New pathways for UN SDGs spatialization: GeoSDG toolkit empowering the sustainable future under a spatial context

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a universal framework for addressing global resource and environmental challenges. However, most existing assessments rely on historical statistical data at coarse scales, often overlooking the explicit spatial dimension and the dynamic interactions between land-use change and infrastructure expansion. To address this, we developed GeoSDG, an integrated modeling toolkit that couples cellular automata (CA) models of land-use and infrastructure change with a spatial SDG assessment framework. Unlike traditional static approaches, GeoSDG captures the co-evolution of land use and urban infrastructure, achieving satisfactory simulation performance (Figure of Merit: 0.128 for land use, 0.263 for infrastructure). By evaluating 27 indicators across ten land-related SDGs, the framework is broadly consistent with established UN SDG assessment principles. Applying GeoSDG to the Yangtze River Delta from 2020 to 2050 under multiple Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), our results reveal substantial spatial heterogeneity and identify approximately 10% of the land area as high-priority zones for targeted intervention. These findings highlight rapidly growing urban areas and provide pathway-specific policy recommendations to support progress towards the 2030 and 2050 sustainability targets.