17 April 2017: The World Bank has released the ‘2017 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals.’ The Atlas includes over 150 maps and data visualizations to assist with efforts to track progress in achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Atlas is part of the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI) publications and statistical resources. For each of the 17 SDGs, selected indicators have been identified and visualized to help the reader analyze trends and challenges. The Atlas also seeks to stimulate discussion on measurement issues.

The Atlas identifies and visualizes selected indicators. It also seeks to stimulate discussion on measurement issues.

The 2017 Atlas includes data that are being published in the WDI for the first time and reviews methodological issues with data, among other topics. New data report on access to clean cooking fuels and technologies. Among the methodological discussions are reviews of efforts to refine measurements of access to clean water and to electricity, as well as to establish better definitions for the term “urban.” According to the Atlas, the terms “urban” and “rural” have no consistent international definitions. The Atlas also discusses new methods to measure SDG indicators related to universal health care, securing land rights, and measuring road accessibility in rural areas, all of which are Tier III indicators.

Users can view the Atlas online or download it as a PDF publication, access the WDI statistical tables and interactive SDG Dashboard, or download and query the WDI database. [Publication: 2017 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals] [World Development Indicators data resources]