Global AQE Map + Visualization - V.1.0
Adam Laskowitz
As you may or may not have known, I have been working on various AQE related visualizations. A few months back I released some Processing work I had done that allowed you to hardcode eggs and then offered 2 visualization types, allowing you to see the eggs in geo-space and the 4 different datatypes.
I want to now release a new visualization which happens to be in the form of a web app. So you don't need to download the processing code and processing IDE in order to use the tool. It is now being hosted on my webspace using my API key for Cosm, but I would love to scale this up in the future using a master API as well as possibly getting it involved with AQE or Cosm proper. I would also love to collaborate to push it further as I can only tackle so much on my own.
http://adamlaskowitz.com/airqualityegg/
In short, the website will allow you to view ALL eggs in the world on a map. You can select a few options right now to filter which eggs you see, and you can also store some info in cookies so you don't have to keep selecting options every time you visit the site. Once you have a group of eggs you are interested in, you can move forward and look at the data for each egg. It is fairly intuitive I think so I won't really explain that much further.
The data: when you are looking at line graphs you will notice you establish a duration, or timeframe, with the latest reading being at the right-most edge of your screen. The data are z-scores (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_score) which means that Averages for the data sample are turned to 0 and every other value is in terms of standard deviations. Basically this allows us to look at the data in terms of high, normal, or low rather than specific numbers that are confused by calibration issues. We can also start to compare eggs to each other because of this which is why the visualization is really built around looking at multiple eggs at a time.
There are some bugs, please be patient, for the most part it works seamlessly. I sincerely welcome your feedback especially in critical form. If something seems messed up or stops working, just click refresh in your browser and it will all go back to normal. It is all programmed to be dynamic so there are no page loads or anything. This means that your "Back" and "Forward" buttons will not do anything.
I hope to hear from the community on the efficacy of this initial design.
Thanks,
Adam
Dirk Swart
D
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Mark Gibbs
Alex Huth
Any news since last month when you made this announcement? Updates, future plans?
Victor Aprea
Hi Adam - this is very cool. I'm seeing a few really nice periodic responses with your app. This provides much-needed context for a first-time visitor, which is really important and something the AQE home page lacks.
Any news since last month when you made this announcement? Updates, future plans?
Alex Huth
Victor Aprea
Adam Laskowitz
I have been working on a few other things (all related to AQE) while doing small amounts of maintenance and bug fixes on the site you're referring to.
Some future plans:
- I want to be a bit more descriptive on the site, add an about feature, and also add the functionality for tagging data (for public and private use). This requires my own database running on top of the data being pulled from Cosm, so that may require people signing up - I'm still working out the logistics of all of this.
- I am working with regional EPA data that can hopefully allow for calibration approximations so that the data are not just abstracted (and flattened) values.
- I want to be more transparent about what the data actually represent. For example, right now they are z-scores which means I find the average for any egg you are looking at (average for a single egg) and flatten it to 0, then everything else is in terms of standard deviations from that mean. It is working for now for the original purpose, but I'd like this to be something more meaningful where comparing one egg to another can actually tell you something.
- I am working on a few different heatmaps - all showing the same thing but working on the aesthetics of the visual style. Once I get something that I think looks good and functions well, I will be adding it to the site and posting an update here.
- I am also working on 3D topography visualizations. This allows you to look at data for an egg over 2 time dimensions. Where x-axis is times of day (15 minute intervals right now), y-axis is days of week (7 days right now), and z-axis is selected datatype values. This visualization is still in really early stages of development, mainly with the interaction with data being worked on the most.
- External data from AQE are also being worked into the visualizations, so EPA data, traffic data, wind data, tree data, etc.
- I'm also exploring different interfaces for filtering through the data. This can be previewed here (it doesn't actually do anything yet...): http://adamlaskowitz.com/visualizations/new_gui/
I think that is all? Please let me know if you have any feedback about any of the above or the website itself.
Thanks.
