Week 1: Briarport Livability

This is my first Dataviz contest! The moment I heard about it, I was curious and excited to see if I could meet the challenge of creating a report that would help viewers understand the livability of various cities in the fictional country of Rivermere. The main theme of the challenge is to provide insights and recommendations for stakeholders, like city planners, policy analysts, and community members of the fictional city called Briarport. The story is told by visualizing data on how the city of Briarport compares with other cities on characteristics like the percentage of land dedicated to green spaces, the burden of housing costs, availability of convenient transportation, and air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

The primary tool I used was Power BI. To add some interest, I added the Infographic Designer visual where you can create charts with fun images. I also used Google Maps to design a custom, interactive Shape Map visual of the country of Rivermere. Bookmarks allow the user to filter views to see Briarport data compared to the top cities -- with the goal of placing Briarport in context with livability goals to strive for.

I started by explaining what the livability composite score means, as well as its components, and showing how Briarport ranks on livability against all other cities in the country. Next I break the rankings down according to the components that make up the livability score -- green spaces, transit, housing and emissions. The user can view where Briarport fits in with all the cities or with the top 3. Livability trends are the next part of the story, providing information on scores from 2015 to 2024, along with some descriptive insights and recommendations. Finally, the report showcases regional differences and offers thoughts on opportunites to make broader livability across Briarport's region.

Bookmarks are a handy method for allowing custom filtering but can be a challenge to keep straight while developing and improving a report! Diligence in checking and rechecking bookmarks after making enhancements is important. The interactive map of Rivermere was the biggest challenge to develop. It has many components all tied together: the shape map, little city marker images, cards to allow tooltips with city and state info, text boxes to label cities and states, and bookmarks.  Is it the most useful visual to convey information on regional differences that would matter to Briarport planners? Perhaps not, but it was fun to make and has delighted reviewers of the report... so I kept it in.

Hope you enjoy it!

Martina