Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs)

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The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) are scenarios of societal change developed by members of multiple research communities, including futures studies, integrated assessment modeling (IAM), and Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (IAV). The SSPs provide qualitative and quantitative descriptions of alternative socioeconomic developments in the future up to 2100. The International Committee on New Integrated Climate Change Assessment Scenarios (ICONICS) coordinates a range of activities contributing to the scenario process.

The qualitative component of SSPs consists of narratives (also referred to as storylines) that describe the relationships among different trends and socioeconomic developments assumed in a scenario.  The quantitative elements provide data accompanying the scenarios on national population, educational attainment, urbanization and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The SSPs are used as inputs to various integrated assessment models to produce scenarios of future land use and emissions consistent with the socioeconomic development pathways. Outcomes for these scenarios, as well as the SSP quantitative elements, are available in the SSP Database hosted by IIASA.

The data collection archived and disseminated here includes data sets developed by researchers based on SSP qualitative narratives and/or quantitative elements that have been submitted to SEDAC for dissemination. These data sets may be useful to the broader research community. Researchers are encouraged to submit their SSP relevant data sets for archiving and dissemination at the SEDAC data submission page.

The current archive of SSP-related data includes several data sets under the following categories:

SSP-based literature

Spatial population 

Spatial urban land