Introduction

I started by familiarizing myself using some of the tutorials uploaded on the Carto website and shortly after thought about using the worlds ports data that was provided in one of their assignments as a base for my map. Considering that oil spills are very dangerous phenomenon’s that have become mainstream in recent years due to mismanagement and lack of responsibility from fossil fuel companies, I thought it would be a good idea to try and generate a map that would visualize the widespread dangers of oil spills on the planet. 

Inspiration

The visualization that inspired me was the map I produced for the tutorial that was provided on Carto’s website. The original visualization only used a single layer and considering that our assignment required 2 layers, I realized I could use this data as a reference point for my own project.

Tools

I used the carto website and a data set on global ports provided by them, in addition to a data set on oil spills provided by incident news. 

Method

I decided to add a calculated cluster of points onto my incidents data and demonstrate the heat map generated by it in conjunction with the ports map data generated from the other data set. I chose a dark symbol to represent my ports because they did not have any implications on the analysis and thought using a muted color could be of help on diverging the attention and focusing it on the heat map. I also used a heat map because I thought data regarding oil spills should be demonstrated in heat maps considering that the oil spill would not be a static object floating at the same spot forever. The heat map also allows for better understanding of the scale of the problem.

 

Reflection

I tried to make the most appealing visualization using the data sets I had available. The graph could definitely use a larger combination of analysis but the lack of proper data that could allow for generating a better map did not make that easy.