The future of mapping and its relevance for the SDGs.
The way maps are made has changed rapidly since the modern computer was invented. We have a huge amount of data to play with and new technology has put digital maps — and the tools to make them — into millions of pockets.
Map-based visualisations are a powerful way to share data that could lead to policy changes, and this could be extremely useful for organisations who want to turn goodwill into impact. In a chapter for a new book that explores this shifting paradigm in map production and geoinformation management, our co-founder, Sergio Estella, and our Social Scientist, Jamie Gibson, outline the design techniques organisations need to know to understand what data to share, and how, in order to attain the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Welcome to the Information Society.
In the same way that the Industrial Revolution changed the way we work and live, our lives are today being shaped by our instantaneous access to information and ability to generate data at an exponential rate. Some call it the “Information Society”. Cheap cloud storage allows us to save and analyze mountains of data, using them to solve global issues like climate change, biodiversity loss, and deforestation. The challenge is making sense of these data and displaying them in a way that helps people make informed, sustainable choices.
Map-based data visualisations can lead to sustainable behaviour in three ways.
- By informing and educating.
- By making global issues more understandable.
- Reinforcing a sense of responsibility to the group.
Developing visualisations that meet these aims requires us to understand how people think and behave. Vizzuality’s approach to accounting for human behaviour is to apply design principles (such as progressive disclosure) and user centered design to the development of our maps. This means people’s attitudes, knowledge, and abilities are accounted for in our designs and ensure the interface between us and our digital devices is intuitive.
Visualisations with impact.
In our chapter on designing purposeful maps to achieve SDGs, we outline three case studies of map-based geospatial data visualisations we’ve built with partnering organisations that seek to improve the state of our world. Each case study uses the principles of modern map design and the opportunities of Information Society to fill gaps in access and understanding, and ultimately empower people to take actions that are consistent with the SDGs. Global Forest Watch (GFW), an initiative led by the World Resources Institute, is one of those case studies.
Global Forest Watch.
Forests are fundamental to the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, and have a central role to play in our efforts to mitigate climate change and prevent biodiversity loss. The sustainable management of forests is therefore one way to achieve a number of SDGs including Goal 12 (Responsible Production and Consumption), Goal 13 (Climate Action) and Goal 15 (Life on Land).
GFW provides access to an interactive map and alerts that help people monitor forest change in near real-time across the world. One of the features of GFW that encourages people to share the data they’re viewing is the option to embed any customised visualisation they create with the GFW map into their own website. In a typical week, at least 15% of views of GFW data are made on sites other than globalforestwatch.org itself.
The impact of opening up forest loss data in this way was illustrated in 2015 and 2016 when Mongabay published a series of stories supported by GFW data that showed United Cacao, a cocoa producer, was illegally deforesting primary tropical forest and ignoring orders from the Peruvian government to cease its operations. Weekly alerts sourced from satellite imagery documented United Cacao’s ongoing deforestation activities and yet the company continued to deny any wrongdoing, despite the evidence being visible to all who visited the GFW website. An official complaint to the London Stock Exchange Alternative Investment Market, on which United Cacao was listed, ultimately led to a series of events that culminated in the business ending its operations in 2017.
GFW is just one case study that illustrates how accessible and shareable data can be used to initiate action that supports the aims of the SDGs. Our book chapter includes two further case studies of platforms that seek to improve the transparency of global supply chains and global fishing activities.
The future of mapping.
As more and more people connect to the internet, and as new technology leads to new services, the circumstances of our Information Society will change and continue shaping our lives in unexpected ways. To support this, the areas of innovation we need to focus on are: building open and publicly accessible APIs; taking the data to the people; and meeting more users to expand our research.
Since we wrote this book chapter, we’ve helped launch Resource Watch, a data platform that uses an open API to draw data from multiple data sets into one visualisation. We’ve also hired a Human-Computer Interaction Researcher to investigate how people understand visualisations. Our aim is to create guidelines that we can share with anyone who wants to create data visualisations that are more useful and useable, in order to achieve greater impact.
We hope to see the development of more thematic maps that represent the scale of the social and environmental challenges within the SDGs, and highlight disparities among countries around the world. To reach our ambitions for sustainable development we’ll need all 7 billion plus people on our planet to be engaged in the development, use and improvement of maps. Together we can identify new solutions and remove the blockers currently hampering our efforts; and the changing paradigm in map production and geoinformation management will help us get there.
Service-Oriented Mapping. Changing Paradigm in Map Production and Geoinformation Management is published by Springer.
Estella, S., Gibson, J., 2018. Vizzuality: Designing Purposeful Maps to Achieve SDGs, in: Service-Oriented Mapping, Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. Springer, Cham, pp. 207–224. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72434-8_10
