Target 1.1: By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day.
(eo services focus on: Mapping spatial distribution of risk of poverty)
Target 1.2: By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.
Earth Observation (EO) data can be used to track and target poverty, and aid the allocation of scarce resources which can help improve human livelihoods. EO can be used to map spatial distribution of socioeconomic deprivations, as well as providing information that may indicate areas at risk of poverty (e.g. contribute towards famine early warning systems) (NASA, 2018). EO data can be used to forecast weather, monitor fires, determine populations at risk from flooding/landslides, analyse climate change and map land cover change (e.g. deforestation and degradation). These factors can all help identify areas currently at risk from poverty, and in the future.
Satellite images can also be used to estimate economic activity (e.g. through monitoring night lights) and mapping houses (e.g. slums), which can be identified through satellite images using physical parameters, clustering of structures with or without a road network, irregular and haphazardly grouped temporary, poorly-constructed or semi-permanent households (Montana et al., 2016). Further, these datasets can be combined with in-field survey data (from socioeconomic household surveys, social media, mobile phone networks) (Leidig & Teeuw, 2015), and often by additionally using machine learning algorithms (Jean et al., 2016), can estimate consumption expenditure and asset wealth of the region analysed. Such approaches can assist efforts to track and target poverty.
(eo services focus on: Estimate economic activity, mapping areas and its resources)