Building sustainable and impactful tools: best practices and future directions for geo-dashboards

Web-based geographic visualization systems – geo-dashboards for short – are increasingly used in geography and urban studies, serving as both communication tools and decision support systems. However, cohesive and reusable approaches to creating these systems remain scarce and thus the current landscape of geo-dashboards is relatively fragmented. In addition, they are often developed in an ad-hoc fashion, which hinders their impact and longevity. To help address these challenges, we review the state-of-the-art academic literature on the use and development of dashboards across geo- related disciplines and, based on a systematic literature review of 82 geo-dashboard articles, identify key issues around stakeholder engagement, longevity, accessibility, and impact. Drawing on the current state-of-the-art, we propose an agenda for building more sustainable, accessible and impactful geo- dashboards.