Utilizing Earth Observations for Reaching Sustainable Development Goals in Water, Sanitation and Public Health

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals call for universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water, improvement of water quality, and adequate and equitable sanitation for all, with special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations (Goal 6). In addition, the world community also aims to end preventable deaths of newborns and children under 5 years of age, and end the epidemics of neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other infectious diseases (Goal 3). Water and sanitation-related diseases remain the leading causes of death in children under five, mostly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, due to diarrheal diseases linked to poor sanitation and hygiene. Water scarcity affects more than 40 per cent of the global population and is projected to rise substantially. More than 80 per cent of wastewater resulting from human activities is also discharged into rivers or sea without any treatment and poor water quality controls. As a result, around 1.8 billion people globally are still forced to use a source of drinking water that is fecally contaminated. Earth observation techniques provide the most effective and encompassing tool to monitor both regional and local scale changes in water quality and quantity, impacts of droughts and flooding, and water resources vulnerabilities in delta regions around the globe. University of Rhode Island, along with partners in the US and Bangladesh, is using satellite remote sensing datasets and earth observation techniques to develop a series of tools for surveillance, analysis and decision support for various government, academic, and non-government stakeholder organizations in South-Asia to achieve sustainable development goals in 1) providing safe water and sanitation access in vulnerable regions through safe water resources mapping, 2) providing increasing access to medicine and vaccines through estimation of disease burden and identification of hotspots, and 3) reducing child mortality due to water-borne diseases in vulnerable regions through empowering public health personnel with prediction of diarrheal disease outbreaks.