The Visualizing Challenge
Thank you for your exceptional entries!
The contest is now closed.
The winners will be announced on March 22.
Meantime, if you have more good ideas about how the world should be looking at water data, we would love to hear them. The global water crisis is ongoing and needs the world’s collective creative design skills to see the problems in new ways and share new approaches to solutions.
Making Sense of Global Water Issues Through Data and Design
A mass migration from rural to urban areas is underway globally. More than half of humanity lives in cities. Of all the challenges that influence this transition, none is more fundamental than water. Yet many of the world’s metropolitan centers lack planning, infrastructure and the water resources needed to support the new tide of urban residents. That’s why cities are simultaneously places where the most dire resource challenges converge, and testing grounds for new ideas, practices, and water-related investments for managing urban transformation.
The Challenge
Visualizing.org, the global open platform for data visualization, and Circle of Blue, the leading news organization reporting global water challenges, issue an ambitious and rapid-fire call to designers, data experts and visualizers to tap into the world’s stream of water data. The international contest, which offers a $5,000 cash prize, challenges cross-disciplinary thinkers and cutting-edge creative teams to use and display data to reveal new ways of understanding trends and patterns, complex systems and relationships.
Topic: Urban Water and Sanitation
- connections between water and infrastructure capacities in cities
- the effects of climate change on urban water supplies
- urban water systems and sources
- water quality and water pricing
- water management and city planning
- the water – energy – food – climate nexus
- innovation
- urban water data
Sample projects
Participants might explore:
- Access to safe water and sanitation, and the relationship to education, GDP and other indicators;
- New ways to map and track water climatological changes in the U.S. Great Lakes region, which supplies water to more than 40 million people, and comparing the Great Lakes to other parts of the world.
- How urban areas use and manage water. Participants might tap into massive streams of live information from major river flows and aquifers that feed major metropolitan areas such as Mexico City or Los Angeles.
- Asia’s water challenges — more than a billion people live downstream from the Himalayan glacial melt. How will climate change affect these flows and how will urban areas monitor and prepare for a potentially drier future?
- Relationships between disease, water and climate.
- Urban water management and the quality of available water data.
- Financing water infrastructure.
How to participate
- Sign up online at visualizing.org
- Visit the water challenge on visualizing.org for more information and data.
- Visit Circle of Blue’s resource site at http://www.circleofblue.org/visualizing for more data and ideas.
- Submit your visualization at visualizing.org
Timeline
This rapid-fire competition opened on Monday, February 21st and closed March 15. Winners will be announced on World Water Day, March 22.
Judging
The judges are a diverse panel of water and data experts, and information designers:
- Brian Collins, Collins:
- Heather Cooley, Pacific Institute
- J. Carl Ganter, Circle of Blue
- Alon Halevy, Google
- Russell Kennedy, Icograda
- Jennifer George-Palilonis, Ball State University
- Arjun Thapan, Asian Development Bank
Past challenges
Past challenges have compared life expectancies, explored the relationship between green space and health, charted relationships between agriculture and resources, and showed relationships between the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Councils.
About Visualizing.org
Visualizing.org is an open online data visualization platform. It is a free resource for designers and students looking for open data about world issues – such as climate change and global health; a platform for the creative community to share visualizations with each other and the public under a Creative Commons share-alike non-commercial license; a service that provides researchers, decision makers, media organizations, educators and the public with important information design; and a tool for schools to showcase the work of their students and help bring data visualization into the classroom. Support for Visualizing.org comes from Seed Media Group, publishers of Seed Magazine, and General Electric. For more, visit: About Visualizing
About Circle of Blue
Circle of Blue is the national and global network of leading multimedia journalists, researchers and data experts that produces daily coverage and trend-setting reports about water issues from every continent. Circle of Blue approaches the freshwater crisis with three coordinated, interrelated components: front-line journalism, existing and new science and data, and communications design. Circle of Blue’s widely referenced reporting makes water issues personal and relevant while providing a hub for data visualization, aggregation and integration. Circle of Blue applies the best tools of the 21st century to help provide the knowledge that people need to make informed decisions. Circle of Blue co-founded Designing Water’s Future and is a nonprofit affiliate of the Pacific Institute. Back to the top.
Want to share data you have discovered or compiled?
Click Here to email us information we can share for the competition and beyond.
Data for Visualization
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Google Fusion Tables is a modern data management and publishing web application that makes it easy to host, manage, collaborate on, visualize, and publish data tables online. |
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The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate.
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Publications
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UN-HABITAT analyses and studies human settlement patterns, and develops methods for controlled settlement with the preservation of the environment in mind. Their Urban Indicator Tool is a quick way to access data for countries and regions.
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Click here to access a full list of the UN’s Water For Life publications. Valuable resources like The Little Green Data Book (below) can be found there. |
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(The) Little Green Data Book. World Bank. 2010 [Documento PDF - 2.20 MB] Cover of the Report Under the headings of agriculture, forests and biodiversity, energy, emissions and pollution, water and sanitation, environment and health, and national accounts aggregates, this document compiles 50 indicators for over 200 countries each year. Concerning water and sanitation, it offers information about the following indicators: Internal freshwater resources per capita; Freshwater withdrawal (total, agriculture); Access to an improved water source (urban and rural); Access to improved sanitation (urban and rural). |
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Publications on Climate Change
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Click here to download UNWater’s recent Climate Change Adaptation publication.
Other Climate Change Publications:
- Gender aspects of climate change, IUCN et al report
- Climate Change and Disaster Mitigation: Gender makes the difference, IUCN briefing note by Aguilar, L.
- Resource Guide on Gender and Climate Change, UNDP publication 2009
- Changing the Climate: Why Women’s Perspectives Matter, a report by the Women’s Environment and Development (WEDO) 2007
- A study of gender equality as a prerequisite for sustainable development (specifically relating to climate change), Report to the Environment Advisory Council, Sweden, by Johnsson-Latham, G. 2007
- Gender and Climate Change: mapping the linkages BRIDGE (IDS) 2008, prepared for the UK Department for International Development.
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Click Here to Download Charting our Water Future a publication from the 2030 Water Resources Group
Charting our water future: Economic frameworks to inform decision-making shows that while meeting competing demands for water will be a considerable challenge, it is entirely possible to close the growing gap between water supply and demand. This report provides greater clarity on the scale of the water challenge and how it can be met in an affordable and sustainable manner. |
Want to share data or resources you have discovered?
Click Here to email us information we can share for the competition.
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Water Prices Data
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Want to share data or resources you have discovered?
Click Here to email us information we can share for the competition.
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Resources
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UNWater.org |
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The Water and Climate Bibliography is a searchable, online database containing over 3,000 references to books, articles, and other scholarly works. |
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The Circle of Blue Research page contains articles, research and photos on current water issues. |
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Federal source for science about the Earth, its natural and living resources, natural hazards, and the environment. |
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The National Science Foundation has a great statistics page and is also hosting a visualization challenge with Science magazine |
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Past Visualizations
