Prof. CHEN Jun, Chief Scientist at the National Geomatics Center of China and Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, delivered the 16th PAIR Distinguished Lecture, titled “Spatial-temporal Information for High Quality Sustainable Development”, on 27 March 2024. The hybrid lecture attracted over 200 participants joining in person and online from more than 20 countries and regions and was also broadcast live on multiple social media platforms, capturing an online viewing audience of over 10,700.
In his presentation, Prof. Chen first gave a brief introduction to the United Nations (UN) 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as SDG monitoring practices in Mainland China. He pointed out that the Nation has adopted the high-quality sustainable development concept, which emphasises harmony among the social, economic and environmental aspects of national development. Next, he elaborated on a pilot project that he led, in which Deqing County’s progress towards SDGs was measured with the use of geospatial and statistical information. The project was selected by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs as one of the first 16 good SDGs practices in 2020.
Subsequently, Prof. Chen asserted that the achievement of sustainable development requires holistic and systematic research to build a digital governance system as the basis for the scientific and orderly development of national territorial space. He also explained how territorial space sustainability studies can help unveil and analyse various patterns, such as the distributions of population, enterprises and public service facilities and the relationships between them.
To conclude, Prof. Chen introduced the national program on the development of the Realistic Geospatial Landscape Model (3dRGLm), which can generate digital descriptions and representations of real 3D geospatial spaces. This new geographic information system can support the Nation’s efforts in natural resources management and high-quality sustainable development.
