Wow. That was the first emotion and thought that came up to me, when I had a look at the website by the World Bank, referred to by the IntelligentHQ crew. The World Bank Data Viz is a Tumblr page that aggregates all kinds of very interesting data visualizations from other organizations. Great example of collaboration, using (open) data and visualizing it to make it easier and faster to understand. Have a look at some fantastic examples.
The ones I always like are mashups, for instance as the following ones where (open) data is plotted on for instance: Google Maps.
The first one is a data visualization on Twitter and Africa.
Researchers at the Floating Sheep recently mapped geocoded tweets from eleven major African cities. They used tweets published in Accra, Cairo, Dar es Salaam, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Lagos, Tunis, Nairobi, Kigali, Mogadishu, and Addis Ababa throughout November 2012.
The maps below display geocoded tweets in Nairobi and Cairo.
These kind of maps related to Twitter gives a good understanding of distribution and geographical density of the technology, which then can be used for all kinds of things, think of marketing, target audience, demographical research etc.
Outdoor air pollution mapped by city
Which cities have the worst air pollution? Which have the cleanest air?. Find out in this interactive map by The Guardian, which plots the latest World Health Organization data on outdoor air pollution worldwide.
[embedit snippet=”worldbank”]
The United Nations’ development programmes
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has launched open.undp.org – an open data browser for information on their 6,000+ projects spanning 177 countries.
It includes data on project budgets, expenditures, sources of funding and details of activities. All the data are available in an API, via bulk download and on the IATI registry.
The power of data visualization
In a global environment the geographical dimension is an important element, or at least an interesting element to take into account when analying large chuncks of data.
Want to understand the power of data visualization?.
Watch this video from Professor Hans Rosling, a professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, and founder of GapMinder.org (a nonprofit foundation focused on promoting sustainable global development and achieving the initiatives of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals).
Gianluigi Cuccureddu is co-founder of Damarque, helping you to improve your commercial performance through better engagement with your employees, customers and strategic business partners.
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