To serve a wide user community by providing composite Landsat images and raw data for urban areas that can be used in interdisciplinary studies of remote sensing and the environment.

To provide geographical portraits of vulnerability designed to incorporate both exposure to climate change and national capacities to adapt.

To provide quantitative metrics for evaluating a country's environmental performance in different policy categories relative to clearly defined targets.

To make the acquisition, comparison and analysis of sustainability indicators easier by compiling them in a single database, incorporating multiple country codes, and condensing the indicator descriptions into short methodological summaries in an accompanying data dictionary.

To help assess a country's demand on and supply of biological capital.

To provide population estimates, gross domestic product, and surface area data to be used in conjunction with the sustainability indicators included in the compendium.

To provide high spatial resolution subnational estimates of unsatisfied basic needs for use by a wide community for interdisciplinary studies of poverty, inequality and the environment.

To provide a global subnational map of the prevalence of underweight children that can be used by a wide user community in interdisciplinary studies of health, poverty and the environment.

To provide a global subnational map of infant mortality rate estimates that can be used by a wide user community in interdisciplinary studies of health, poverty and the environment.

To preserve access to the original set of socioeconomic and natural resource scenarios used by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) and other related research.

To provide a time series of raster data on population to facilitate data integration.

To provide a set of coastlines consistent with GPWv3 raster data for cartographic purposes.

To provide maps of the input administrative units used in GPWv3.

To provide a time series of raster data on population projected to the year 2015 to facilitate data integration.

To provide a time series of raster data on population projected to the year 2015 to facilitate data integration.

To provide a raster representation of nation-states in GPWv3 for use in aggregating population data.

To provide a time series of raster data on population density to facilitate data integration.

To provide a quantitative measure of the input resolution of administrative units used for GPWv3.

To provide a quantitative measure of the input resolution of administrative units used for GPWv3.

To provide a vector (point) version of the input administrative units used in GPWv3 for use in data integration.