Mapping Houston Homicides

Inspiration

We were interested in exploring how homicides in Houston compare to the rest of the nation, how they have changed over time, and how they correlate with other demographic variables.

What it does

Our project is an interactive visualization that updates with every user scroll. It leverages the power of the scrollama library (JavaScript) and the MapBox API, as well as an interesting dataset, to explore the homicide context in Houston.

How I built it

We began with data exploration and data cleaning. We cleaned data in R and Excel.

We built every static visualization using ggplot2 (R), and styled each "chapter" of the visualization using the MapBox Studio interface.

Challenges I ran into

We spent a lot of time developing our story and mapping out our plan for the narrative we built. Because we pursued the "Houston/Texas trends" track, which relies on narrative storytelling, we spent a lot of time thinking about our story. We ran into trouble when it came to developing a complete and comprehensive story within the provided time parameters.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are proud of developing a beautiful interactive visualization in less than 16 hours. We gained familiarity with different languages and online interfaces. We also are proud of the succinct way we present (only the essential) information for our story.

Built With

• css
• ggplot2
• html
• javascript
• mapbox
• r