Context

GaiaViz to partnered with GMU DAEN program as subject matter experts in our domain, advanced data visualization. During their capstone project, students used GaiaViz datascaping tool to gain a deeper understanding of multivariate data displaying technics. Focusing on UN SDGs data set for it universality and variety. The wold scale data set encompasses al countries and is composed of indicators, composite data.

Since 2015, the United Nations rallies governments, private sector and civil society around 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for a better future, in a roadmap to alleviate health, social, political and economic problems.

Project

In a call for partnerships between stake holders of all levels, Goal 17, “Partnerships For The Goals” encourages to “Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development” (Goal 17 | Department of Economic and Social Affairs, n.d.), through higher inclusion of the least developed countries in the trade system as well as resources, expertise and technology sharing to build their self-sufficiency.

The SDGs progress is monitored by series of indicators.  It is a complex and multidimensional dataset that has reached 2.7 millions records in 2023, provided in CSV and/or JSON formats. There is a need for a more effective visualization approach (than traditional 2D graphs), as to enable a holistic vantage point that allows project participants to better understand the complex relations surrounding the goals. 

Goals

Building on the work of two capstone project teams from the Fall 2024 semester, we aim to enhance the presentation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to aid decision-making at the higher-level and facilitate actionability at the grass-root level through improved communication of key insights within these inherently complex systems. Enabling stakeholders to see how their piece of the puzzle relates to other key players, so that they may better know who to communicate with and how to communicate actionable information.

Deliverables include a 3D interactive visualization of the partnerships surrounding all 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals using the GaiaViz app.  This is a follow-on project that will enhance the existing datascape by adding EU open-data that shows the funding (links) between partnerships, which is particularly important for Goal 17.