Day 5

Today I put together my first dashboard! I used 3 different visuals: a map, a treemap, and a bar chart.

See this link:

https://public.tableau.com/views/Dashboard1_130/Dashboard1?:embed=y&:showTabs=y&:display_count=yes

The map allows the user to see where each sample site is located in the New Jersey/New York area. The relative sizes of each point (colored circle) signify the amount of total damage to businesses in the area. The sites are color-coded by region, but hovering over each also gives the region, sample site ID, and a breakdown of the total damage to different types of businesses.

Note: All three visuals are color-coded the same way, such that each region represented has the same color.

The treemap focuses on the total number of businesses damaged per site, with the sample sites labelled. They are also grouped and colored by their respective region. The relative sizes show the extent of damage to each site. Hovering over each rectangle displays the per site totals.

The bar chart focuses on the regions, with the length of the bar signifying the sum of all the businesses affected by flood waters of all the sites within each region.

The filter option (placed on the map) allows the user to choose to see all the regions or one specific region to view on the map and graphs.

I've now begun looking at my next set of data. So it continues...

Day 4

Today I finished going through all 38 (!!!) data tables in the Hurricane Sandy data set. I've been figuring out what is being shown by each one and how I can visualize it. From there I selected the ones that I think will work best for my info graphic. I'm starting from the data table I was looking at before (see Day 2 post). So far I've created 2 visuals:

1. A map showing all the sampling sites with color representing region, and size signifying the total amount of flood damage done to a business at each site. If you hover over each point, you can see the total damage for the different types of businesses.
https://public.tableau.com/views/7-2Data/Sheet1?:embed=y&:showTabs=y&:display_count=yes

2. A tree diagram with all the sample sites color coded by region. Size represents the total amount of flood damage per sample site.
https://public.tableau.com/views/SummaryoftotalcountsofNewJerseyandNewYorkbusinessesinundatedbyfloodwatersresultingfromHurricaneSandy/Treemap?:embed=y&:showTabs=y&:display_count=yes

I am going to continue to work on both of these, and then add them to a dashboard where I am going to start putting my info graphic together.

Reflections on the field trip to USGS on 7/2/15

As part of my internship, I got to visit the United States Geological Survey (USGS) headquarters in Reston, VA. For one thing, it's huge! Not only the building itself, but the range of different jobs and specialists who each contribute to the organization in their own way. It was really interesting hearing people from both geology and computer science fields talk about their work. I especially enjoyed seeing some of the advanced mapping and GIS technology that are becoming more and more instrumental in the work that USGS does. It is important to have up-to-date data about minerals, energy sources, and other resources for the United States and other countries as well. These new technologies are helping maps to be updated more efficiently, and they are allowing for the information to be more available to the public.

Overall I had a really great time and I hope I'll be able to visit again in the future.

Day 3 and Webinar Reflection

I devoted today to familiarizing myself with the software and the data I will be using. On the Tableau Public website I found some really helpful tutorials and I watched them and took notes. I now have a better idea of all the neat things I can do with Tableau. I also got some feedback about the visuals I created yesterday so I now know which designs will work better for the data set that I'm using.

I will build each of my visuals in the Worksheet section, and then put together related graphs or maps into a dashboard. This is essentially what a dashboard looks like:

Source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxhZUdIHkeoFyEl8X2lEGDlUkg3eQgDHO3JlDlf7SYhKAKp0uh39Omp-A3S9KZrWI1N4q0WbFz-iVPh0c9ZwDm2AhbeGB78ajok3OTAgh2d-ogKur7PlPQB2e7N8ezZFI966n3H6mYZ0s/?imgmax=800

 Finally, I will collect everything together into a story where I will add some captions, descriptions, and images. I will be working with the USGS data set I described in my Day 2 post. The Excel file includes multiple sheets that focus on different aspects of the Hurricane Sandy damage. Since there is lots of geographic data, I will be creating several maps with Tableau.

Today I listened in to a really interesting Webinar entitled Harness the Power of Location Data in Government with CartoDB. (See this link: http://www.digitalgov.gov/event/harness-the-power-of-location-data-in-government-with-cartodb/) Speakers included Roger Keren, Phil Ashlock, and Nate Irwin, who each use CartoDB in their work. CartoDB is a mapping software used by government agencies to create interactive maps of data from http://www.data.gov/, the USGS, and other sources. Maps can be customized with a variety of editing tools, including a CSS editor. My favorite part of the talk was when Irwin described how the National Park Service is using CartoDB to create maps that can be easily updated by park employees to provide the most up-to-date info about happenings in the park, weather conditions, and really anything that can be put on a map. This allows for greater efficiency. Irwin's team have also been working on mobile apps that provide maps and other helpful information for certain parks such as Yellowstone.

From what I can tell, CartoDB is free and available to use for everyone, not limited to just government employees. The Webinar provided a short tutorial of how to work with the program, and I saw some similarities with Tableau Public. I think that this is definitely worth looking into, especially considering the type of data that I'm working with.

Day 2

Today I looked at some of the D3 tutorials and I tried to figure out the code for some of the sample graphics. I was able to understand some of the simple ones and get them to work, but considering the complexity that will be required for visualizing the data, I needed to find another way. At least for now.

So I did some research for good software that I could use to create graphs and maps. After some experimentation with various resources, I found one that I particularly liked. With Tableau Public I created 3 visuals using some USGS data about the impact of Hurricane Sandy. This tool allows me to represent data in an appealing and easy-to-understand way with many different formats to choose from. It doesn't require any code, so I'll be focusing on becoming more familiar with all the tools and finding the best way to represent different types of data. I had some trouble modifying the labels on the axes and I haven't decided how I will handle large data sets just yet, so I'll just have to keep working at it.

Graph 1:
https://public.tableau.com/views/HurricaneSandy1/Sheet2?:embed=y&:showTabs=y&:display_count=yes

Each of the bubbles represents a different region in New Jersey or New York hit by Hurricane Sandy. The relative size is the extent of the damage to businesses in each area. You can see the total number of businesses hit by hovering over a bubble with your mouse. 

Graph 2:

https://public.tableau.com/views/HurricaneSandydamageforaccommodationandfoodservicebusinesses/Sheet3?:embed=y&:showTabs=y&:display_count=yes

Here I focused on accommodation and food service businesses (such as hotels and restaurants) damaged by flood waters in each of the regions surveyed by USGS. I chose to do a sideways bar graph because it's fairly easy to see how the numbers varied from region to region. Hovering over each bar provides the specific values.

Graph 3:

https://public.tableau.com/views/HurricaneSandydamageinAtlanticCityforselectbusinesstypes/Sheet4?:embed=y&:showTabs=y&:display_count=yes

This is a bar graph for Atlantic City. Each colored bar represents a different type of business, and its length is the amount of businesses affected. The x-axis labels are in alphabetical order, unfortunately, so it's not as easy to see how the different bars compare to one another. I'll have to go back and fix that.

PRIME IT Internship Day 1

Greetings!
For the next month or so I will be working on a project for my internship in collaboration with the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The goal is to create better ways of visualizing data to make it more user-friendly. We examined some of the info graphics that USGS currently uses, and many haven't been updated recently and can be further improved upon. I'm really excited to be working with cool software to create maps and other visuals.


As a general assessment of today's work, it was a good start! I've begun figuring out Cesium, which is a tool for creating interactive 3D maps and graphics. I hit kind of a rough patch early on with setting it up and trying to execute a program. However, the answer is probably right in front of me, so I'll just have to come back to it. I'll planning to also work with D3, which uses JavaScript with data manipulation as well.


So yeah, this should be fun! :)

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