SPES Explorer European Pressing Issues Dashboard

The SPES Explorer - European Pressing Issues Dashboard is a web-based, interactive application that visualizes how citizens across European countries historically perceived their most pressing national problems over time. It offers country-level maps and time-series charts, with optional breakdowns by age and gender. Users can explore, compare, and download harmonized indicators derived from Eurobarometer surveys. The current release candidate can be reached via https://spes-test.shinyapps.io/spes-release/ and will be incorporated into the SPES website before end of project. The dashboard’s core innovation is that it is based on harmonized Eurobarometer time surveys. Multiple survey waves are cleaned, recoded, and harmonized into consistent indicators so that changes in public concern can be tracked comparably across countries and years. This enables robust temporal analysis (e.g., rising concern about prices, immigration, or the environment) rather than one-off snapshots. SPES examines productivity, equity, sustainability, participation and human security. The dashboard documents citizens' perspectives by showing how people prioritize problems in their countries. It supports scenario building and policy dialogue by revealing shifts in perceived challenges that may motivate, accelerate, or constrain sustainable development pathways. In this sense, it is tightly connected to the work done in WP8 on citizens’ perspectives and WP10 on the sociopolitical barriers in implementing sustainability transitions.