Do Smart City Solutions Contribute to the Achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals?

2022 ◽  
pp. 22-44
Author(s):  
İhsan İkizer
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
The People ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Urban Problems ◽  
Multiple Actors

Sustainable development and smart city have been two key concepts that are mentioned and referred to in any discussion on our cities. Today, more than half of the people live in cities, and the problems that we face in urban areas ranging from climate change to transportation, from waste management to communicable diseases, threaten the future of our cities and next generations. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by the world leaders at the UN Summit in 2015 in order to save our planet, our generation, and next generations. As the problem is global, the solution needs to be global; and as the problem is a result of multiple actors, the solution needs to be provided by the collaboration of multiple stakeholders. Smart city has emerged as a concept that offers several solutions to the urban problems, which also overlap with most of the targets listed in the SDGs. In this chapter, the contribution of smart city technologies to the achievement of the SDGs is analysed through the in-depth case study of Istanbul, a mega city with a population of around 16 million.

scholarly journals Using citizen science data to monitor the Sustainable Development Goals: a bottom-up analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Ballerini ◽  
Sylvia I. Bergh
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Science Data ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Development Goals

AbstractOfficial data are not sufficient for monitoring the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): they do not reach remote locations or marginalized populations and can be manipulated by governments. Citizen science data (CSD), defined as data that citizens voluntarily gather by employing a wide range of technologies and methodologies, could help to tackle these problems and ultimately improve SDG monitoring. However, the link between CSD and the SDGs is still understudied. This article aims to develop an empirical understanding of the CSD-SDG link by focusing on the perspective of projects which employ CSD. Specifically, the article presents primary and secondary qualitative data collected on 30 of these projects and an explorative comparative case study analysis. It finds that projects which use CSD recognize that the SDGs can provide a valuable framework and legitimacy, as well as attract funding, visibility, and partnerships. But, at the same time, the article reveals that these projects also encounter several barriers with respect to the SDGs: a widespread lack of knowledge of the goals, combined with frustration and political resistance towards the UN, may deter these projects from contributing their data to the SDG monitoring apparatus.

scholarly journals Teaching for a Better World. Sustainability and Sustainable Development Goals in the Construction of a Change-Maker University

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (15) ◽  
pp. 4224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Zamora-Polo ◽  
Jesús Sánchez-Martín
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Primary Teacher ◽  
Practical Consideration ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
Development Goals

Sustainability, as a key concept in the education field, has submitted a relevant change during the last years. Thus, there is a growing debate about its meaning. It has undergone a crucial merging of significances from many fields: Ecology, environmental awareness, but also from politics, ethics or even spiritual approaches. All these fields have been co-involved in the building of such subject concept. In this sense, this article addresses the different ways of understanding sustainability as a polyhedral concept and how sustainability can be understood under the umbrella of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Furthermore, it is proposed a conceptual framework to teach this UN Program at Higher Education, contributing to the training of undergraduate and postgraduate students from both a professional and a personal point of view. This framework is applied in a case study—in particular, in a course of Primary Teacher Degree called Didactics of Matter and Energy. This article finishes with practical consideration to build a change-maker University.

scholarly journals Towards the implementation of sustainable development goals in Nigeria: Maximizing the influence of religious leaders

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Idowu A Akinloye
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Millennium Development Goals ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Potential Influence ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Global Agenda ◽  
Limited Scope

The limited scope of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the failure of the programme to achieve its developmental objectives at its expiry in 2015 led to the development and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) programme commencing 2016. The SDGs progamme has been widely accepted as laudable for its wider approach to global development and sustainability. However, if the SDGs programme is not to end as the Millennium Development Goals did, it is necessary that its implementing actors collaborate with stakeholders of institutions that will make more members of the populace aware of, accepting of, and involved in the implementation of the goals. This is crucial because the goals require the populace’ corresponding participation. This paper focuses on one such institutional stakeholder: religious leaders. This paper, through literature review and analysis of surveys and reports, examines the influence religious leaders have on their followers in Africa with Nigeria as a case study. It argues that religious leaders have a strong influence on their followers, as Nigerians and most Africans place more trust in, and respect the opinions of their religious leaders than their political counterparts. The paper, therefore, contends that if the global agenda of the SDGs is to be realised by getting a wider Nigerians to accept and involve in the implementation of the sustainable goals, then, the potential influence of religious leaders should be harnessed.

scholarly journals University collaboration for co-designing sustainable urban areas

2021 ◽  
Vol 301 ◽  
pp. 03002
Author(s):  
Peter Čajka ◽  
Veronica Grebennikova ◽  
Hoang Manh Trung Vu ◽  
Van Tran Ngo
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Entrepreneurial Activity ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

Our article tackles the timely and important issue of the university collaboration aimed at shaping up the sustainable urban areas and contributing to their development through the teaching and research. Universities provided qualified labour force, yield novel research solutions and act as hubs for entrepreneurial activity in urban areas. In this article, we show that even though most of the universities are concentrated in large urban centres and capital regions, many of them are located in small rural areas and have a profound effect on them. We also demonstrate the impact of universities on the sustainable development which is done through the sustainable education as well as the R&D approaches. These effects are very relevant for the co-designing of sustainable rural areas that can follow the principles of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and the green policies imposed by the majority of the local and central governments around the world.

scholarly journals The concept of sustainable development as the foundation for changing education in the North

2021 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 00048
Author(s):  
Vasiliy Savvinov
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
The North ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Northern Territories ◽  
The University

The article reveals the experience of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in Russian universities based on the case study of North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU). The article presents a comparative analysis of strategic programs to manage the development of universities in the North of Russia and the northern countries of Europe and America in the context of global changes and growing uncertainty of the environment. It shows NEFU’s groundwork for the implementation of the sustainable development model of the northern territories and justifies the key principles and the directions of change in the academic and innovative activities of the university related to the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

scholarly journals The Collective Intelligence based Program to Accelerate Achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals as a Case Study for Collectively Intelligent Program Design

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy E Williams
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Program Design ◽  
Collective Intelligence ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Software Platforms ◽  
The Cost

General Collective Intelligence (GCI) are software platforms that organize groups into a single collective intelligence with general problem solving ability. In doing so a GCI has the potential to give groups vastly more ability to address collective challenges such as the SDGs. A GCI is a significant infrastructure investment. The Collective Intelligence based Program to Accelerate Achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (CIPAA-SDGs) however is designed to implement a GCI in phases so that the cost to any single project is far outweighed by the potential benefits. The phasing of that GCI development in the CIPAA-SDGs program design is used here as a case study for collectively intelligent program design.

scholarly journals Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development Targets: A Possible Harmonisation? Insights from the European Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 926 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigi Petti ◽  
Claudia Trillo ◽  
Busisiwe Ncube Makore
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
National Level ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Agenda 2030 ◽  
Development Framework ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
National Databases

The Agenda 2030 includes a set of targets that need to be achieved by 2030. Although none of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) focuses exclusively on cultural heritage, the resulting Agenda includes explicit reference to heritage in SDG 11.4 and indirect reference to other Goals. Achievement of international targets shall happen at local and national level, and therefore, it is crucial to understand how interventions on local heritage are monitored nationally, therefore feeding into the sustainable development framework. This paper is focused on gauging the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals with reference to cultural heritage, by interrogating the current way of classifying it (and consequently monitoring). In fact, there is no common dataset associated with monitoring SDGs, and the field of heritage is extremely complex and diversified. The purpose for the paper is to understand if the taxonomy used by different national databases allows consistency in the classification and valuing of the different assets categories. The European case study has been chosen as field of investigation, in order to pilot a methodology that can be expanded in further research. A cross-comparison of a selected sample of publicly accessible national cultural heritage databases has been conducted. As a result, this study confirms the existence of general harmonisation of data towards the achievement of the SDGs with a broad agreement of the conceptualisation of cultural heritage with international frameworks, thus confirming that consistency exists in the classification and valuing of the different assets categories. However, diverse challenges of achieving a consistent and coherent approach to integrating culture in sustainability remains problematic. The findings allow concluding that it could be possible to mainstream across different databases those indicators, which could lead to depicting the overall level of attainment of the Agenda 2030 targets on heritage. However, more research is needed in developing a robust correlation between national datasets and international targets.

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