Semantic network analysis of sustainable development goals to quantitatively measure their interactions

Abstract Following the Sustainable Development Goals proposed by the United Nations in 2015, several countries, institutions, and people have been involved in the design of policies and implementation of practices relating to environmental, social, and human development. The structure of internal relationships that underlie official documents that detail the seventeen sustainable development goals can have a considerable influence on the prioritization of these policies. This study analyses the semantic network that exist between the goals proposed by the United Nations, comparing their English and Spanish versions. The results show some similarities between methods and languages in the most and least connected goals. The least connected goals appear to need greater attention as they are more independent and their targets are not connected to the other goals’ targets. The semantic network that has been analysed enables the visualization of the strength of the connections between goals within the official texts and can be a tool for ensuring a better understanding of these goals and creating policies that linked several of them with one another.