Sustainable Development Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Sustainable Development Goal 9 seeks to build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation. This SDG encompasses three important aspects of sustainable development: infrastructure, industrialisation and innovation. Infrastructure provides the basic physical systems and structures essential to the operation of a society or enterprise. Industrialisation drives economic growth, creates job opportunities and thereby reduces income poverty. Innovation advances the technological capabilities of industrial sectors and prompts the development of new skills. Inclusive and sustainable industrial development is the primary source of income generation, allows for rapid and sustained increases in living standards for all people, and provides the technological solutions needed for environmentally sound industrialisation.
Space technologies play a key role in:
- Infrastructure mapping and monitoring, including maintenance of road infrastructure in rural environments, where the most reliable technology is satellite-based
- Construction surveying though machine automation
- Smart mobility, e.g. reduced fuel consumption by smarter planning and monitoring of driving behaviour
International Committee on Global Navigation Satellite systems (ICG)
Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) contribute to the construction of of buildings and city infrastructure. The use of GNSS for machine control, for example, automates construction activities by controlling the blades and buckets of construction equipment based on information provided by 3D design. GNSS machine control increases the speed of grading by more than 50 per cent relative to non-automated machines, and reduces the consumption of tarmac by 9 per cent when paving because the width and thickness is precisely as prescribed in the plans. Other applications include topographic surveys of construction sites and subsequent infrastructure monitoring.
Through the International Committee on GNSS (ICG), UNOOSA facilitates coordination among GNSS providers, regional systems, and augmentations to ensure greater compatibility, interoperability, and transparency of GNSS systems, benefiting all using GNSS around the world. The ICG assists developing countries to upgrade their infrastructure by leveraging satellite-based services which can benefit their development plans and applications.
China Space Station
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UNOOSA has created the Access to Space for All initiative, in its effort to facilitate key infrastructure development in space emerging and non space faring nations. As part of the Access to Space for All Initiative, the Office has partnered with the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) to offer opportunities for space experiments on board the China Space Station (CSS). Through this programme, UNOOSA intends to capitalize on the technological and innovative skills of the Government of China to benefit Member States of the United Nations, in particular developing countries, thereby contributing to the SDGs through increasing access to space. The programme provides scientists from around the world with an opportunity to conduct their own experiments on board CSS; it is an innovative and future-focused programme under UNOOSA's Access to Space for All initiative, to open up space exploration activities to all nations and to create a new paradigm in building capabilities in space science and technology.
Read more about the UN/China Cooperation on the Utilization of the CSS