The Affordable Housing Atlas aims to look into the issue of housing access on a global scale. The approach to the issue is supported by data provided by multiple sources, making it possible to describe the planet on a global scale using the criteria of the Affordable Housing Activation (AHA) scientific committee, which has defined different barriers contributing to housing inaccessibility.
Indicators can be searched either by source, by the barrier to which they belong, by relevance or by keyword. More than 4,000 indicators from more than 200 countries are available.
Indicators with time frames of between 10 and 40 years are available and can be easily viewed by moving a slider.
The atlas is a tool that has been created at a very particular moment in time, when, on the one hand, previous reference tools have become obsolete, and on the other hand, new data has emerged that can describe urban settlements on a planetary scale, allowing for a unique and novel approach. Most of this new data is provided by GHSL, both data from the metropolitan region scale and data available for the city scale or lower. The tool also incorporates data from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which describes both cities and countries, offering a consistent, global view.
The tool also offers the option of generating a graph describing the evolution of a particular indicator within a given time frame.
By selecting two indicators (using the + button), users can generate bivariate maps showing the correlation between the two indicators. Purple areas show where there is a correlation, while tones tending toward blue or red show areas where the values do not correlate.
The Affordable Housing Atlas uses data from multiples sources that, until now, were only accessible through different websites. By translating this data in a uniform way in terms of qualities and standards, the tool provides a vast amount of information on a single platform in a coordinated way. Sources include the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and Google, among others.
By selecting more than two indicators, users can generate TSNE graphs in which countries are grouped depending on their similarity regarding the indicators in question.
Some indicators are also available on a metropolitan scale, giving access to more than 50,000 regions all over the world.
The tool facilitates access to all this data to support a deeper understanding of the issue of housing access on a global scale, allowing users to compare countries and cities, and to inform public policies to help improve access to affordable housing.
Creating bivariate maps with metropolitan region data is also available.
The tool offers the possibility of checking for each metropolitan region’s development over the years. The visualization has a detail of 250 x 250 meters, which shows the population growth and the land urbanization.
The navigation through the Affordable Housing Atlas is simple and intuitive to make access to the data easy. Thanks to the internal structure of the atlas, which adheres to the AHA Conference guidelines, existing data that has not yet been published can be included to enrich the tool as well.
