Rivers interaction

Interact Problem #2 River Deep Mountain High

Jennifer Stuart Lesch

February 22, 2012

Executive Summary Starting point visualization • BiblioOdyssey has a collection of maps from the 1800s

that attempt to describe the world’s rivers and mountains, mostly by comparing their respective lengths and heights.

• Common features of the river comparisons are: • Noting their source and destination • Marking cities along the path of the river • Some of the maps also attempt to describe the

rivers’ surrounding climate (e.g., brown shading to indicate the desert area the Nile travels through)

• In this case, only the visualization of the rivers on one particular map will be addressed, the “Comparative Heights of the Principal Mountains and Lengths of the Principal Rivers of The World” map by William Darton.

Sense-making task this design will address

• This visualization will take the map “Principal Mountains and Lengths of the Principal Rivers” and make the rivers explorable over a period of time. Rivers are dynamic forces, but their long lifespan (as compared with humans) makes it difficult to appreciate the full impact of their changeability.

• Exploring the map over time makes it possible to see patterns in population, climate, shapes of the rivers, and a wide variety of other information.

Assumptions made about the visualization

• Since the map has such small detail, it is not possible to see some labels even at high resolution; a particular feature may be assumed missing in the map, when in fact it’s just too small to be seen in the digital image.

Initial visualization

Interact Problem #2 / Rivers


• River length is the only determining factor for placement on the page; only a minimal accounting for the compass direction of the river flow.

• Since images are arranged by length only, there is no way to easily make comparisons like how many rivers on one continent, or flowing into the same ocean.

• The ‘country of origin’ information to describe the rivers is nonspecific; the Missouri River flows from a mountain, nothing indicates that mountain is in Montana, just “United States” in the text legend . No further level of detail to indicate states.

• No accounting for how population and other characteristics may have developed around rivers over time.

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Revised visualization: Overview



0 Length (in miles) 4000 River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River River

Time 1600 2012

Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean Ocean

• Default image is to display by river length, and present day state. Labels are for river name and destination ocean.

• The dark line indicates the river itself and its length, the color shading behind the dark line indicates arid/lush/temperate areas), varying in width to indicate population.

• Time slider at the bottom begins at the year 1600, chosen as a point when there begins to be somewhat comprehensive known map records for all the available rivers described.

• Basic sorting function for initial exploration.

Sort by River Name (A-Z) Ocean Name (A-Z) Continent of origin Country of origin Destination Ocean

Detail view of climate/ population shading

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Revised visualization: Detail



0 Length (in miles) 4000

Euphrates

Danube

Indus

Ganges

Orinoco

St. Lawrence

Don

Time 1600 2012

Amazon Mississippi

Hoan-Ho Yangtse

Nile LaPlata

Volga

Dneiper Senegal

Rhine Gambia

Elbe Vistula

Susquehanna Oder

Tagus Loire

Rhone Seine

Po Eiro

Severn Thames

Shannon Humber

Tay Forth

Persian Gulf

Black Sea

Arabian Sea

Bay of Bengal

Atlantic Ocean

Gulf of St Lawrence

Sea of Azoff

Atlantic Gulf of Mexico Eastern Eastern Mediterranean Atlantic Caspian

Lorem Ipsum Lorem Ipsum











1918

• There are encodings for climate (color shading), and population (vertical bars to indicate amount and density).

• Dragging across a section of the bars brings up a fisheye distortion of the affected rivers, showing the surrounding climate and population, plus current speed, which can correlate to human activity such as dam-building or use of a waterway to move goods.

• By using the slider on the time axis, the view changes dynamically according to historical statistics, e.g., you could see how population grows, shrinks or moves along a river in response to changing climate. Population might also change due to a circumstance unrelated to the river, such as the 1918 flu pandemic.

Sort by River Name (A-Z) Ocean Name (A-Z) Continent of origin Country of origin Destination Ocean



Revised visualization: Details

• Details on demand are available for individual rivers; river is no longer represented as a flat blue bar, but shows its fine details. Zooming is done via button at right.

• Using the time slider shows dynamically changing features (oxbow lakes forming, towns as dots that grow or shrink according to population size). Click arrow for detailed historical information.

• Current speed (encoded as one, two or three arrows).

• Features such as dams (man- or animal-made) or irrigation channels appear

• Time slider in the detail view will provide further information about historical events at different points, e.g., where it appears a major population shift occurred, a popup window might be available to show a dam broke and population from smaller towns shifted downriver to a larger city.

Time

1600 2012 1918

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Demo City

Lake Sample

Famous Dam

Small Town

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The Famous Dam was breached after flooding in May of 1918. Since the town population had been lessened by the flu pandemic that year, no one was available to repair it, and the remaining population moved upstream to Small Town.

Mississippi River 1

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Rivers interaction

Design