Visualizing California's Water

By Christopher Kremer
Class of 2015

Read about our summer interns on the OutWest student blog. Throughout the summer, the Center's interns and Research Assistants will be sending in virtual postcards, snapshots and reports on their summer work.

Over the past ten weeks, I have worked with Geoff McGhee, the Bill Lane Center’s Creative Director for Media and Communications, to create an interactive information dashboard about California water management and conservation. I have used D3 and other Javascript data visualization libraries to develop interactive charts and graphs based on models from our partner Mitch Tobin at California Environmental Associates. I have also used geographic information systems technologies such as Quantum GIS to prototype maps about endangered species conservation and natural resource extraction, among other topics related to California’s water. Since we moved into the new office at the beginning of the summer, the once relatively empty workspace has grown up around us. We have added several top of the line computers for data visualization, as well as ample desk space for various creative projects. While our office, sandwiched between two others, was at first fairly quiet, it now hosts members of the City Nature team, too. It has been exciting to see the project evolve from the initial design, a constantly updated information panel with at-a-glance facts, to its current form, an interactive narrative platform that will see larger, more periodic additions. I have learned quite a lot from my summer work and am very excited to see our project in action.

Read more at the Out West Blog for Summer Interns »