13 January 2016: The Millennium Institute launched the Integrated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Planning Model (iSDG), a tool to simulate trends towards achieving the SDGs under a business-as-usual scenario (BAU), to explore potential impacts of alternative scenarios, and to model trends up to 2050. iSDG features a dashboard displaying the BAU performance of all 17 Goals, which can be manipulated to explore alternative scenarios.

Policy makers and government officials can make use of the simulation tool, which is currently in a beta version, to test the likely impacts of policies before they are designed or to analyze the effects of policies after implementation. By clicking on a Goal on the dashboard, users can view interventions that are expected to affect progress on the Goal and manipulate these interventions to explore how additional investments could enhance or detract from Goal performance.

After applying an intervention, users can then see how the country’s progress towards that goal, and all other goals, changes. This interface allows users to visualize how combinations of interventions can lead to positive synergies, the Millennium Institute notes. [iSDG] [Millennium Institute]