Yahara Watershed Lake Levels website

Kevin Rose

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Jul 4, 2019, 1:55:38 PM7/4/19

to HackingMadison

Hey all,

I posted on this group a while ago about some work on water data I was doing. I'm pretty happy with the end product of some of that work, and thought others here might be interested in the result: http://www.yahara.info

It's got some narrative and real-time overlaid graphics (a real pain for me to learn how to do), but I think the real fun lies in the charts pages. You can view http://www.yahara.info/plot-year for a comparison of the current year to previous years (works well on mobile devices too), or http://www.yahara.info/plot-timeline for a full timeline (doesn't work well on mobile at all).

And of course it's all open source, so feel free to submit a PR if you find something you don't like!

Have a good 4th of July everyone,

Kevin

Dougal

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Jul 4, 2019, 2:07:06 PM7/4/19

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Nice work. I intermittently work on something like this but am not really sure how to interpret what is too high or low from USGS data, so my "red lines" on UI meters seem to be off.

Anyway, the way this project is presented exposes an obvious agenda behind it. That makes the reader skeptical of what you mean by "too high" status in your initial map presentation. You want lower lake water levels? Are you a waterfront land owner?

Cheers,

Dougal

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Kevin Rose

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Jul 13, 2019, 3:29:16 PM7/13/19

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Thank you for your thoughtful feedback Dougal, I'd love to see how you're thinking about showcasing the data if you're willing to share!

My "red lines" are coming from the State Department of Natural Resources-defined maximum levels for each lake. As the order for Mendota states, those levels "are in the interest of public rights in navigable waters and will promote safety and protect life, health, and property", so it felt reasonable to say if it's above the requirements then it is "too high".

In terms of the skeptical readers, I agree. I did try hard to define "too high" as soon as possible -- right below the words there's a large-font sentence which makes it more clear: "[The lakes] are above their state-required maximums." And right below that the first body paragraph explains what these state-required maximums are, and has links to the official PDFs where they are defined. The connection between the state maximums and "too high" might not have been clear, so I updated the website so that the header text now says "Too high compared to what?". Hopefully that makes it clear that "too high" means "above the state-required maximum".

Honestly if I could have fit "above their state-required maximums" in the graphic with any readability I would have done that.

> Are you a waterfront land owner?

Nope, I've never owned land in my life, let alone waterfront. Maybe I'll put that in the byline at the bottom of the page :)

-Kevin

On Thursday, July 4, 2019 at 1:07:06 PM UTC-5, Dougal wrote:

Nice work. I intermittently work on something like this but am not really sure how to interpret what is too high or low from USGS data, so my "red lines" on UI meters seem to be off.

Anyway, the way this project is presented exposes an obvious agenda behind it. That makes the reader skeptical of what you mean by "too high" status in your initial map presentation. You want lower lake water levels? Are you a waterfront land owner?

Cheers,
Dougal

On Thu, Jul 4, 2019, 12:55 PM Kevin Rose <ke...@maypark.com> wrote:

Hey all,

I posted on this group a while ago about some work on water data I was doing. I'm pretty happy with the end product of some of that work, and thought others here might be interested in the result: http://www.yahara.info

It's got some narrative and real-time overlaid graphics (a real pain for me to learn how to do), but I think the real fun lies in the charts pages. You can view http://www.yahara.info/plot-year for a comparison of the current year to previous years (works well on mobile devices too), or http://www.yahara.info/plot-timeline for a full timeline (doesn't work well on mobile at all).

And of course it's all open source, so feel free to submit a PR if you find something you don't like!

Have a good 4th of July everyone,
Kevin

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Alnisa Allgood

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Jul 16, 2019, 2:09:08 PM7/16/19

to Kevin Rose, hacking...@googlegroups.com

Hi, Kevin,

Thanks for sharing your report. I'm one of the organizers for the Data for Impact Conference and I'd love for you to consider speaking about this. The Data for Impact Conference is about how small data ( 100 to 100 Million records ) can be used to make a difference. Our audience is a mixture of nonprofits, entrepreneurs, community members, and those people interested in learning about how, why, when data can be used, and the ethics and morality of its usage.

The Data for Impact Conference is Monday, August 26, 2019, at the Memorial Union. Yogesh Chawla will also be talking about Madison flood data, but from the perspective of how it can be used to influence and inform local governments, so your sessions could be complimentary in the lineup.

Last year near 200 attendees participated in a variety of workshops. They can be viewed online at https://dataforimpact2018.splashthat.com. Our goals this year are to once again provide a mixture of workshops that inspire, teach, and challenge individuals and organizations in their use of small data. The workshops cover usage cases, measuring impact, anything around data dealing (collection/cleaning/analyzing/visualizing/storytelling), tools/how-to's, and ethic /morality/legality. The application process is still open, so if you are interested in speaking about this from a straight up usage case or a how-to case, we'd love to have you.

The submission form is here.

Alnisa

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Community Capacity • Economic Equity

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