Visualizing data through Google Public Data Explorer

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April 23rd, 2010

Google Public Data Explorer is a new tool I found quite by chance which visualizes some very interesting databanks in a useful manner.

For example, the World Developement Indicators obtained from the World Bank include quite a few statistics relating to environment:

Agricultural land (% of land area)
CO2 emissions (kt)
CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita)
Electric power consumption (kWh per capita)
Energy use (kg of oil equivalent per capita)
Forest area (sq. km)
Improved sanitation facilities, urban (% of urban population with access)
Improved water source (% of population with access)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)

All these statistics can be viewed over time for different countries or for the world as a whole and make some very interesting line graphs.

Issues like Population growth (annual %), Population (total), Poverty headcount ratio at national poverty line (% of population) are also present and can be used to solidify your stand on the environmental reasoning in your design.

Taking the case of CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita), this dataset can be viewed as a line graph.

It can also be represented as a bar graph and can be animated to show the CO2 emissions for the specified countries increased over time.

The data can also be visualized overlaid on a map getting a beautiful visual perspective of the data.

There are many more options, datasets worth exploring.

Head to Google Public Data Explorer to start exploring!

Tags: co2 emissions, datasets, google, public data explorer, world bank
This entry was posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2010 at 7:03 AM.
Category: News, Tools.

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