Developing a Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3) Index for Italian Municipalities

Since the establishment of the SDGs, related progress at a national level has usually been measured using the province as the smallest geographical aggregation. To cope with this gap, we aimed to develop a methodology for SDG3 index calculation for Italian municipalities. Official data for 2018–2022 were collected to cover 11 of 13 SDG3 targets that were mapped to 29 unique indicators: 10 were computed at municipal level, while for the remaining 19 a lower granularity was applied. The SDG3 index, calculated by weighting the targets equally, ranged from 0 to 1, with higher values corresponding to better goal fulfilment. The methodology was applied to the municipalities in the Lombardy region, where the index spanned 0.538 to 0.769. Since SDG indices contribute to the 2030 Agenda goal achievements at country level, more attention should be paid to the geographical details of assessment through policy information and local benchmarking.