Mapping Minnesota’s Progress: The SDG Geospatial Impact Hub
Developed as a prototype collaboration between the University of Minnesota’s SDG Initiative and U-Spatial, the SDG Geospatial Impact Hub demonstrated how county-level data could be mapped to the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Project Overview
In a past initiative, U-Spatial provided GIS support and technical consultation to help the University of Minnesota’s SDG Initiative explore sub-national tracking of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While global metrics are typically measured at the national level, this project sought to visualize indicator data across Minnesota’s 87 counties.
Prototype & Implementation
Using Esri’s Sustainable Development Goals solution and ArcGIS Hub technology, student researchers and faculty compiled public data from sources including the U.S. Census Bureau and federal/state databases. U-Spatial assisted with spatial data organization and technical setup to help visualize key metrics, ranging from education to environmental indicators, at the county scale.
As a proof of concept, the project successfully mapped indicators aligning with all 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals across Minnesota's 87 counties, serving as a model for how academic institutions can organize public GIS datasets to illustrate sub-national trends in sustainable development.
Project Status & Legacy
This initiative served as an exploratory prototype to demonstrate the feasibility of county-level SDG mapping using open GIS tools. While active development on the platform has concluded, the project remains an important benchmark in U-Spatial’s history of supporting multidisciplinary campus collaborations and spatial data transparency.