Interactive data visualization of climate hazards for the International Organization for Migration, UN

The International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN migration agency, promotes orderly and humane migration worldwide. As our planet changes, a complex challenge that has emerged is climate change-induced human migration.

Millions are being forced to leave their homes, seeking safety and stability. Recognizing this critical issue, the United Nations (UN) led a coordinated effort to support vulnerable communities.

Its Global Data Institute (GDI) wanted a data-driven solution to visualize climate hazards. We developed an interactive data visualization tool to predict how climate change will impact human mobility across the globe. This tool, showcased at COP28, helps identify areas at risk of floods, droughts, and other climate hazards.

It allows for data-driven decisions and international collaboration to address climate-induced migration, ensuring that the user interface caters to diverse needs across the target audience, and observes changes in exposure over time.

The challenges

The platform had to ensure swift access to quantitative climate data, highlighting IOM’s expertise in predictive modeling, data analysis, and visualization. It also needed to be informative and user-friendly. This project was expected to showcase results in diverse visualizations like 3D maps, line charts, and bar charts. Efficient handling of large datasets on 3D maps and their performance was also crucial.

Validating map outputs using color shades (instead of numbers) required data-driven creative solutions. Building a user-friendly data update system through a dashboard, while ensuring a smooth user experience, presented another hurdle. Finally, explaining complex climate data to non-expert users meant pushing the limits of existing tooltip functionalities, necessitating external libraries.

We also had tight deadlines to complete the project due to the business’s need to present the tool in the COP28 event which made it challenging for our development and quality engineering teams.

The approach

Agile methodologies were at the core of our approach which helped us to adapt to emerging challenges and navigate complexities with remarkable efficiency throughout the project lifecycle.

We started with an initial questionnaire involving client stakeholders to gather all the details related to the projects, like — design, project discovery documents, and data files to run an analysis. This helped us in analyzing the platform goals, identifying the raw data available with IOM, and visualizations needs.

For data accuracy, detailed test scenarios were created for validating maps, trends, and filter combinations covering all data types. For the map, we used a browser development tool to validate the data.

The solution

Design

We created an intuitive world map that projects climate changes and their effects over the next decades with a unique combination of different factors. Users also had the option to toggle between a 2D & 3D map to view the data they required.

Line charts and bar graphs were added to view and compare different projections of climate change affected by the different degrees of factors. Different visual representations of climate-related data that could be switched from a simple interaction were done.

A collapsible left-side panel with different filters that could be switched from a simple interaction helped users view specific projections of climate changes and gave more space for the users to see the data properly.

Data visualization portal development

Our extensive research on the available JS visualization library, mainly d3.js, observable-plot and svelte helped to implement CSS properties as per designs — especially for legends. Using d3.js seemed to be a better approach than the Math library of JS while working on huge datasets for visualization.

Developed individual batch processes triggered manually, step by step via a user-friendly dashboard, for preparing the required files and nodes.

Leveraged Drupal’s node entities to store the data required to visualize the line and bar charts. The filter-able GraphQL APIs ensured that only required data was served.

The outcome

We designed and developed a fully responsive, interactive data visualization solution that IOM could use to present its climate-related hazards forecast at the COP28 summit. And also, develop a simple solution for updating the source data as and when required.

The data-driven portal helped to understand climate-related displacement risk better which provides a vital foundation to allocate resources and make informed policy decisions. The data shown enabled international organizations with insights to provide effective and targeted support for vulnerable populations.

They can now interactively explore where and when climate hazard exposure, high population densities, and economic vulnerability will coincide in the future. This shift towards evidence-based decision-making ensures that aid and resources reach those who need it most, maximizing their impact and fostering a more resilient future for all.

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This post was originally published on qed42.com