Forecasting Sustainable Development Goals: A Time-Series Analysis Using Prophet Model on Global SDG Indicators, Dr Eimad Abusham, Dr Salahaldin Abdulkader, Ahmad Kayed, Mahmood Al-Bahri

Dr Eimad Abusham, Dr Salahaldin Abdulkader, Ahmad Kayed Ahmad Kayed and Mahmood Al-Bahri
Sohar University
Oman

Purpose: To construct a transparent, reproducible pipeline of modeling SDG regional trajectories towards 2030 to use Prophet, harmonizing data and regions, visualizing observed and projected performance, and determining key policy priorities in inclusion, city systems and ecological governance.Design/methodology/approach: Region-goal, we specied Prophet using piecewise-linear trend, no seasonality, additive errors; make predictions out to 2030 and truncate at 0-100, benchmarking by rolling-origin to naive and ARIMA.
Findings: Europe and North America lead in social services and infrastructure, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean are mixed but improving, Oceania is split between Australia/New Zealand and Pacific nations, and Africa is recovering from basic services, ecosystems, and institution collapses.
Value: A fully scripted, end-to-end workflow that automates data harmonization and cartography, yields a compact figure suitable for high-impact outlets, and supports consistent cross-region, cross-goal comparisons.
Research limitations/implications: Results inherit limitations of the underlying SDG indicators (coverage, comparability, and potential measurement error).