Earlier this week a balcony collapse in Berkeley, California killed six Irish students. The building had only been finished in 2007 and was barely ten years old. While the investigation is ongoing, the Los Angeles Times reported on what might have been the cause: dry rot.
Credit for the piece goes to Rong Gong-Lin II.
Today’s post looks at an illustration from the BBC about aircraft cabin flow. As I have flown on four aircraft in the last month—quite a lot for me—I do recall thinking during one particular flight just where the air intakes were on the aircraft. It never dawned on me that they were in the actual engines themselves.
I think from a design side the only thing I would change is the width of the line for the airflow. That would show how while some is released, replacement air comes from the air mixing unit.
Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.
I read this piece quite some time ago. But, the other night at the bar, I ended up drawing it to explain the concept to people. So, I figured I would share the original. The whole post is worth the read.
Credit for the piece goes to Tim Urban.
Another weekend, another weekend trip. This time I’m flying to Philadelphia for a quick trip back home. Naturally, I’m going to pack a suitcase so I can bring some things back to Chicago from civilisation. But what happens to my luggage between my checking it and it being loaded onto the aircraft? Thanks to the National Post, we have a graphic to explain just that.
Credit for the piece goes to Bonnie Berkowitz and Alberto Cuadra.
I just returned from my trip to Kansas City last night. Kansas, if you did not know it, exists within what people call Tornado Alley. That means they receive a lot of tornadoes. But what are tornadoes beyond the plot points of mid-90s action films? Basically complicated micro-weather systems. So complicated we still don’t entirely understand them. But the National Post looks at explaining what we do know.
Credit for the piece goes to Andrew Barr and Mike Faille.
I’m off to Kansas City this evening for Memorial Day Weekend. There, I fully intend to at least try some legitimate Kansas City barbecue. But how does this relate to a blog on information design and data visualisation? Well, some folks at Harvard endeavoured to design a better smoker for barbecue. Thanks, science.
Credit for the piece goes to James Abundis.
Tuesday I posted my late-night work on Amtrak No. 188’s derailment, (now with a few minor updates, including the speed information released this afternoon) so you could all get a sense of what happened yesterday. Of course, in the last 24 hours, we have seen a lot of news outlets covering the story.
The New York Times has a nice piece mapping out the details of the accident. Of particular interest, they included a map showing the parts of the Northeast Corridor equipped with positive train control. That is a system designed to prevent trains from exceeding their speed limits.
The Washington Post has two nice pieces. The first, below, incorporates both illustration to simplify the wreck site for the audience and then photographs to provide context of just how destroyed some of the train cars are, the first in particular.
The Post, however, also has a supplemental piece that looks at Amtrak’s accidents over the last ten years. This is the most data-centric piece of all that we are looking at, but that is okay. Most of the story is not reliant on data, but rather illustrations and diagrams trying to piece everything together.
Lastly, the BBC has an article with several small graphics looking at US train risks. Spoiler, American trains, while safe, are far less safe than those in Europe and Asia. Here, though, the map looks at accidents along the Northeast Corridor.
Credit for the New York Times piece goes to Gregor Aisch, Larry Buchanan, Bill Marsh, Haeyoun Park, Sergio Peçanha, Julie Shaver, Joe Ward, and Karen Yourish.
Credit for the Washington Post piece on the derailment goes to Bonnie Berkowitz, Patterson Clark, Alberto Cuadra, Todd Lindeman, Denise Lu, Katie Park, and Gene Thorp.
Credit for the Washington Post piece on Amtrak accidents goes to Dan Keating and Lazaro Gamio.
I just finished reading Tacitus’ account of his father-in-law Agricola. Agricola is the Roman—more likely from a family of Romanised Gauls—general who conquered Great Britain for Rome. His crowning victory was the Battle of Mons Graupius. It should all be taken with a grain of salt, because there are no other corroborating sources—to my knowledge. For one thing, nobody knows for sure where this battle occurred—if it did—other than somewhere in what is now Scotland. So, I decided to attempt to illustrate the battle as I couldn’t find a satisfactory one on the internets. Again, with the knowledge that Tacitus’ account is not the most thorough.
If you missed it this weekend, Nepal suffered both loss of life and significant damage from an earthquake Saturday morning. The Washington Post quickly had a graphic up that explored the story.
Credit for the piece goes to Bonnie Berkowitz, Darla Cameron, Samuel Granados, Richard Johnson, Laris Karklis, and Gene Thorp.
Yesterday we looked at the Russian sale of advanced surface-to-air missiles to Iran. Let’s stay in the Middle East and look at one of the forces that Iran—among many others, the US included—is fighting: ISIS, or Islamic State. We all know it from its ruthless, zealous, brutal application of Islamic law to the territories it controls. But is the organisation itself really that “religious”?
Der Spiegel obtained documents in late 2014 that had been in the possession of Hajj Bakr, who had quietly outlined much of the structure of ISIS and how the group would function. The article is a thrilling read, if you are into these kinds of things, and depicts an ISIS different than what many would possibly suspect.
So why are we talking about it here? Because organisations require diagrams or flow charts of responsibilities. The folder of files that Spiegel obtained included just such things, and below is an example included in the article.
Credit for the originals go to Hajj Bakr.
