Functional areas relate to, and support, the organisation and management of people, communities, society, and their activities in geographic space. These areas arise from human decisions. Linking data to administrative and functional geographies provides the spatial component that further enables data integration and broader comparability. It’s also the key to informing stakeholders on the status of international, national and sub-national policy objectives and programme goals/deliverables. As a result, they are the building blocks of many processes relevant to sustainable development goals. Functional areas form the link between data collection and implementation of actions. They can be used to visualise data, but also for analytical purposes and, if stable, trends over time. In the natural environment context (including marine) they are key units for implementation and monitoring.
Functional areas are relevant for most, if not all, of the SDGs which relate to people, and marine administrative units are relevant for actions which apply to sea areas.
Functional Areas are essentially human-defined virtual areas, often organised in a hierarchical way. Their key attributes are: geometry, level (in the hierarchy), code, name, and function. Functions include protected sites, planning zones, statistical units, flood zones, school catchments, agricultural zones, administrative areas, etc.