Spatial and Temporal Data Visualisation Assignment

Overview:

The objective of this assessment item is to give you experience with processing and visualising spatial and temporal data (and justifying your choices). You need to discuss your choices and the reasoning behind them and not just present your graphs and R code. This justification, and your choice(s) of data visualisation, should be referenced with appropriate citations from academic literature. Your selection of citations will form part of the assessment criteria, so choose wisely and use reputable sources only. If in doubt, ask!

Two sets of visualisations and discussion/justification should be produced – one showing the spatial distribution of your selected data for a selected temporal period, and the other showing the temporal variation for a selected spatial area.

(Those who are super keen can try a spatio-temporal animated visualisation, but this would be purely for your own edification and not worth any extra marks for this assessment piece.)

Steps:

1. Data Selection and Manipulation:

1. Choose a spatio-temporal data set from the list given in the Phase 1 assessment page;

2. Download and save this data to your computer;

3. Import this data into R – it is strongly suggested that you create a new R project to hold your work for this assessment piece;

4. You may need to manipulate the data so it conforms to the layout required to produce the graphs you want to make. Your tutors will be able to help you with this aspect in workshops.

2. Producing Graphs:

Choose a variable (numerical) that you are interested in visualising and use that variable for the following:

1. For your first graph, choose a geographical region from the data set and extract that region’s temporal data for your variable of interest.

2. Produce a temporal visualisation, or visualisations, of that variable. Your graphs must be labelled appropriately and discussed in terms of what the visualisations are showing. You should also justify your choices of visualisation and provide citations to articles to help back up your justifications. All R code used to produce the graphs, including any code used to manipulate the data and select the required geographical subset, should be put in an appendix at the end of your report. This appendix should be indexed appropriately.

3. For your second graph, choose a time period from the data set and extract that region’s spatial data for your variable of interest.

4. Produce a spatial visualisation, or visualisations, of that variable. Your graphs/maps must be labelled appropriately and discussed in terms of what the visualisations are showing. You should also justify your choices of visualisation and provide citations to articles to help back up your justifications. All R code used to produce the graphs, including any code used to manipulate the data and select the required temporal subset, should be put in a second labelled appendix at the end of your report. This appendix should be indexed appropriately.

All citations used in your assessment submission must be referenced properly using a recognised referencing system – it is not important which one you choose, but it must be used correctly and consistently throughout your submission. A reference list showing full details of all citations should appear after your main report and before your code appendices.

Please make sure you ask for help early if you get stuck. Last minute help will be provided only if we have time to do so, which we probably will not, so start work early. All the code you need to do this assessment is available in lecture notes and workshops