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.
(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.
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.
Another week has ended. Another weekend begins. I saw this a little while ago and flagged it for myself to share on a just for fun Friday. And since I posted a few things this week I figured I would share this as well.
It is remarkable it took the similarity of the two coastlines to “discover” continental drift, but that is, very broadly, the truth of the matter.
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.
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.
Last weekend, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred created a mild furore when he discussed the sport’s looming expansion and how it would likely prompt a geographic realignment. I am old enough I still recall baseball’s two leagues—the American and National—organised into only two divisions—East and West. In the early 1990s, baseball expanded and created a new Central Division. Afterwards, teams changed divisions, teams changed leagues, the sport expanded again to add new teams. As of today, MLB comprises 30 teams, 15 each in each league divided five teams per division. The only potential downside is whereas for decades the leagues only played amongst themselves, since the late 1990s, the odd numbers of teams have required “interleague” play on a daily basis.
But baseball wants to expand to 32 teams in a process yet to begin. Expansion requires the interested parties to pay an enormous fee, making other owners significant amounts of sweet, sweet cash. The question on everyone’s mind is where will the two expansion teams locate? And once they start play, how will the sport organise its teams?
The Athletic posted an article about this very issue earlier this week and it included two nice and simple maps showing one potential geographic realignment. This image is of author Stephen J. Nesbitt’s idea for the American League. (I care about the American League because as my regular readers by now know, I am an unapologetic fan of the Red Sox.)
As maps go, I think it works well. Personally, I prefer lighter backgrounds to darker, but a grey map is a grey map all the same. I think the colours work well and visually group the proposed divisions clearly. The white box makes clear the new division. (The map for the National League also works well.)
Beyond the information design or data visualisation level, I generally like the realignment proposed here as it offers a decent compromise between those wanting a basketball-style apportionment into two conferences, one eastern and one western, and those traditionalists like myself who still value the distinction between the American and National Leagues.
The biggest issue is where will the teams be? The author assumes one team on the East Coast or at least east of the Mississippi, and one West Coast or west of the Rocky Mountains. But baseball returning to Canada and Montreal would be welcome as would an expansion team in Texas, say Austin or San Antonio. Then of course you have the issue of Oakland. And the longshots have always been expansion into Mexico.
Personally, I have long been in favour of an even larger expansion to 36 teams. For sake of argument: Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Charlotte, Nashville, and Montreal have always made sense to me. Of course six new teams in one quick go would be impractical and thus it would be a long-term goal. But three 6-team divisions would mean 18 teams per league and you could still eliminate or reduce interleague play to special occasion weekends.
A good friend of mine sent me this graphic earlier this week. The World Wars fascinate me—to be fair, most history does, and yes, that even includes the obligatory guy thinking of the Roman Empire—and I can see on my bookshelf as I type this post up my books on naval warships from World War I and a history of the Great War itself. But the graphic comes from the Onion and satirises the Great War with a few choice bits relevant over 100 years later.
World War I is the what happens when you leave the default settings on and fail to make changes to your account after you set it up. Because someone declared war on someone else, another someone had to declare war on that person, and that person had to be declared war upon by another person, and so on and so forth until millions were dead.
Credit for the piece goes to the Onion’s graphics staff.
Last week two of the largest American freight railroads agreed to a merger with Union Pacific purchasing Norfolk Southern. Railroads have long played an important part in the history of the United States, from the Second Industrial Revolution to settlement and development of the West, through to the time zones in which we live and the laws on monopolies and corporations by which we live. Even in my own family history, my 3×great-grandfather was crushed between two rail cars and instantly killed whilst working for the Reading Railroad.
This merger, however, will create a truly transcontinental railroad spanning from the East Coast to the West Coast. Fortunately the New York Timescovered the news and included a graphic to showcase the new network—if approved by the Administration, which…really?…do we have any doubt?—with the Union Pacific in red and Norfolk Southern in orange.
The graphic is great. It need not be overly complex. With other railroads shown in light grey for context, the graphic highlights both the expansiveness and pervasiveness of the two networks. In a normally operating world, we probably would see significant concerns from the government about monopolistic concentrations of freight—we are talking about 40% of freight traffic here being controlled by one company. But this ain’t exactly Kansas. Except, it kinda is. Regardless, I doubt this merger gets held up.
A minor note, I appreciate that this map includes the state-level administrative units for both Mexico and Canada—Cuba too, but that is less important for this article. The only concern would be, I would probably have used a thicker white stroke for the international borders, because how many readers would know on the above map where the United States ends and “not the United States” begins…
Last weekend, the United States’ 4th of July holiday weekend, the remnants of a tropical system inundated a central Texas river valley with months’ worth of rain in just a few short hours. The result? The tragic loss of over 100 lives (and authorities are still searching for missing people).
Debate rages about why the casualties ranked so high—the gutting of the National Weather Service by the administration shines brightly—but the natural causes of the disaster are easier to identify. And the BBC did a great job covering those in a lengthy article with a number of helpful graphics.
I will start with this precipitation map, created with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data.
I remain less than fully enthusiastic about continual gradients for map colouration schemes, however the extreme volume of rainfall during the weather event makes the location of the flooding obvious to all. Nonetheless the designers annotated the map, pointing out river, the camp at the centre of the tragedy and the county wherein most of the deaths occurred.
In short, more than 12 inches of rain fell in less than 24 hours. The article also uses a time lapse video to show the river’s flash flooding when it rose a number of feet in less than half an hour.
The article uses the captivating footage of the flash flooding as the lead graphic component. And I get it. The footage is shocking. And you want to get those sweet, sweet engagement clicks and views. But from the standpoint of the overall narrative structure of the piece, I wonder if starting with the result works best.
Rather, the extreme rainfall and geographic features of the river valley contributed at the most fundamental level and showcasing that information and data, such as in the above map, would be a better place to start. The endpoint or culmination of the contributing factors is the flash flooding and the annotated photo of flood water heights inside the cabins of the camp.
Overall I enjoyed the piece tremendously and walked away better informed. I had visited an area 80 miles east of the floods several years ago for a wedding. Coincidentally on the 4th I remarked to a different friend from the area now living in Philadelphia about the flatness and barrenness of the landscape between Austin and San Antonio. I had no idea that just to the west rivers cut through the elevated terrain that would together cause over a hundred deaths a few hours later.
Credit for the piece goes to the BBC, but the article listed a healthy number of contributors whom I shall paste here: Writing by Gary O’Donoghue in Kerr County, Texas, Matt Taylor of BBC Weather and Malu Cursino. Edited by Tom Geoghegan. Images: Reuters/Evan Garcia, Brandon Bell, Dustin Safranek/EPA/Shutterstock, Camp Mystic, Jim Vondruska, Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP and Getty.
