From metrics to meaning

Authors

In brief

Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals is polarised, with wide disparities between the trajectories the metrics record and the capacity-building that would give those metrics meaning. Environmetrics spans disciplines, institutions and societies, and is unusually well placed to address that gap. The authors set out the history and mission of The International Environmetrics Society, and where its work needs to go next.

“Achieving the SDGs requires practical, understandable, and trustworthy solutions, with greater in-built flexibility.”

What the article covers

• What the 2025 WMO forecast implies for the 1.5 degree threshold, and why action now still determines severity.
• Environmetrics as an n-science: a meeting ground for ecologists, engineers, statisticians and political scientists.
• Physics-informed neural networks, and why physical principles and statistical learning need not compete.
• TIES mentoring, webinars, and a joint international conference in Mexico City.

How to cite

Nathaniel K. Newlands, Marco Costa and Stefano Castruccio. “From metrics to meaning.” vISIon: The ISI Magazine Vol. 1 No. 1, October 2025, pp. 7–10.