Desperate Journeys

By Ibrahim T. Ghanem

Geovis Project Assignment @RyersonGeo, SA8905, Fall 2019

Background:

Over the past 20 years, Asylum Seekers have invented many travel routes between Africa, Europe and Middle East in order be able to reach a country of Asylum. Many governmental and non-governmental provided information about those irregular travel routes used by Asylum Seekers. In this context, this geovisualization project aims at compiling and presenting two dimensions of this topic: (1) a comprehensive animated spider map presenting some of the travel routes between the above mentioned three geographic areas; (2) develop a dashboard that connects those routes to other statistics about refugees in a user-friendly interface. In that sense, the best software to fit the project is Tableau.

Data and Technology

Creation of Spider maps at Tableau is perfect for connecting hubs to surrounding point as it allows paths between many origins and destinations. Besides, it can comprehend multiple layers. Below is a description of the major steps for the creation of the animated map and dashboard.

Also, Dashboards are now very useful in combining different themes of data (i.e. pie-charts, graphs, and maps), and accordingly, they are used extensively in non-profit world to present data about a certain cause. The Geovisualiztion Project applied geocoding approach to come up with the animated map and the dashboard.

The Data used to create the project included the following:

-Origins and Destinations of Refugees

-Number of Refugees hosted by each country

-Count of Refugees arriving by Sea (2010-2015)

-Demographics of Refugees arriving by Sea – 2015

Below is a brief description of the steps followed to create the project

Step 1: Data Sources:

The data was collected from the below sources.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Human Rights Watch, Vox, InfoMigrants, The Geographical Association of UK, RefWorld, Broder Free Association for Human Rights, and Frontex Europa.

However, most of the data are not geocoded. Accordingly, Google Sheets was used in Geocoding 21 routes, and thereafter each Route was given a distinguishing ID and a short description of the route.

Step 2: Utilizing the Main Dataset:

Data is imported from an excel sheet. In order to compute a route, Tableau requires data about origins,and destination with latitude and longitude. In that aspect, the data contains different categories:

A-Route I.D. It is a unique path I.D. for each route of the 21 routes;

B-Order of Points: It is the order of stations travelled by refugees from their country of origin to country of Asylum;

C-Year: the year in which the route was invented;

D-Latitude/Longitude: it is the coordinates of the each station;

F-Country: It is the country hosting Refugees;

E- Population: Number of refugees hosted in each country.

Step 3: Building the Map View:

The map view was built by putting longitude in columns, latitude in rows, Route I.D. at details, and selecting the mark type as line. In order to enhance the layout, Oder of Points was added to Marks’ Path, and changing it to dimensions instead of SUM.  Finally, to bring stations of travel, another layer was added to by putting another longitude to columns, and changing it to Dual Axis. To create filtration by Route, and timeline by year, route was added Filter while year was added to page.

Step 4: Identifying Routes:

To differentiate routes from each other by distinct colours, the route column was added to colours, and the default setting was changed to Tableau 20. And Layer format wash changed to dark to have a contrast between the colours of the routes and the background.

Step 5: Editing the Map:

After finishing up with the map formation. A video was captured by QuickStart and edited by iMovie to be cropped and merged.

Step 6: Creating the Choropleth map and Symbology:

In another sheet, a set of excel data (obtained from UNHCR) was uploaded to create a Choropoleth map that would display number of refugees hosted by each country by year 2018. Count of refugees was added to columns while Country was added to rows. The Marks’ colour ramp of orange-gold, with 4 classes was added to indicate whether or not the country is hosting a significant number of refugees. Hovering over each country would display the name of the country and number of refugees it hosts.

Step 7: Statistical Graphs:

A pie-chart and a graph were added to display some other statistics related to count of Refugees arriving by Sea from Africa to Europe, and the demographics of those refugees arriving by sea. Demographics was added to label to display them on the charts.

Step 8: Creation of the Dashboard:

All four sheets were added in the dashboard section through dragging them into the layer view. To comprehend that amount of data explanation, size was selected as legal landscape. Title was given to the Dashboard as Desperate Journeys.

Limitations

A- Tableau does not allow the map creator to change the projection of the maps; thus, presentation of maps is limited. Below is a picture showing the final format of the dashboard:

B-Tableau has an online server that can host dashboard; nevertheless, it cannot publish animated maps. Thus, the animated maps is uploaded here a video. The below link can lead the viewer to the dashboard:

https://prod-useast-a.online.tableau.com/t/desperatejourneysgeovis/views/DesperateJourneys_IbrahimGhanem_Geoviz/DesperateJourneys/ibrahim.ghanem@ryerson.ca/23c4337a-dd99-4a1b-af2e-c9f683eab62a?:display_count=n&:showVizHome=n&:origin=viz_share_link

C-Due to unavailability of geocoded data, geocoding the routes of refugees’ migration consumed time to fine out the exact routes taken be refugees. These locations were based on the reports and maps released by the sources mentioned at the very beginning of the post.

Missing Migrants: The Mediterranean Sea

By: Austen Chiu

Geovis Project Assignment @RyersonGeo, SA8905, Fall 2019

Background

The dangerous journey of migrants seeking a better life has existed as long as countries have experienced political unrest. Advancements in technology have brought greater visibility to migrant groups than ever before. However, those who failed to make the journey often go unseen. Due to the undocumented nature of migrant paths, accurate numbers of survivors and deaths is difficult to track.

The data used in this project were obtained from the Missing Migrants Project. A dashboard was created in Tableau desktop to visualize the locations of missing migrant reports across the Mediterranean Sea, and to improve awareness of the scale at which the migrant crisis is occurring.

Creating an Animated Time Series Map

Following the prompts in Tableau, import your data. The data imported from an excel file should appear like this.

Make sure the data contains a date column, and spatial coordinates. Tableau can read spatial coordinates such as latitude and longitude, or northing and easting, to create maps. You can designate a column to be read as a date, or assign its geographic role as a latitude or longitude, to draw a map.

The icon above the column reveals options for which you want to format the data.
Geographic roles can be assigned to your data, allowing Tableau to read them as a map.
Creating a new map can be done by clicking the new tab buttons at the bottom of your window.
This is a blank graph. You can create graphs by dragging data into the “columns” and “rows” fields.

Tableau will automatically generate a map if data assigned with geographic roles are used to populate the “Columns” and “Rows” fields. If the “Pages” field in the top right corner is populated with the date data, a time slider module will appear below the “Marks” module. The “Pages” field facilitates Tableau’s animation capabilities.

The “Filters” field has applied a filter to the data, so only cases that occur in the Mediterranean region are visualized in the map.

The “Pages” field in the top left has been populated by the date data and a time slider has appeared in the bottom left.
The time slider allows you to select a specific date to view. The right arrow below the slider starts the animation, and Tableau will run through each snapshot of time, much like a slideshow.

Tableau can produce many types of data visualizations to accompany the animated map. A histogram, live counter, and packed bubbles visuals accompany the map on my dashboard.

The final product of the dashboard I created has been shared to Tableau Online. However, Tableau online does not support the animation features. A gif of the animated dashboard in Tableau Desktop has been shared through google drive, and can be viewed here.