Earlier this week each person received their capstone projects that will be created over the course of this semester and presented in late April.
My project is about visualizing data related to climate change and interpreting that data in easy-to-view ways. If you want to learn about my project in its entirety, click here.
First, looking at the project, I had no idea where even to begin and quickly panicked.
But, after a night’s sleep and talking to a few people much smarter than me, I slowly hacked away at what I think could be a plan.
The first plan (of I’m sure many)
The main tool I am planning to use is called Arc-GIS. It is a data mapping software that specializes in something very similar to what this project asks. I have only very briefly worked with this program in the past, but there are a lot of great tutorials and example projects online, so I am hopeful what I am envisioning can come true.
Here are a few examples of what is possible in Arc-GIS. First is a map of election data from the UK General Election in 2015. You can click a color on the map and it will bring up the election data for that area. If you hover over the bottom of the map, you can also view the map in different regions. You can view it entirely and learn more here.
Below is what is called a story map and it animates different charts and figures together in almost a webpage fashion. These types of groups are not super friendly for mobile phones, so if I do create something similar, I am expecting it would be more for a website. You can learn more and view it better here.
Lastly, is a GIF of the average number, location, and size of tornadoes from 1950 to the present day. Part of my project includes animating data, and I am intrigued to dive into the tutorial given on how this was created. You can view the animation here.
The biggest hurdle is going to be making sure that these maps can be embedded in applications. Each of the example projects has been able to be embedded, but overall, I am not sure if every project has this capability.
Besides using Arc-GIS, I would like to dive deeper into app development maybe in react because then it can be viewed on both iOS and Android phones. However, I did enjoy Android Studio and am not opposed to using it again.
My overall goal would be to create both an app and a website, but I want to make sure I’m not overwhelming myself right now. I am much more uncomfortable creating an app, so that is where I would like to start.
The first step as I dive in is going to include making sure that I can find current and detailed data about the maps I want to create. Even before that, I think I need to try to think of the main maps I would want to create (if the data exists). I know the main one I would like to dig deeper into is the average temperature per day/month/year over the course of multiple years.
