Project Ocean Data (First sketches)
Remember last weeks story about the ocean data collected by waverider buoys? This week I spend some time on visualising its most important dimensions and would like to share those with you. I decided to focus only on those dimension which are important in a surfer’s perspective, since I want to end up with a visualisation, surfers can consult for information about the different surf spots. The table below will already give you an overview on which dimensions are used in which sketch.
Now let’s take a look at the sketches. In the first sketch, I visualised ocean swell (height and period) for one surf spot. In sketch XI, I did the same but now for every surf spot so that they can be compared. In sketch IV, I draw this ocean swell again, but know the averages of multiple years so that it can be compared over the years.
Sketches II, III and VI all show us the average or max height of the waves over time, with the only difference that for sketch III this is visualised by plotting samples at every hour, and in sketch VI time is divided in 6 time zones in which the height at all sites can be compared.
Because I also wanted to include wind direction one way or another, I tried to do this in sketches V, VII, IX, XIV, XX and XXII. Sketch V represents a histogram of the height of the waves at all different sites in which I used the color to fill the bars as an indicator of wind direction. In sketch VII, the diameter of the circle represents the height of the waves, and the direction in which it expands is used to indicate the wind direction. color is here used to represent the different spots. figure XIV is quite similar to sketch V, only now all sites are clustered by their wind direction.
Sketch XXII basically shows us the ocean swell by wind direction from a surf spot. In sketch XX I used the x and y axes again to represent the wind direction like in sketch VII. In this, the circles represent the different sites in which the diameter of the circle is used to represent the height of the waves, and the further the circles are from the middle, the bigger the ocean swell. Same dimensions are used in sketch IX. The surface of the square represents the ocean swell and the saturation of the color blue, the waves. Wind direction is then drawn by the arrows inside the sites.
Because the waverider buoys provide data about several different sites, it would be nice to see them beside the map of Australia as well to locate them, which is done in sketch VIII, X and XV. In sketch VIII and XV I gave every spot a number indicating the level of difficulty to surf on those waves. In sketch X, the height of the waves (difficulty) are displayed by the size of the triangles. Wind direction is presented in sketch X and XV by the arcs (in the ocean or on top op the circles). Beneath sketch XV, I draw the ocean swell of the past 24 hours of all sites.
To further compare the different sites, I draw sketch XVI in which the average height is presented for every site. In sketch XVII I wanted to visualise the height of the waves by the blue triangles, categorised by its level of difficulty. Sketch XVIII, which is one of my favourites shows us the best time of the day to surf on a site. In here, the sites are presented by the different colours.
In sketches XII and XIII, I wanted to do some wave comparison. Sketch XIII just shows the average ocean swell of every site, while sketch XII does this too (colour), but now for every year, and shows an additional average (red dots) of the maximum wave height in that particular year.
Because normally there should be a correlation between the size of ocean swell and the size of the waves I wanted to visualise this in sketch XIX. Finally, sketch XXI represents the size of ocean swell and its direction for every site.
