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3 maps reveal the impact of global business

Logistics, supply chains and renewable energy adoption appear in a new light with these data-driven visualizations.

If viewed out of context, unexamined data points appear as unrelated dots on a pointillist painting. With proper analysis and artful visualization, however, data forms a true story about the present moment, how we got here and where we’re going if we continue on a path.

Climate and sustainability data are in dire need of an objective treatment to illustrate the overwhelming and awe-inspiring impact human activity has on the world at large, for better or worse. These three interactive maps weave a story about the human footprint in its many manifestations: shipping emissions; the reach of retail manufacturing; and the "contagious" spread of solar energy. They may inspire you to rethink the landscape of sustainability in your own work.

1. Shipmap

Global shipping routes, 2012
This mesmerizing animated map tracks how tens of thousands of cargo ships, some a quarter of a mile long, bring the world’s goods across different seas, each with their own embattled story.

Shipmap is based on 250 million data points collected by Exact Earth, Clarksons Research and UCL Energy Institute. It shows the extraordinary extent of modern shipping’s reach, whether navigating the East China sea, the pirate-ridden waters of Somalia or the historic Suez canal, which is host to 70,000 annual transits.

Overlaid on a bathymetric map (showing the ocean’s topography), data draws out the location and speed of the global merchant fleet over the course of 2012, detailed down to vessel characteristics — no easy feat given the thousands of ships that move between countries daily.

There are five cargo ship categories, which can be coordinated by color and detail of their tonnage and environmental impact:

  • Container (manufactured goods)
  • Dry bulk (coal, aggregates)
  • Tanker (oil, chemicals)
  • Gas bulk (liquefied natural gas)
  • Vehicles (cars)

The environmental downsides of this tide of activity also become clear: a counter for emitted CO2 (in thousand tons) shows that commercial ships create more than a million tons of carbon dioxide per day, more than the emissions of the U.S., Canada or Brazil.

Although the data is from 2012, Shipmap, created by Kiln Digital, won a gold prize winner at the 2016 Information is Beautiful Awards. Global shipping and its side effects have only grown since the data was culled, but using this museum-ready map, companies need no longer be in the dark about how their goods get from shore to shore. 

2. Marks and Spencer supply chain map

Corporate transparency gets the X-Ray treatment in U.K. retailer Marks and Spencer’s (M&S) interactive supply chain map. Part of the company’s sustainability goals for 2020 includes publishing an annual list of active manufacturers involved in making the clothing, accessories, footwear, drinks, beers, spirits and household products bearing the M&S logo.

In the pursuit of openness, M&S tasked its direct and contracted factories to join the Supplier Ethical Data Exchange to disclose their labor standards and health, safety and environmental performance based on self-assessment and site audits.

Adam Edelman, M&S’s head of 2020 sustainability goals, said that representing the data was an even greater challenge than sourcing it. The retailer’s interactive map of its 1,231 factories in 53 companies — employing more than 787,000 workers globally — speaks  volumes louder than a sustainability report can express.

You can zoom in on each country, region and street where factories are, described by function and even the gender division of employees. For example, World Wise Foods of Naknek, Alaska, employs 707 people to process seafood. The gender split is 43 percent female employees and 57 percent male workers.

It stokes curiosity about a place such as Mauritius, where about 1,000 workers make clothing at the address Quartier Militare 1 230. Here, the split is 63 percent female and 37 percent male employees.

You don’t know the world until you’ve seen its working conditions. While this map lays a company’s supply chain bare, it makes me think about the industries operating in different countries affects the local culture, and whether the factory workers are getting equal pay by gender or even by region.

This map shows how even one company’s global supply chain has brought the world closer together.

3. SolarCity 'contagion' map

We have all heard of videos "going viral," but this data visualization shows that the spread of physical objects can be as quick as the sharing of Internet memes.  

SolarCity’s maps are partially interactive: Moving GIFs show the contagious spread of solar panels within a community, proving that the desire to "keep up with the Joneses" is still strong in the U.S. — and companies marketing good ideas (such as renewable energy) can harness it for success.  

Solar power has grown at light speed across America, with total installations in 2015 increasing by 10 percent from 2014, which hopped over solar installations in 2013 by 20 percent, which dwarfed 2012 in annual U.S. solar PV installations. And in 2016, the U.S. surpassed its millionth solar installation.

The most cited reasons for the rise of solar are the lowered cost of solar panels and pro-solar policies that have been put in place.

According to SolarCity, a powerful but overlooked reason for the growth of solar installations is social influence. One in three of its customers have "gone solar" because of their friend or neighbor. The "most contagious" solar cities in the U.S. are Fort Follins, Colorado; Kailu-Kona, Hawaii; and Gloucester Township, New Jersey.

SolarCity discloses that it gives its customers a bonus for their referrals, but a deeper dive proves that the data is pure. Yale research shows that the installation of a PV system in six months within a half-mile increases the number of installations in a block group by 44 percent in a "wave-like centrifugal pattern" that diminishes over a long distance.

Solar-owning neighbors are likely to convince each other to purchase panels despite their socioeconomic backgrounds or political views. Maybe fences don’t make the best neighbors — but solar panels do, in the shared pursuit of lowered electricity bills and protecting the environment. 

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