May 2017: A number of community initiatives have developed online dashboards that can be used to benchmark and track progress on community well-being, including the status of implementation of the SDGs. In San Jose, California, US, collaborators are developing the San Jose SDG Data Dashboard to evaluate the alignment of the City of San Jose’s strategies and goals with the SDGs. In Canada, the Peg initiative provides a local measurement of community well-being that incorporates indicators on education, health, the natural environment, and transport, among others.

The San Jose SDG Data Dashboard aims to raise awareness, inspire change and motivate local action on the SDGs, with a focus on SDG 13 (climate action). To raise awareness on the relationship between material consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the dashboard presents neighborhood-specific estimates of per capita carbon emissions categorized by energy, food, water, goods, and mobility footprints. The Dashboard then generates comparisons of user-generated inputs with neighborhood and city averages with an option to share results via social networks. To motivate action, the tool produces individualized and incentive-based improvement plans and links to municipal resources.

Local government representatives and leaders provided input on their priorities for future revisions of the Dashboard during a meeting between Stanford University’s Sustainable Urban Systems (SUS) initiative, one of the lead agencies on the project, and staff from San Jose’s District 3 and members of the District 3 Community Leadership Council. Residents recommended including metrics on education, health, housing (affordability and homelessness), and transport (walkability and public transit ridership). Other suggestions for improving the dashboard include delineating neighborhood boundaries and increasing inclusivity through Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese options.

The UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s (SDSN) SDG Data for Cities Solution Initiative, San Jose State University (SJSU) and SUS collaborated on the development of the SDG Data Dashboard. A report on the project, titled, ‘San Jose: Implementing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals at the Local Level,’ examines how the SDGs could serve as a framework for achieving sustainable development at a local level.

Peg, an initiative led by two partnering organizations, the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD) and United Way of Winnipeg (UW), evaluates well-being using indicators on the built environment, basic needs, economy, education and learning, governance, health, natural environment, and social vitality. These areas measure a variety of indicators related to community health, ranging from how often citizens volunteer to how much garbage ends up in landfills to more common indicators like infant health and graduation rates. On the natural environment, for instance, Peg considers themes on waste, water use, air quality, GHG emissions, active transportation, automobile use, public transit use, parks and open space, and community gardens.

Also on community indicators, IISD is partnering with the Community Indicators Consortium and Canadian Sustainability Indicators Network (CSIN) to offer a two-day symposium with a focus on community values and engagement. The Symposium will explore and share ways for communities to define priorities through the selection of indicators and then engage with communities to use data to make improvements to sustainability, equity, and quality of life. The event will take place from 12-13 June, in Winnipeg, Canada. [SDSN Press Release] [Draft San Jose Dashboard] [San Jose: Implementing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals at the Local Level] [Peg Website] [Community Indicators Symposium]