Viz: Fukushima radiation spread: wide dispersion and localized hot spots

See the heatmaps in the pnas links. 

Fukushima radiation spread: wide dispersion and localized hot spots

Tool: SHOGUN aims high with Google Summer of Code ))

Dim reduction is an important technique for high d viz. 

SHOGUN aims high with Google Summer of Code

Data:UNData-world of information

The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) introduced a web-based data access system to bring UN statistical databases within easy reach of users by having a single entry point.Objectives here are to provide free access to global statistics, to educate people about the value of statistics for evidence-based policy and decision-making. It also assist Statistical Offices across several countries in strengthening their data distribution and record-keeping capabilities. Database consists of variety of statistical resources

covering the following areas:

Areas of statistics include: Sources include:

Economic Education UN Statistics Division

Demographic Employment WHO

Health National Account UNESCO

Environment Human Development World Bank

UNdata provide two views for accessing and querying data:- record view and table presentation.Users can also sort through the various databases by looking at their metadata which is especially useful if you are looking for historical records.You can filter databases by topics. Each result has a "Download" link to download the data as .xls sheet or xml document, a "Preview"

link to preview database and an "Explore" link to access database.The UNdata wiki provides links to the sources' homepages and includes information about the methodology by which data sets are collected.

There are many ways to extract and use the UNdata. A Geospatial Librarian's World offers some tips on how to process data downloaded from UNdata. In many cases when users download data they get multiple records for each country; one record for each year for each data point. In order to bring this data into geographic information system, the data set needs to be re-arranged, so that there is only one record for each country with multiple columns for years.The first UNdata API project is a community effort to make this data mashable and reusable in a variety of ways.The service uses a straightforward REST API hosted on Google’s Java AppEngine and makes UNDATA sets easily queryable from any application.The second UNdata API project is made available via Microsoft's cloudcomputing service called Dallas.

UNData can be viewed here

References:-

http://data.un.org/Default.aspx

https://www.sqlazureservices.com.

http://gothos.info/2009/09/undata-processing-calc-data-pilot/

http://www.undata-api.org/

Data: World Bank Data

The World Bank data site allows the user to look at and visualize the data related to all the countries around the World. The World Bank consists of Data which is divided into different categories. Categories include country and a wide array of topics such as;

1. Agriculture & Rural Development
2. Infrastructure
3. Aid Effectiveness
4. Labor & Social Protection
5. Economic Policy and External Debt
6. Poverty
7. Education
8. Private Sector
9. Energy & Mining
10. Public Sector
11. Environment
12. Science & Technology
13. Financial Sector
14. Social Development
15. Health
16. Urban Development

The extensiveness of the World Bank data can be seen by the fact that data within these topics are further divided into many different indicators within that topic. Indicator is basically a property in which some measurements are made in a particular topic. For ex: For Topic Health; one indicator is Life Expectancy at Birth (male/female). The World Bank data contains many such indicators which are crucial to understanding many factors related to the world and to specific country.

The World Bank is an organisation which maintains the world statistical data and makes it available to clients within and outside the Bank.

The data for each indicator under any topic is available for download in Excel and XML format. Further more, it has an API for developers to access and query over 3000 indicators using parameters to specify the request. Developers can use API queries which can be constructed using World Bank's own interactive API query builders Indicator Query builder and Projects Query Builder.

The World Bank data can be found here.

Viz: Radiation Zones in Japan

Non formatted data is of no use as it has no eye-catching bling to it. The raw data needs to be cooked before it is presented to the audience so that it has a appeal towards the audience.

While reading few blogs (like - http://faustusnotes.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/japanese-data-visualization-skills-with-a-radioactive-example/)I found that the writer mentions that 'Japanese people in general seem to have excellent skills in data visualization, as well as quite advanced mathematical ability and a robust approach to science. Japanese appreciation of data visualization, particularly, seems to exceed anything similar in the West'[1]. Tokyo graffiti is one such magzine which ask local people to list their hairstyles, shoes on spider charts and other unique data viz. tools. On the same blog, I found that there's a site http://microsievert.net/ which shows the radiation level in microsievert level in 8 different cities in the Greater Kanto area where the recent power plant explosion took place after the recent tsumani. Sievert is SI unit for dose equivalent radiation. It attempts to quantitatively evaluate the biological effects of ionizing radiation as opposed to other physical aspects[2].

What the graphs indicate are the world average hourly radiation levels with the increase from left to right. The right one indicating that the radiation absorption per hour is too high and that place should be evacuated asap. Its a two dimensional graph which shows the amount of radiation absorption per hour by the workers working in a radioactive zone, the amount required for a 0.5% increase in cancer risk; and the amount at which you should evacuate. Below eight figures are eight different cities in which recent radiation absorption indication are shown.

What makes this viz. effective is that it manages to produce an overall calm image, at the same time it tries to indicate a clear sense of panic to the danger zone image while also smoothly contrasting it with the reality that surrounds it and the chart occupies the center of the real estate where all the focus is while visiting a website.

My PPT

References:
[1]faustusnotes blog http://faustusnotes.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/japanese-data-visualization-skills-with-a-radioactive-example/
[2]Sievert Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert

Viz: Sweet Spots, But Not Many

Natural gas not as easy to produce as we think.

Sweet Spots, But Not Many - Graphic - NYTimes.com