Topographic and thematic (in)visibility of Small Island Developing States in a world map

Abstract

Many world maps visualize global data to represent the statistical and spatial relationships among countries. These maps are typically printed in reports or displayed online at a small scale. At such scale, small nations are difficult to perceive or even disappear, as is often the case for Small Island Developing States (SIDS), a group of more than fifty island states designated by the United Nations for their social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities. While the United Nations aims to address the social, economic and environmental challenges world-wide through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), SIDS can be missing from maps presenting SDG indicator data. This constitutes five percent of the world population missing from maps. We propose maps and visual representations to address the perceptibility of SIDS and the availability of their indicator data to offer a more complete visualization of the status towards achieving the SDGs.