Rising Tides, Rising Disasters?

One more day of Harvey-related content. At least I hope. (Who knows? Maybe someone will design a fantastic retrospective graphic?) Today, however, we look at a piece from the Economist about the rising number of weather-related disasters, but thankfully falling numbers of deaths. The piece has all the full suite of graphics: choropleths, line charts, and bar charts (oh my!). But I want to look at the bar chart.

A timeline of disaster causes around the world
A timeline of disaster causes around the world

I cannot tell from this chart whether there has been any change in the individual elements, the meteorological, hydrological, or climatological disasters. And unfortunately stacked bar charts do not let us see that kind of detail. They only really allow us to see total magnitude and the changes in the element at the bottom of the stack, i.e. aligned with the baseline. So I took their chart and drew the shapes as lines and realigned everything to get this.

My take
My take

You can begin to see that meteorological might be overtaking hydrological, but it is too early to tell. And that right now, climatological causes are still far behind the other two.

Credit for the piece goes to the Economist Data Team.

Credit for mine goes to me.

Author: Brendan Barry

I am a graphic designer who focuses on information design. My day job? Well, they asked me not to say. But to be clear, this blog is my something I do on my own time and does not represent the views of…my employers. I think what I can say is that given my interest in information design—be it in the shape of clear charts, maps, diagrams, or wayfinding systems—I am fortunate that my day job focuses on data visualisation. Outside of work, I try to stay busy with personal design work. Away from the world of design, I have become an amateur genealogist and family historian. You will sometimes see that area of work bleed into my posts.

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