IoT and machine learning for enabling sustainable development goals

The United Nations drafted an agenda for 2030 to achieve sustainable development with 17 well-defined goals which are an urgent call for action requiring collaboration and innovation across countries and organisations. The year 2023 marks the midpoint toward fulfilling the proposed agenda but the world is still behind in attaining any of the set goals. This article discusses the opportunities offered by the rise of the Internet of Things and advances in artificial intelligence in ushering these goals with tangible use cases that relate to health, energy, and cities. Moreover, the article exposes the challenges that emerge from applying these technologies in the realisation of sustainable development goals (SDG) with underlined risks related to bias, security, data privacy, and the multi-objective optimisation of often competing SDGs.