Many of my previous articles have described the use of data visualization for enterprise management or personal data analysis, but there is more to data visualization than that.
From the social level, data visualization can also help us to carry out social governance and public health protection. For example, when data visualization is integrated into GIS technology, it can help us improve the way we respond to natural disasters.
In recent years, natural disasters have been destroying our homes with increasing intensity and frequency.
China’s annual summer floods have been plaguing the Yangtze River region, and hot news about floods has emerged endlessly on Weibo every summer.
Take Chongqing as an example this year, facing the biggest flood in 40 years, the Yangtze River in 2020 “Flood No. 5” greatly exceeded the guaranteed water level, a large number of roads and residential buildings in Chongqing riverside were submerged, ciqikou, Chaotianmen and other landmark areas became the “disaster area”, the so-called “mountain city” was almost flooded into an “island”.
In the face of natural disasters, GIS technology can help us track, predict and prepare for disasters, and all of these actions will generate a lot of data.
Time is of the essence in disasters, and the ability to quickly turn large amounts of data into actionable insights and effectively communicate the results is critical to protecting public health, minimizing damage and saving lives!
Therefore, the use of GIS technology combined with data visualization can accelerate the data analysis results when we face disasters, improve the way we work, and try our best to reduce disaster losses.
Next, I will introduce a real big screen case to let you better feel the value of data visualization.
I. Case introduction
This big screen case is an intelligent water conservancy project of a municipal Water Conservancy Bureau. It is based on the existing basic information of water conservancy projects in the city, as well as real-time external data such as precipitation and typhoon, so as to achieve global visibility, comprehensive monitoring and intelligent flood prevention, helping government departments to command and dispatch scientifically and quickly, and providing support for safe flood control.
So for a disaster prevention nature of the data visualization screen, the preparation of early data is naturally very important.
Develop emergency action plans with community emergency response checklists by identifying data needs, developing data sets, and sharing data between government and non-governmental agencies.
This needs before the disaster for short-term cooperation activities, these activities will eventually improve disaster response and recovery readiness between institutions, such as the development of the application associated with a specific response and recovery activities, and build a common feature of data sets, all potential responder reporting practices and access procedures.
With the data, it is natural to draft and design the data screen. If we use the data we have collected to visualize the operation, the staff can better understand the real-time dynamics and take corresponding actions.
For the flowchart of creating a large screen, see the following steps:
Disaster prevention data visualization large screen scene construction chain
Second, program design
The color of the city’s image logo is selected as the main color, and the unique celadon color is very representative of the city, reflecting the cultural characteristics of the ancient porcelain capital. The main screen part is the overall map display and data overview of the central city.
In terms of content, the large screen realizes the visualization and real-time dynamic update of important indicators such as river distribution, water level data, reservoir equipment, water diversion situation, typhoon monitoring, rainfall monitoring, drainage data and so on based on GIS map.
1. The overview page
The main screen shows the overall map of the city, which shows the distribution of backbone/non-backbone river network and housing information. On the right side of the main screen is the general display of reservoirs and rivers. The left screen shows water diversion and the right screen shows an overview of drainage.
On the right side of the main screen are the general display of the reservoir and river and the drainage profile. The water level at different time points in different rivers can be clearly known through the line chart.
On the left screen, we can see the amount of water diversion in the whole city and the proportion of water diversion in the central city.
Then comes the diversion page. The map on the main screen of the diversion page displays the distribution information of backbone/non-backbone river network, and the daily diversion matrix is displayed on the side of the diversion page, with dots of different sizes representing the amount of diversion data.
The left screen of the water diversion page shows the overall data, namely the total amount of water diversion and the number of days; The right screen shows the data of water diversion by region over the years.
On page 2. The reservoir
The map on the main screen shows the distribution of reservoirs. Click to view the detailed data of a reservoir. The left screen shows the overall data, that is, the annual average and per capita water resources in this region; The right screen is the detailed data of water discharge, supply and storage of reservoirs.
3. The channel page
The map on the main screen shows the distribution of reservoirs, backbone/non-backbone river network, video surveillance and housing. The water area data of each township and street is displayed on the right side of the main screen. The left screen shows the overall data of the river, and the right screen shows the general situation of the river.
On page 4. The rain
The map on the main screen shows the distribution of houses. On the right side of the main screen is the rainfall statistics of the river area and reservoir. The right screen shows statistics of rainfall in different time dimensions.
On page 5. Drainage
The map on the main screen shows the distribution of backbone/non-backbone river network, houses and pump sluice. Click to view the detailed data of a pump sluice. The water level of each region is displayed on the right side of the main screen. The left screen shows the annual drainage amount, and the right screen shows the drainage amount of each region by time period.
6. The typhoon
Precipitation map is displayed on the main screen, and typhoon overview is displayed on the right side of the main screen. The right screen shows detailed rainfall data.
We can see that the large screen for data visualization of smart water conservancy projects in the city has realized real-time monitoring of water quantity in the whole urban area through seven pages, one main screen and two side screens. Moreover, data ICONS, thermal distribution maps and other components can be displayed more intuitively to accurately realize data visualization.
In recent years, due to the over-development of cities, floods have become more frequent and the annual water level has also been rising. If we just rely on the traditional flood fighting mode, it is difficult to withstand natural disasters.
However, with the rapid development of science and technology today, what we need to do is to reform and innovate on the traditional, through the data visualization screen can greatly improve the efficiency of flood fighting, before the disaster happened to know.
“In the past, flash floods were assessed based on measured rainfall, but people were often moved when the flash floods had already occurred. The intelligent Flood Control Brain will advance the warning time by 0.5 to 3 hours by integrating the measured rainfall and the short impending forecast, and strive for the golden time for the personnel transfer. Since last year, there have been more than 60 flash floods in small drainage areas in the city, and no casualties have occurred due to timely prediction and early warning and advance transfer, “said Zhang.
In the simple case above, this phase of natural disaster response includes immediate activities that reduce life-threatening conditions, provide life-sustaining assistance and stop further property damage.
Geospatial data are critical to disaster response objectives, such as search and rescue efforts, distribution of water and basic supplies, and establishment of temporary power sources and shelters.
GIS can help immediately complete image acquisition, processing, analysis, distribution and convert images to map the area affected, covered with the following information: the map damage location, population, key material inventory location, no power supply area and possible power recovery time, and the power wire and roads closed map.
For epidemics like COVID-19, geospatial data can be used in interactive visual analytics to track the spread of the virus and gain insights from large data sets.
Key challenges in the emergency phase include quality control and information dissemination. Common practices for integrating geospatial data into information products, such as common data reporting intervals, timestamps and distribution methods, must be established between agencies.
The size of geospatial data is huge, and distribution of this information can be significantly slowed down due to network corruption. During this time, data from ground reports, remote sensing, geospatial models and real-time data from field monitoring can be used until images are obtained.
The real-time analysis platform for data visualization speeds up the decision making process, enabling rapid visualization of data and model scenarios, driving better mitigation, preparedness and response decisions, and facilitating the development of better disaster response plans in general.
It’s not just rhetoric that data visualization helps policymakers see the future. Whether in enterprise management or social governance, the function of data visualization is not limited to itself, but can be combined with many technologies.
We hope that through the visual large screen we set up, the flood relief personnel can fight for one more second in the rescue, save one more person in the disaster, and reduce the disaster loss to the minimum. Make data not just a few cold numbers, but into warm and human symbols.
The above cases are from: Kangaroo Cloud EasyV