Numbers a planner can defend

Sabah is one of Malaysia's most unequal regions internally, yet the data describing those gaps is scattered across survey reports, spreadsheets and satellite archives. Atlas Ekonomi Sabah brings each district's structure, trajectory and peers into one place, with the reasoning shown, for state and district planners, researchers, elected representatives' offices, journalists and NGOs.

What it is, and is not

• An evidence atlas built on official DOSM statistics, with transparent diagnostics and projections that show their uncertainty.
• Not a source of individual or household microdata: every figure is an aggregate published by DOSM or derived from one.
• Not political: no party or candidate content, no seat predictions, neutral language throughout.
• Not real-time: a slow-data atlas, updated when a new official vintage arrives.

Design and cultural credits

The visual system, Tenun Data (woven data), borrows the structure of Sabah's textiles, not their patterns. The district jalur and section rules follow the banding of mogah sarongs woven by Iranun and Bajau communities; loading states echo the ordered dots of Rungus beadwork from Kudat; framed panels recall the supplementary-weft borders of dastar weaving; the contour texture on dark panels is drawn from Mount Kinabalu's topography.

These are abstracted geometries, not reproductions of specific ceremonial motifs. We credit the communities whose craft informed them, and we intend to have the motif set reviewed by a cultural practitioner or a heritage academic at Universiti Malaysia Sabah before the version 1.0 launch. If you are one, we would value your advice.

Data and methods

Official statistics come from the Department of Statistics Malaysia via OpenDOSM (CC BY 4.0) and boundaries from geoBoundaries (CC BY 3.0). How every number is produced, including model cards, backtests and known limitations, is on the methodology page. Everything is downloadable from the data page.

Corrections

If a number looks wrong, a district is mis-named, or a sentence is unfair, please open an issue. Corrections are logged publicly in the errata and the release changelog.

Team

Built by Ilham Kassim. Code is open source under MIT on GitHub; contributions and external review from researchers and planners are welcome.