dynamic data displays: experiences from usda’s economic research service
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Dynamic Data Displays: Experiences from USDA’s Economic Research Service. Vince Breneman GIS Coordinator USDA-Economic Research Service March 5, 2007. Economic Research Service Overview. 400 employees (300 social scientists) - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Dynamic Data Displays: Experiences from USDA’s Economic Research
Service
Vince BrenemanGIS Coordinator
USDA-Economic Research ServiceMarch 5, 2007
Economic Research Service Overview
400 employees (300 social scientists) ERS conducts a research program to inform public and private decision-making on economic and policy issues involving:
agriculture
trade
food markets
food safety, nutrition, and assistance
natural resources
rural America
Data visualization objectives
ClientsPolicy/legislative gatekeepersPress/Media Commodity industry/AgribusinessResearch communityPublic
Goal is to provide our clients with robust data products that will allow them to find, explore, extract data and build custom presentation products with some level of consistency
Challenges
Lots of products often in the wrong format to create dynamic displays
100 data products that in include 1000’s of datasetsMost products are file based with meta data in the file
A variety of users wanting different things from the dataSome want a number a relationship a table or database graphics
Finding data How do we expose data and information that are contained in our automated data delivery systemsHow do users find cross tabulations and geographic subsets etc.
Challenges
Departmental guidelines limited screen real-estate: 767 pixel width,140 pixel header, ¼ left nav box, ¼ right nav box 508 compliance – must provide reasonable access to the visually impairedPopups not advised because of popup blockersDepartmental guidelines have and will change so building applications with a level of flexibility becomes part of our requirements
Commercial packages we use for developing Web data visualization applications
Corda’s PopChart – graphing toolGenerates flash files as well as jpgs, eps, pdf …Provides some standard graph types but we have done a bit of customizationTo reduce development time and provide some consistency we have been building graphing web servicesProvides a d-link for visually impaired
ESRI’s ArcIMS 9.1 for mapping of detailed geographies generally county level of lowerUtilizes our SQL Server and spatial data repositoryAble to incorporate a host of spatial reference layers
ERS data sets page
Lots of productsDepartmental guidelinesFinding data
ERS food consumption applicationProvides food availability estimates of food supplies moving from production through marketing channels for domestic consumption.U.S. national level annual time series 1909 - 2005 Includes hundreds of commodities from beef and pork to coffee and tea to potato chips
Total domestic population
Food Consumption data selection page
- Application instructions- User defined graph-able subset-Output options
Challenge:Wanted to show over 100variables creating a LIL (Long Intimidating List)
Solution: Break list into categories
Challenge: Application description and data query component takes up lots of screen real-estate
Solution: Jump return page to data selection and results
Challenge:Want to illustrate the group total and commodity shares - this can create scaling issues
Solution:Allow user to add or delete items from selected group
PopChart features: - Graph dynamically scales Y-axis for a given set of data
- PopCharts generates flash files with rollovers to get actual values
-PopCharts provides d-link for visually impaired
Challenge:Wanted graph to standalone and be clear about what it was representing
Solution:Include extensive footnotes
Challenge:How do we handle to many variables?
Solution: Panel plots?
Profiles of America mapping applicationspatial data
Purpose: Help users visualize over 100 important US county level demographic and socio-economic indicators and a number of ERS rural indicators/geographiesSummarize demographic data by rural geographies and by StateAllow the application to be extended with new indicators of regional geographies
Outputs include maps, graphs and tablesThis is one of our first highly interactive data visualization products
Regional geographies/typologiesRural-Urban Continuum Code, 2003 County Typology Codes, 2004 Metro-Nonmetro status, 2003 Metro-Micro-Noncore status, 2003 Urban Influence Code, 2003
Unemployment rate, 2003
Example Demographic and Socio-economic data
Population and Migration Age and Sex Race and Ethnicity Educational Attainment Households and Families Journey to Work Employment and Unemployment Income and Poverty
How do unemployment rates compare between metro and nonmetro regions?
State selection – US default
Topic groupings
Rural indicators
Challenge:How to map 3000+ counties quickly…under 2 seconds?
Solution:Currently we use ESRI ArcIMS - thin client
Regions view
Standard map navigation
Issue:
Do you just show the state or surrounding states?
Challenge:Where to display identity tool results?
Solution:
Used pop-ups - Now posting table results below the map
Challenge:How to link map regions and chart regions
Solution:Used color linkages
Same population change variable aggregated to a different geography
How to aggregate data?
Make sure all variables were using the same county base geographyDevelop a data sturcture to handle regional aggregations
Identified variables as totals, ratio or categoricalRatio data (rates, percentages) need to know the numerator and the denominator by regionTotals sum variable by region
Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) application
ARMS is USDA's primary source of information on the financial condition, production practices, resource use, and the economic well-being of America's farm households It’s a large and complicated dataset with over 650 variables before you start summarizing the data with various categorical variables
It’s a large complicated dataset with over 650 variables before you start slicing and dicing
All these variable are embedded in an application and it’s quit difficult to wrap a search engine around it
Challenge:
How do you search this variable list and provide useful result to the user?
Solution: ???
Commercial farms:Very large family farms, non-family farms
Intermediate farms:farming occupation/high sales farms, large family farms
Rural residence farms:limited-resource, retirement, residential/lifestyle, farming occupation/low sales
2005 view of farm assets per farm
2005 view of farm assets
Percent
Challenge:How do we show farm assets by farm typology over time?How do we provide statistical significance to the estimates?
Solution:
Panel plots
Provide confidence bounds
Issue:
We had to calculate confidence bounds in the application….Would prefer the graphing software to handle it.
Challenge:
How do we show farm assets by region?
Solution:
Charts on a map
Farm assets over time by region – with confidence bound
Challenge:There are several ways to show the same data each with different users in mind
Solution:Display data in multiple formats
Challenge:How to provide an easy way for comparison of multiple graphs?
Solution: Here grabbed jpgs and lined up in PowerPoint
Farm household income from farming and from off farm sources
Useful approaches for developing Web data visualization applications
Identifying a few graphing products to concentrate development…Corda’s PopChart and ESRI ArcIMSDeveloping data exploration apps for in house use – provides utility to research staff and a test bed for external applicationsIn house usability testing – really helps you identify the common information people are looking for from a dataset/application
Concluding thoughts
Building dynamic data displays helps ERS and its clients in a number of ways
Makes data products more accessible and usableProvides ways of turning data into informationProvides better ways to find informationProvides incentives to organize and manage our data in better ways supporting both our research and data dissemination missions