Brooke Bao and Danika MacDonell
1. Motivation
Our most recent post presented a set of exercises designed by undergraduate researcher Helena De Figueiredo Valente to familiarize users with the MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium's (MCSC's) interactive geospatial mapping tool for trucking fleet transition support. It also presented a case study Helena developed to demonstrate how we envision the tool being used by a trucking fleet owner.
Over the summer, we hosted a session with representatives from ten MCSC member companies in which we presented the exercises and case study and asked their feedback on areas for improvement. During the feedback period, we heard strong alignment around a need to allow users to access more detailed data about regions and geospatial features of interest to inform their regional planning.
As a first step in this direction, Brooke Bao has done incredible work over the summer with MIT's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program adding a new "click feature" to the tool that allows users to click on specific regions of interest to learn more about them and their underlying data sources.
2. The new click feature
Currently, the dashboard displays information relevant to each layer through a visual, static display, which can make it challenging to gather detailed insights about specific regions or other geospatial features of interest.
For example, when working with the "State Regulations and Incentives" layer, a color gradient shows the number of incentives and regulations available in each state to support heavy duty vehicle fleets in transitioning to low-carbon energy carriers. This layer also offers filters to refine the details of the incentives and regulations displayed. However, if a user is interested in learning more detailed information about the specific regulations or incentives available in a given state, there was previously no direct way for them to access this information. So this layer seemed like a compelling use-case to target for a first implementation of the new click feature.
With the new click feature, demonstrated in the video below, clicking on a state will generate a pop-up window that displays detailed information about the specific regulations and incentives for that state, including a link to additional details on the DOE's Alternative Fuels Data Center. These are organized into categories for easier viewing, allowing users to quickly find the regulations and incentives most relevant to their needs.
Video: Click Feature Demo
As we start to expand this click feature to other layers, it may look slightly different from layer to layer, depending on the data that the display draws from. But the same principle of making information easier to access will remain consistent throughout.
3. How to access the tool
The interactive tool can be accessed on the MCSC DataHub website as follows:
Create a username and password on the DataHub website here: https://climatedata.mit.edu/users/register/
Log in with your user credentials here: https://climatedata.mit.edu/users/login/
Access the tool here: https://climatedata.mit.edu/faf5/transportation/
4. Next Steps
Building on this initial implementation of the click feature in the "State Regulations and Incentives" layer, we plan to extend it next to the "Hourly Grid Emissions" layer. This layer, shown in Figure 1 (top) below, uses data that was sourced from ElectricityMaps, and processed by MCSC Impact Fellow Noman Bashir, to visualize average hourly emission rates in different "Independent System Operator" (ISO) regions.
Figure 1: Top: Layer showing average emission rate by ISO. Bottom: Pop-up window with a filter for users to select the hour of day in which to visualize average emissions.
Currently, the user selects which hour of day to view emission rates for using a drop-down filter, as shown in Figure 1 (bottom). We'd like to apply the click feature to allow users to instead click on a particular ISO to dynamically generate a set of plots that visualize hourly and seasonal variations in emissions intensity.
We've also started working with developer Brilant Kasami to add another widely-requested feature: user data upload and overlay. This will allow users to upload their own geospatial data via the DataHub webpage and visualize it overlaid on the public layers in the geospatial tool.
Stay tuned for upcoming posts on these next steps!
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