Project Proposal


Basic Info

Project Name TBD

Abby Endale, Shaza Ali

a.endale@wustl.edu, a.shaza@wustl.edu

508412, 508179


Background and Motivation

Initially, the project we were intending to do was related to the birth and death of various languages across regions of the world, with the idea of using colored light nodes to represent each language that was first used and last used in each country. The challenge with that was finding publicly available and non-contested data related to the birth and death of languages; however, due to the socio-linguistic issues that arise from historical debate regarding the matter, both of those tasks proved to be infeasible. However, we still wanted to use the idea of conveying some form of historical chronicling of data across different countries using colored light nodes as a representation of the shifting value of that data over time. Considering our shared interest in environmental trends and energy consumption, the goal of the project eventually turned towards chronicling either energy consumption and light production over time or energy production over time. Upon further research of available datasets, we found an entire chronicle of various forms of energy production for all countries between the years 2000-2024. Therefore, the project is now geared towards representing this data via a flat geomap with each country having a singular light node representation that shifts in color over time depending on what form of energy production is most dominant in a given year.


Project Objectives

Historically, the growth and change of accessibility to energy has been an incredibly slow progression, however, due to the leaps in technology from the 80s to the 2020's more countries have developed electrical access and new forms of production at incredible speeds. We wanted to map this rapid period of growth in a more global scale to properly understand the following:

  • Which areas of the world grew in their production capacity the most?
  • What forms of electricity have been more favoured than others throughout this period of?
  • What forms of electricity are favoured by countries who have had previous access versus those that only recently gained it?

    • Data

    The majority of our data is from the Ember Energy Institute's Statistical Review of World Energy (2025) with major processing by Our World in Data, a non-profit organization dedicated to collecting, cleaning, and analyzing data for social good.


    Data Processing

  • There are several rows and one column in the data that will be excluded from the final dataset including the country code column and every row that presents data from non-sovergein country entities (ex: ASEAN or continental categories like “Africa” or “Asia”)
  • Our data will largely be cleaned manually, then any additional processing and analysis will be done within python.
  • Not all countries have data for a given year, so we could either create additional empty columns for them or just treat them as “blank data” until they become active. In the context of the visualization this would be represented as greyed out countries.

    • Visualization Design

    The colored light sources that represent the produced energy source per year will be attached to each bordered sovereign nation listed in the dataset on a Mercator map. The user will be able to hover over each country's node to get a detailed rundown of the number of TWh of every energy source being used as time passes. A Radar chart will be placed in the corner of the map at low opacity which shifts the area between the different categories of energy production worldwide to display the shifting proportions of each energy source's use across the board over the years. We're also considering the possibility of adding a bar chart that works similarly to stock exchange graphs, wherein the change in use of each energy use per energy production source is graphed as positive or negative percentages depending on the change per year.

    (scroll through pages horizontally below)


    Must-Have Features

  • The visualization must have some interactive way of seeing differing data over the years.
  • Countries must somehow be represented, as well as at least their major source of power for a given year.

    • Optional Features

  • Bar chart similar to a stock exchange graph, where the change in use of each energy use per energy production source is graphed as positive or negative percentages depending on the change between each year.
  • Radar chart or pie chart of total proportions of each energy source
  • Interactive hover detailing each country's energy breakdown for that year

    • Project Schedule

    Week 1: Initial data cleaning complete or in process of being completed including but not limited to: removal of unnecessary columns, removal of regions as opposed to countries listed in the Entity column, and differentiating between different energy production sources between different countries across different years. Barebones setup of project repository.

    Week 2: Data cleaning listed above totally complete, Project Process Book age laid out and updated for Milestone 1, Main page has Mercator map.

    Week 3: Mercator map has light nodes that shift color over time according to shifting dominance of energy production source. Start Radar Map.

    Week 4: Radar Map complete, hover data breakdown complete. Potentially bar graphs complete if time permits.

    Presentation week!