Tag: infographic

Tarnished Linings

Last month the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) ordered Philadelphia’s public transit system, SEPTA, to inspect the backbone of its commuter rail service, Regional Rail: all 225 Silverliner IV railcars. The Silverliner IV fleet, aged over 50 years, suffered a series of fires this summer and the NTSB investigators wanted them inspected by the end of October.

We are now into the second week of November and the job is not yet finished. Luckily, the NTSB extended the deadline to the middle of November—this Friday—and the Philadelphia Inquirer has quietly tracked the progress of the inspections with a series of graphics, the screenshot below being today’s. (The data being as of Friday, 7 November.)

I specifically took a screenshot from the top of the webpage, because I think this datagraphic series works particularly well. Directly beneath the article’s sub-head the reader sees the graphic answering the title’s question. The legend sits atop the graphic and incorporates the actual data labels for the specific number of cars in each category. This is instant gratification without the need for a superfluous file photo of a burned out railcar or commuter rail station. I have long advocated that data visualisation pieces can be the hero or headline image for articles and written works.

Does the legend need to incorporate the actual, specific number of railcars in that status? No, that bit is superfluous because graphics are meant to show, not tell, a visual story or pattern. If the precise number is required, a table suffices. (Or, in this case, three factettes in lieu of the graphic could do the trick.)

Colour-wise the designers opted to eschew the traditional green–red status board and the potential deficiencies for the colour-blind that such a pattern entails. Instead they used a blue–red pattern that not only works in the context of statuses but also calls to the brand colours of the transit agency.

Functionally, the datagraphic is static. And that is perfectly fine—not every online graphic needs to be interactive. Instead of, say, having a dropdown menu to select the data from whatever date the user wants, the article contains a series of posts of the static datagraphic of the day.

Overall, I really like this piece. I just wish we could have seen the inspections completed by the original deadline.

Credit for the piece goes to Erica Palan and Thomas Fitzgerald.

Fun fact no. 1: the datagraphic shows a total of 223 railcars instead of the 225 in the fleet. The editors did a good job calling attention to this and pointing out Septa had previously retired two railcars for unrelated aging issues.

Fun fact no. 2: the Commonwealth’s budget impasse of earlier this year saw Harrisburg moved nearly $400 million from Septa’s capital improvements fund to cover day-to-day operating costs with the vague “promise” the fund will be backfilled at a later date. That $400 million capital improvement fund would have been responsible for things like, say, replacing the Silverliner IVs with new railcars. So for those so inclined, you can blame Harrisburg Republicans for delaying the Silverliner IV’s replacement.

(I do have to say, seeing that gives me flashbacks to the days of posting all my COVID-19 status updates. I had not realised it at the time, but nearly two years of daily posts of deaths burned me out on the regular daily updates here.)

Philadelphia Blue Jays

Last weekend one of my good mates and I went out watch Game 7 of the World Series, wherein the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Toronto Blue Jays for Major League Baseball’s championship. Whilst we watched, I pointed out that the Jays’ pitcher at the moment hailed from a suburb of Philadelphia. He was well aware and informed that player was far from the only one and showed me a graphic of five Blue Jays from the Philadelphia region.

I asked him to send me the graphic, but unfortunately the graphic itself does not include any branding or creators’ marks so I cannot attribute its designer.

Also unfortunately, that night turned out—to nobody’s surprise—to be the final night of MLB games until Spring Training begins in February. (Though if you want, you can watch the Latin winter leagues to get your fix. I have been known to dabble.)

Credit for the piece goes to somebody out on the internet.

Boy, Does That Stink

(Editor’s note, i.e. my post-publish edit: The subject matter, not the work.)

Last week the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article about the volume of sewage discharged into the region’s waterways over nearly a decade. It cited a report from Penn Environment, which claimed 12.7 billion tons of sewage enter the Delaware River’s watershed.

I clicked through to the report to see if it included any graphics. Mostly I saw tables and a few line charts. Nothing surprising. But the report led off with this interactive map as an overview of the various reporting locations, and I thought it worth a mention or two.

To start, a map works to show the various stations. That works great, because the actual names of the various stations are combinations of numbers and letters. I often hang out in Old City and the discharge at Front and Market is D53. Good luck trying to figure that out in a spreadsheet. Smartly, the designers added more user-friendly names to their overview and labelled D53 as “Market Street & Front Street”.

As for the design of the map, broadly it works for me, but I think it could use a little bit of refinement. To start, the legend provides dots of two colours: brown and blue. Brown, naturally represents combined sewer overflows (CSO). What is a CSO? Philadelphia, along with a number of cities, uses a single network of pipes to collect home and business sewage. When you flush it, there she goes. But these pipes often run under the streets where you will find grates to collect runoff from rain or thunderstorms. Those grates connect directly to the sewers below, because obviously street water is not exactly clean and so it all runs to your sewage treatment plant for, well, treatment, before the water returns to the rivers.

Except, when the thunderstorm is severe to the point of flooding. Sewers as old as Philadelphia were designed prior to the Industrial Revolution, read climate change, and their engineers drew the plans to handle a certain capacity. Even more modern sewers also have limits that fail to account for increased rainfall rates we increasingly witness due to climate change. In those cases where the stormwater runoff exceeds the sewer capacity, the overflow—that mixture of sewage and street water—is discharged directly into the nearest river or waterway. Hence the name, combined sewer overflows. In Philadelphia’s case the overflow discharges into the Delaware River and her tributaries. The problem for cities, especially older cities with infrastructure designed and built decades if not centuries ago, is renovating/upgrading/replacing things like sewers is expensive and costs money. And paying for those things requires taxes, which is not a thing people want to pay. And so we don’t and we delay the remedies and the problems worsen with time.

The Penn Environment report highlights the severity of the problem for the Philadelphia region and the map locates the various CSOs. Brown works. But then we get to “water recreation areas”, which receive a blue dot. Unfortunately the use of the dot confers a non-existent geographic precision. When people recreate in and around the waters, they often stray up- or downstream. I wonder if a different system could highlight portions of the rivers. Or perhaps the use of a symbol other than a dot could help disassociate the idea of a precise location for a recreational area.

As for the dots themselves, I would argue the strokes are a touch too heavy. The designers need the outlines, however, because the base map is beige, which is a tint of brown. And the legend notes how the size and the colour of the dots reflect the average annual frequency of overflows. Consequently a number of low overflow locations will have small, very light brown dots. So light brown they could be lost on the beige base map.

Instead, I would disentangle the two attributes from the one variable. I.e., allow the dot’s size, e.g., to reflect the frequency of overflows. Then the colour can remain constant and allow for a lighter stroke. However, the designes do have two attributes they could link to two different variables. I wonder if the size, linked to the frequency of the overflows, could encode one variable and the colour another, perhaps the volume of the overflows. A frequent but lightweight overflow could be a large, pale brown dot. A low frequency but high volume overflow could be a small, dark brown dot.

Regardless, using the two attributes for only variable is an inefficient choice.

Overall, this is a valuable piece of work because it highlights—or is it lowlights?—just how much work we need to do to update our urban (and suburban, you suburbanites have your own sewage systems) infrastructure for an era of warming climates and more extreme weather events.

After all, there was a reason so few people—mind you, not nobody—went into the water when Hurricane Ida turned the Vine Street Expressway into a crosstown canal.

Credit for the piece goes to the Penn Environment design team.

Where’s the Tin Can?

After a few weeks away for some much needed R&R, I returned to Philadelphia and began catching up on the news I missed over the last few weeks. (I generally try to make a point and stay away from news, social media, e-mail, &c.) One story I see still active is the US threatening Venezuela.

The BBC reported statements this past weekend from Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who claimed the US of “fabricating a new war”. This followed news the Pentagon ordered the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford to deploy to the Caribbean. The American carrier hosts 90 aircraft, including a number capable of striking ground targets within Venezuela if ordered.

In their article detailing Maduro’s comments the BBC included the following graphic detailing US Navy ship deployments to the Caribbean.

As far as graphics go, we are talking a simple locator map here. Just a little generic icon locating US warships. But I feel it misses some critical context. To start, the map highlights the country of Venezuela and Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is, of course, part of the United States—despite what some who object to the announced Super Bowl Halftime Show performer think. But then why is Cuba highlighted? Do the US and Cuba not frequently find themselves on opposite sides of most issues?

Well, the map likely included Cuba to somehow acknowledge Guantanamo Bay. Since the turn of the 20th century the US has leased a naval base at the entrance to Guantanamo Bay from Cuba under a deal of indefinite length, which can only be ended by mutual agreement. Clearly post-revolution, Cuba has opposed the US agreement, but the US remains committed to the facility and so the base remains. Since the turn of the 21st century, however, the naval base earned notoriety and infamy for its hosting of the detention facility for high-value detainees in the US War on Terror. Although about a decade before that you may have heard of Guantanamo as the scene of a murder around which the plot of the film A Few Good Men revolved.

Regardless, the point is Guantanamo Bay houses US Navy facilities for the region, but I would have only covered the small area of the bay in Cuba and left the remainder grey. You will note that the designer did not even opt for a label for Guantanamo Bay. But to see two ships placed at a naval base is not at all surprising.

As for Puerto Rico, to my knowledge, the US Navy no longer maintains any active naval bases in Puerto Rico as Roosevelt Roads on the east coast was closed early in the 21st century. (Roosevelt Roads effectively guarded the Vieques Testing Range, which was the US Navy tested munitions, the protests of which were also big news at the turn of the 21st century.) (There have been rumours the administration is looking to reopen Roosevelt Roads.)

However, as the island is—strangely this feels as I cannot emphasise it sufficiently these days—an integral part of the United States, it is not surprising at all to see ships in and around the island just as you could see naval vessels up and down the east and west coasts of the continental United States. Arguably, warships are more valuable there than the mainland because trade with Puerto Rico is even more dependent on sea-based commerce.

An additional context missing from the graphic is just what each little ship icon means. We have reports of the deployment of the USS Newport News, which is a Los Angeles class attack submarine. Whilst nuclear-powered, it does not carry nuclear missiles and primarily attacks submarines and surface ships, though its Tomahawk cruise missiles can also strike land-based targets. But clearly not every icon represents an attack submarine. We also have reports of nearly half a dozen Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, powerful warships equipped with lots of missiles and helicopters, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, with even more missiles but primarily tasked with air defence for a region, and the USS Iwo Jima, which is basically a light carrier and far smaller than the Gerald Ford and hosts helicopters and a few aircraft. The Iwo Jima is the focal point of amphibious group capable of inserting forces ashore. Definitely something the US would want nearby if the US intended to invade or utilise “land options” in Venezuela. As the centre of an amphibious group, a number of other naval vessels defend and support the Iwo Jima. (Similarly, when the Gerald Ford reaches the Caribbean, she will be defended by a number of ships and usually a submarine or two.)

Importantly, the news of US ships deployed to the Caribbean include logistical ships carrying cargo, fuel, munitions, &c. that are, by themselves not at all a threat to anyone.

Which icons represent which, if any of the aforementioned vessels?

Should this map alarm readers that the US has deployed warships to the Caribbean? I think on its own, no. The graphic does not really add much to the story here from my perspective. We have two (presumably) warships at a naval base and four more south of Puerto Rico, perhaps docking for shore leave—who knows?

Most threateningly for Venezuela, we have three icons near the coast, one more or less directly and two others east of Trinidad and Tobago. But is the icon the aircraft carrier with enough firepower to level a small city? Or is it the USS Minneapolis–St. Paul, a small patrol ship whose designers intended for it to interdict drug vessels and participate in littoral or coastal operations? An aircraft carrier is very different from a coastal patrol ship.

Perhaps if the designer added labels to identify each vessel or if different icons represented different types—not even specific classes—of ship the graphic could add some valuable context to US naval deployments in the Caribbean.

Usually I laud simple graphics for telling things clearly, simply, and plainly. But this graphic is a bit too oversimplified for my liking.

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.

Revisiting My 2025 Red Sox Predictions

Back in March I posted my predictions for the 2025 Boston Red Sox on my social media feeds. I chose not to post it here, because the images had no real data visualisation and the only real information graphic was my prediction of the playoffs via a bracket. I did, however, write about how the Sox may have found their second baseman of the future in Kristian Campbell.

That prediction looks not so hot. The Sox optioned/demoted Campbell to the minor leagues in June and he has not been seen in Boston since. I still think the kid has long-term potential with his bat, but his globe worries me. It never really came around as I hoped.

But what about all my other predictions for the 2025 Red Sox and baseball more broadly?

Well, since today is Day One of the Postseason, I have nothing to report other than that my prediction of a Red Sox–Phillies World Series wherein Boston wins remains possible. Though the bracket itself, not so much. And as for the awards, we still have to wait and see on those too. The rest of the graphics, which had my predictions for select players and statistics, well, those we can look at here today.

We can start with the divisional standings.

The AL East turned out pretty differently than I thought it would. Baltimore’s young prospects did not have a great year and their rotation was even worse than I thought it would be—and that was not very good, I just thought their young bats would make up the difference.

Similarly, I thought the Yankees would fail to survive some bad injuries to start the year. Unfortunately they did and they host the Red Sox this evening in the Wild Card series.

Toronto finally put it all together after years of failing to do so and Tampa Bay did the opposite, had a bad year where everything fell apart after years of finding a way to put it all together.

In the NL East, the Braves just got hurt and never recovered. But that they were worse than even the Marlins in Miami surprised me. Without Atlanta atop the division, the Phillies and Mets made sense and in that micro-ranking I was spot on.

The West Coast divisions were similarly jumbled. I really thought Texas would dominate, but injuries and poor performances crippled their year. I had thought Houston lost too many big pieces from their roster to remain competitive. And in that I was largely correct as they sputtered out in the final week. As for the Angels and Athletics, the less said about them the better.

The NL West largely went as I expected. The Dodgers did not really dominate the way I and many others expected them to, but they performed well enough to win the division. I thought Arizona, San Diego, and San Francisco would slug it out all year and they largely did, though San Francisco was a bit more disappointing than I thought. And the Rockies were just bad.

As for the two central divisions, what can I say? No notes.

Ultimately I thought Boston would be a better than they were at year’s end. Though they dealt with serious injuries all year and the kids were forced to come up and reinforce the roster a bit too soon then they too all got hurt.

So let us start with the hitters.

The big, glaring, obvious point here is that in the middle of the season, the Boston Red Sox traded away their best player, at least their best hitter, in Rafael Devers. I thought then it was a stupid move. I think now it was a stupid move. In a few years, if I were a betting man, I would bet I still think it a stupid move. Boy did they really miss his bat in this lineup, especially when Roman Anthony, one of the aforementioned kids, went down with a month and a half left to play in the season.

Triston Casas fully ruptured his patellar tendon before he even played 30 games when I and many others counted on him to be our slugging first baseman. Instead of 35 home runs, he hit only 3.

Alex Bregman was hurt for about two months and Trevor Story was ice cold for about the same. Campbell was demoted like I said and Roman Anthony’s callup was later than I thought it would be and then he got hurt. Only Duran really performed as I expected.

The team also started the year running and being aggressive on the base paths, but that stopped during the summer. David Hamilton had an awful season and through the middle months was playing in AAA, only returning to the major league club because of the injuries ripping through Boston’s roster.

As for the two rookies I thought would play. most of the year, Campbell’s triple slash fell short of my predictions. Hence his demotion. Roman Anthony’s bat exceeded my expectations, though he was hitting more grounders and ground ball singles than I would have hoped, leading to a lower slugging percentage.

Finally we have the pitching.

Good lord did things go horribly awry.

Houck was bad then blew out his elbow and had Tommy John surgery, meaning he missed 2/3 of this season and will miss all of next year.

I never wanted Buehler, but thought he would be even more serviceable than he turned out to be. He was just awful. Of the expected rotation, that left just three guys: Garrett Crochet, Brayan Bello, and Lucas Giolito.

Crochet was as advertised, a true ace. He led the American League in innings pitched and all of baseball in strikeouts. He dominated. Period. Bello started the year injured as did Giolito, so whislt Bello did eventually hit the innings I expected him to, Giolito did not. Nor did either player reach the strikeout totals I thought they would, though with Bello that may be more due to a change in approach. It seemed as if last year the Sox wanted him to be a strikeout guy. He has shown flashes of it in the past. But this year he really seemed to buy into the ground ball and weak contact guy.

Then in the bullpen and in the ninth inning Aroldis Chapman was just as dominant as Crochet was at the start. Unfortunately, Justin Slaten had some elbow issues with some kind of a bone spur and he missed significant time. Though in his limited innings he looked as dominant as I hoped. Fortunately he just came back in time for the playoffs.

All in all, a good year for the Red Sox.

As for what happens next, well this time I will leave you with my playoff predictions, though I have edited them to actually include the teams that really did make them.

Let’s go Red Sox.

Credit for the pieces is mine.

Pick Your Pizza

As many longtime readers know, I lived in Chicago for eight years. I probably had Chicago-style pizza fewer than eight times in my life. I grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and for the last nine years I have lived in central Philadelphia, where pizza is very much a different thing. And in my life I have visited New York probably more times than I can count and obviously pizza is a culture of its own there.

The other day, xkcd posted about the various different regional styles of pizza.

Now I will not venture to throw my two cents in here on which pizza is the best. Rather, each has their own qualities that make them good fits for specific types of occasions.

What I will say is the mouseover state makes mention of Altoona-style pizza. As I am someone who visits the Altoona regional annually—and will be again next spring—I have indeed heard of the style. But, no, I have never tried it. Nor does it sound particularly appealing.

However, I had also heard of a Primanti Brothers sandwich of Pittsburgh fame, which includes French fries inside the actual sandwich. A few years ago when I visited Pittsburgh for the first time I did give one a go. But, and perhaps because I am not a fan of French fries, I found the sandwich disappointing.

So maybe some year I will give the Altoona-style pizza a similar go.

But right now, a slice of pizza, any other kind of pizza, sounds pretty good right about now.

Happy weekend, all.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

Palestine. The Newest Country in the World?

One of the most debated questions one could ask at pub trivia: How many countries are there in the world?

To start, the question cannot be answered completely. What is a country? What is a state? What is a nation? Define recognition. Whose definition?

When I worked at Euromonitor International I had to edit a map for a Moroccan client because the maps and visualisations I designed showed Western Sahara as a disputed and occupied territory along with places like—surprise, surprise—the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Kashmir, and in later years Abyei. The client was upset because Morocco occupies the majority of Western Sahara, particularly the coast and areas containing the area’s natural resources, and claims it to be an integral part of the kingdom. But the Polisario Front occupies the remainder of Western Sahara and claims the whole territory for its people. Some countries, particularly in Africa, recognise Western Sahara as independent—it belongs as a full member of the African Union. The rest of the world largely refuses to recognise Western Sahara as independent whilst also refusing to recognise Morocco’s occupation. Hence my maps.

You can see what I mean if you look closely at this un-Moroccanised map my team made. I have added some orange boxes to highlight Western Sahara along with the West Bank and Gaza, Abyei, and Kashmir. (Some geographies were simply not covered by the company and remained blank. Here the most notable example is Greenland.)

Do you count Western Sahara as a country?

At your pub trivia this week, will you count Palestine as a country?

This past weekend, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Portugal formally recognised Palestine statehood. They were followed this week by France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Andorra, San Marino, and Malta. (Maybe.) Notably, but not surprisingly, Israel and the United States refuse to follow suit.

My first draft of this post then continued with a history of the Israel–Palestine conflict from the most recent/today’s war to the formation of Israel to the Ottoman Empire and ancient history. But I wanted this post to focus on these graphics posted by the BBC. The first comes from earlier this week, prior to said announcements. The second from later.

I like this graphic. The designer chose to use circles as abstractions of countries rather than a more traditional choropleth map coloured by who recognises whom. In the context of an international conflict over geographic borders and statehood, removing the concept of borders shows a subtle attention to the nuances of the debate.

Critically, the yellow may be a touch light vís-a-vís the grey, but it clearly stands in stark contrast to the purple. I should note I saved this graphic from earlier this week before the official announcements of France et al. Today all that yellow is solidly purple.

As you can see in this second graphic, most of the yellows have become purples. Any of concerns over the lightness of the yellow faded.

Earlier I had noted how Belgium and Andorra were part of President Macron’s announcement, however this graphic shows them still awaiting to announce. I wonder if the discrepancy will be resolved when the representatives of the those countries speak at the United Nations. In essence, they have pledged to announce their recognition, but will do so formally in their address to happen later.

Once again, graphics need not be overly complicated or complex to clearly explain a point to the audience. You can easily see most of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and the Middle East recognises Palestine. Europe and Oceania remain the outliers at a regional level. But the use of a black stroke to outline the grey dot of the United States makes clear one point. Whilst the use of dots abstracted countries to discrete data points equal in theory, in practice not all dots are equal.

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.

Pour One Out—For Your Liver

Last month Vox published an article about the trend in America wherein people are drinking less alcohol. They cited a Gallup poll conducted since 1939 and which reported only 54% of Americans reported partaking in America’s national tipple—except for that brief dalliance with Prohibition—making this the least-drinking society since, well, at least 1939.

Vox charted the data in the following graphic.

Overall, the graphic is good. Here the use of individual dots makes clear the years wherein Gallup conducted the survey. In some of the earlier periods it was not an annual question. The line weight is just thick enough to be distinct and the axis lines are lighter and in a light grey to create contrast.

The line uses the colour black. You really do not need colour in a line chart—or a bar chart or anything really charting only a single variable—unless it stems from your branding. Admittedly, Vox is now membership-supported and I am not a member so I only can read a few articles and am unsure if their chart brand standards now use black as their primary colour.

I can quibble with the axis label, “Drink alcoholic beverages”, because that should or could be included in the graphic header or sub-header. But putting in the graphic space is fine. And I like it next to the line instead of in a legend above the chart.

But the thing that irks me is the use of data labels at specific years. You could argue for the inclusion of the label at the current year, the 54%. You could argue for the maximum value, the 71%, but I would not.

Labels distract the reader’s eyes from the line itself and the line is the story. Calling out the 54% and maybe the 71%, fine, but the random 67%? A second random 67%? Those are unnecessary distractions that take away from the chart’s communicative value.

I have mentioned it before and I will mention it again, the use of excessive data labels plagues data visualisation these days. I need to write it up in a longer piece and someday I will. Here is a crude mockup of the graphic without the data labels.

The line’s pattern is easier to spot—fewer distractions for the eyes. The pattern is clear that since the late 1970s roughly 65% of Americans drank alcohol, with the occasional dip, including one in the late 1980s and early 1990s and a briefer one in the mid-90s. I wonder if the 1989–90 dip relates to the recession. The sudden dip in the mid-90s confounds me. But the point is these things are easier to spot without labels the sparkling distraction of the labelling.

Again, overall, the graphic is good. And these days the state of information design and data visualisation is…not great, Bob. So I do not want to critique this graphic too heavily. But a tweak or two would make it even better.

Credit for the piece goes to Dylan Scott.

Baby You Can Drive My Car

Last month the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article examining the geographic distribution of Teslas and Cybertrucks and whether or not your car is liberal or conservative. The interactive graphics focused more on a sortable table, which allowed you to find your vehicle type.

The sortable list offers users option by brand and body type—not model. But whilst the newspaper claims to include 11 million vehicles in Pennsylvania, its classifications are lacking. For example, I drive a Ford Focus hatchback, but the list includes only 1400 hatchbacks, of the Toyota four-door variety in the entire Commonwealth.

More interesting to me was the geographic map of Tesla electric vehicles and Cybertrucks. The screenshot below is of the Tesla.

The choropleth maps use shades of green to indicate the share of vehicles in the particular zip code. Teslas represent relatively small shares of the market across Pennsylvania, but their limited presence is concentrated in the more affluent communities surrounding the big cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Cybertrucks are even less popular in Pennsylvania and barely register statewide.

Overall the graphics work, but I wish the data was a bit more robust. I would be curious how political my vehicle choice is. Of course choice is relative here. I purchased my car back in 2010 and I cared little for the brand. I just wanted something small to drive and park in Chicago and that could lug cargo. Of course 2010 was a less polarised time when the outrages of the day centred upon tan suits.

Credit for the piece goes to Lizzie Mulvey and Dylan Purcell.

Sudan Side by Side

Conflict—a brutal civil war—continues unabated in Sudan. In the country’s west opposition forces have laid siege to the city of el-Fasher for over a year now. And a recent BBC News article provided readers recent satellite imagery showing the devastation within the city and, most interestingly, one of the most ancient of mankind’s tactics in siege warfare: encircling the town or fortress with a wall. No one gets in. And no one gets out.

The screenshot from the article above is of a village to the west of the city and it reveals the brutality of siege warfare. Paramilitary opposition forces constructed their siege wall through the middle of the village, which the image reveals barely exists any longer.

I love images like this because sometimes complex graphics are not necessary to tell the story. The scale of obliteration is obvious to the audience. And it only requires a moment’s extra thought to realise each building was someone’s home or business.

This second screenshot is of an annotated map from the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University. Coloured lines indicate the siege wall’s size and progress. Unlike the obvious nature of the first set of side-by-side images, here the story requires annotations.

Colours indicate when the paramilitaries built the segment of wall. The village in the satellite photos can be seen on the left of the map with the green dashes appropriately cutting through the text label. There are only four colours relevant to the wall and I perhaps would have explored using a light-to-dark gradient instead of four distinct hues as a gradient implies a progression. The wall began in the north, then went to the west and worked clockwise, i.e. cyan to green to yellow to red. A gradient probably would have been clearer in that regard.

I think the drawback with that particular graphic is the legend is not in the graphic itself. Instead, the BBC had to explain it via the article’s text. The lack of an integrated graphic hurts in cases just like this when, say, a screenshot of the image is used without the accompanying text. Here is an example of how that could work.

Overall I like the graphics. And by like I mean the design of the graphics. I do not like the ongoing civil war. The paramilitary forces have made clear their intention to starve and bombard the city’s population to death. Alas, I doubt we will see anything change anytime soon.

Credit for the original pieces go to the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University and the BBC graphics team.

Credit for the edit is mine.