A System-Level Engineering Approach to Define the Social Value Rating of Earth Remote Sensing Missions Through Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, the UN state members agreed on the “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” document to drive the evolution of humanity in the close future. A great effort has been placed to understand how space missions and their data can support the goals fulfilment, both by private entities and public organisations like the European Space Agency (ESA) or United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). This paper proposes a method to evaluate the level of support that a space missions used for Earth observation in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) can provide to each goal, using a set of indices based on missions' and payloads' performance related to Earth Observation (EO) services. Eight Earth observation services have been selected for this study: mapping, disaster monitoring, forestry, agriculture, geology, oceanography, hydrology, meteorology. Each of these services has its own performance requirements and can support many different goals. Using the relationship between mission performance and services together with the original correlation between the services and the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDG2030), the final assessment of an Earth Observation mission towards each goal is achieved.