Towards an IoT-Enabled Digital Earth for SDGs: The Data Quality Challenge

Digital Earth (DE), a technology offering real-time visualisation of Earth’s processes, has shown promising results in aiding decision-making for a sustainable world, raising awareness about individual impacts on our planet, and supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) agenda. However, both DE and SDGs face a common obstacle: Data Quality (DQ). This review investigates the challenge of DQ in the context of DE for SDGs and explores how IoT can address this challenge and extend the reach of DE to support SDGs. Furthermore, the study discusses three core aspects; first, the potential of IoT as a data source that supplements satellite data for DE for SDGs, second, the DQ challenge that is specific to an IoT-enabled DE for SDGs is illustrated through scenarios identified from the literature, and third, solutions and perspectives that address the DQ challenge. This study underscores the necessity of addressing the DQ challenge and discusses some potential solutions to foster effective interdisciplinary collaboration, knowledge sharing, and data reusability. The study provides a viewpoint for understanding and addressing the DQ challenge for an IoT-enabled DE for SDGs to support the UN SDGs agenda for a sustainable world by 2030.