A new home for Composite Indicators and Scoreboards

On November 1, in the framework of the European Union side-events at the UN Summit on Climate Change (COP26), the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre unveiled a new online platform gathering hundreds of composite indicators and scoreboards just a click away – the Composite Indicators & Scoreboards Explorer.

"At the Joint Research Centre, we are creating more than just a data tool. We are creating a home to all well-known multidimensional measures that can help us take the pulse of our societies", said Michaela Saisana, Head of the Monitoring, Indicators and Impact Evaluation unit at the JRC.

The Composite Indicators and Scoreboards Explorer builds on 20 years of experience, and over 100 collaborations with international organisations, world-class universities and policy departments of the European Commission.

"The Explorer currently includes close to 100 indices and 6000 components, so it is really a big effort that the team at the JRC has put into it, and the plan is to arrive at 400 indices and scoreboards", said Ana Rita Neves and Carlos Moura, principal investigators of this project.

Speaking at the launch event, Martin Wolf, principal investigator for the Environmental Performance Index said "The JRC's new Composite Indicators and Scoreboards Explorer really marks a new era of policy making, one that is driven by science and research and the most effective solutions".

Yanchun Zhang, Chief of Statistics at the Human Development Report Office and Jock Martin, Head of Integrated Assessments for Sustainability at the European Environmental Agency, also welcomed the Explorer and underlined its potential in becoming an important public good, which facilitates data discovery and brings awareness and understanding about opportunities and shortcomings.

Exploring the data behind the world’s most pressing issues offers an opportunity for more informed policy making. By bringing data often spread across multiple sources into one single resource, the Explorer allows anyone without any technical background to explore the issues that matter in a visual and interactive way.

Explore the tool