Data Tools for the California Bay Area: Actionable Intelligence for Cities to Support SDG Achievement

Overview

Data is integral to target-setting and tracking SDG achievement over time. While much attention has been given to national-level measurement and reporting systems, such as the U.S. National Reporting Platform (NRP), less has been done to determine how these types of activities might function at the city level.

60% of the global population will live in cities by 2030, so successful SDG localization will be a critical step towards the achievement of SDGs. This success will depend on the concerted leadership of cities and city networks to take local action towards the Global Goals.

For the past year, Stanford’s Sustainable Urban Systems Initiative (SUS) within the School of Engineering has been working with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a variety of local stakeholders in the California Bay Area to test SDG localization strategies. SUS has identified this main challenge: We need actionable intelligence at the city level to achieve the SDGs.

Solutions from this Project

Local Reporting Platform

The SUS team synthesized its work with San José and stakeholder conversations with governments across the Bay Area to recommend features for a unified local reporting platform.

Online Data Dashboard

Once a local reporting platform is developed for the Bay Area, it will have an online database of local SDG statistics which can be visualized using an online dashboard. As an interim solution for a comprehensive tool, SUS has built a preliminary Bay Area SDG Dashboard.

---

Written by
Derek Ouyang, Lecturer, Stanford University
Jack Lundquist, Student Researcher, Stanford University