Mind The Energy Gap  

One piece of video I like to refer people to from time to time is Hans Rosling's TED talk from a few years ago, which looks at population dynamics and shows the downward trend in growth rates dramatically using some great visualisation techniques.

Since then, Hans has done a series of online talks that he calls "Gapcasts", the latest of which is on energy.

All humans emit carbon dioxide (Co2) and contribute to the climate crises. But some humans emits much more than others. Although the total Co2-emission from China are almost as big as those from United States, the emission from a single American is more than 6 times those from a person in China.

In China today, almost 80% of the electricity are produced from coal, and that proportion is increasing. What China needs is an environmental friendly way of producing electricity that is cheaper than coal.

The software Hans used to produce the graphics in the video is called "Trendalyzer", produced by an organisation named "GapMinder", hence the site name for the Gapcasts.

GapMinder is looking to enable the production of more time series based data visualisations, and is looking to expand the available data sets via an initiative called "Gapminder Graphs".

As a first step towards a solution that will allow anyone create own “Gapminder-graphs” with their own data, Gapminder are now starting a cooperation with a number of organizations and institutions that have data sets for relevant indicators that they want to share with the world and show in a Gapminder Graph of their own.

When your organization/institution becomes a member you will get an account were you can upload your own indicators and also you get an on-line graph with the indicators you choose.

The requirements for becoming a member is that your organization:

* have data that covers a certain time (the longer time series the better);
* the data concerns “Countries and territories” of the world and;
* that the indicators can be shared to other Gapminder Graphs and be downloaded by anyone.

If you belong to an organization or institution that are interested in becoming a member of Gapminder Graphs Communtiy and fullfill the three requirements above please [contact us].

Google acquired the Trendalyzer software from GapMinder last year and have since released a Google Gadget called "Google Motion Chart" which enables relatively simple time / motion charts (compared to the full GapMinder World visualisation) to be produced, as part of the Google Visualisation API.

Microsoft have also announced a "Gapminder Tool" though there are no indications as to when it will become available to end users.

The Google Motion Chart tool is integrated with Google Docs, so you can very quickly create a spreadsheet and a visualisation of the data in it without any real technical skills.

The visualisation / video can then be easily embedded in a web page as well (you can also do this directly using some Javascript if you don't want to use Google Docs).