Synthetic Aperture Radar for SDGs in Big Data Era

To well keep track of progress towards the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the corresponding 169 targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development signed in 2015, the UN Statistical Commission proposed a Global Indicator Framework (GIF) of 232 SDG indicators to help countries to implement development strategies and monitor the progress toward the SDG Targets. In the past years, the contributions of EO-based data to the GIF are recognized and regarded as it will play more important role in the next 10 years of action to realize the SDGs of 2030. In this paper the contributions of Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to the 232 SDG Indicators are assessed, which can monitor our planet day and night as an important part of EO. And in order to better support the SDGs in the future, the specifications of the SAR-based dataset (products) and the corresponding requirements for the new generation SAR are discussed, which is helpful for the proposed SAR mission designated to SDGs.