Analysing the past and exploring the future: the leverage of data and scenario making in the policy process

Monitoring the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires substantial analytical capacity. The complexity of the topics covered by the SDGs requires adequate tools to capture and depict dynamics that take place across different spatial scales, and that evolve at fast pace but have consequences visible on the longer term.

Availability of free, reliable and consistent data is necessary to derive useful information which policy solutions have to be based on. We have to be able to analyse and understand, to the extent possible:

- what happened in the past,

- how the continuation of past and current trends might unfold in the coming years, and

- what might be the likely impacts of future policies.

One powerful tool is the exploration of long time series of indicators, covering both past trends and future scenarios. These scenarios depict how territories might evolve in the future, given selected assumptions and conditions. The combined impacts of future demographic and economic trends, and policy interventions, are analysed across several topics (from service provision to well-being) and geographical scale (from the core city to the metropolitan area).

This analytical capacity, based on open and consistent data and indicators, would also allow local authorities to compare their performance against selected benchmarks or cities. Collaboration amongst cities might therefore be encouraged, leading to harmonisation of additional data and indicators, sharing monitoring strategies, and comparing policy solutions and good practices.