Note: please view our StoryMaps presentation at: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/50da53801efa489f87e938f81a17e700
Inspiration
We wanted to show the potential impacts from deep-sea mining sites which are a hot topic and currently in debate in the International Seabed Authority, which is the governing body that grants mining contracts in the high seas - an area which no one nation has economic claim over. With a new Secretary-General elected for the ISA, there is a potential moratorium that is supported by over 60 nations and several influential companies. It is difficult to visualize the impact that a single site would have in such a connected and large environment like the ocean. Our main inspiration was creating a tool that made this complex data into simple and beautiful visuals anyone can understand.
What it does
This web app is an information tool to provide visualizations and layer interactivity concerning the potential pollutions from deep-sea mining sites. By drawing an area on the bathymetric map, we are able to highlight ocean currents passing through or carrying potential pollutions and toxins from that site around the global ocean. This animation shows the wide reaching impact that even a single commercial mining site would have on ocean biodiversity, carbon sinks, food supply, climate events, and human health
How we built it
We used data layers from authoritative sources like National Geographic's Pristine Seas Project to represent carbon storage, biodiversity, and global food supply priority areas. We also used ocean currents vector and magnitude data from the Copernicus Marine Service which we converted to raster data with the source type Vector UV in order to feed into the FlowRenderer API. Our developers were able to modify the JS SDK to create custom visualizations and change the color of the currents passing through the drawn area. We can visually show the relationship between these ocean currents and the most sensitive areas for each of the data layers we are showing
Challenges we ran into
We ran into some challenges with the speed of rendering on our web application, but we were able to slim down the code and improve the rendering speed while maintaining the complexity and stunning custom visualizations.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Our teamwork! We were able to create stunning custom visualizations by modifying the JS SDK and show complex data in a simple way that both experts and people unfamiliar with ocean science.
What we learned
We also learned that patience is key and things come together in the end.
What's next for Sea the Future
We want to improve our UI and add additional functionality to model other potentially environmentally damaging dispersions like plastic waste and oil spills.
Built With JavaScript, ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript, FlowRenderer API, ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, authoritative data layers hosted on ArcGIS Online, and Copernicus Marine Service NetCDF currents data.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.