U.S. Forest Fires - 1926 to 2017

Week 11 Viz

Posted by David Velleca on May 22, 2018

Data Storytelling and Data Viz Approach

This was a pretty quick viz for me this week. The dataset was pretty simple, with only a few columns. I did employ a secondary dataset (Consumer Price Index) to inflation adust the fire suppression costs to 2017 dollars. In addition to this calculation, I also created calculated fields for cost per acre and cost per fire.

I used a set of BANs across the top that employ hover filter actions to filter their values to reflect where the user is interacting with the area charts below. Additionally, each BAN has a relevant viz in tooltip. The area charts were way to tempting as their look lends itself to the fire theme. I also had some fun with my color palettes - keeping the overall dashboard in the motif, while ensuring that the metrics were color coded across all vizzes.

I'd love to hear any feedback you have! Tweet me @DavidVelleca or reach out to @TThrowbackThurs

Data Source

We'll be using data from the Total Wildland fires and Acres table, as well as the Suppression Costs table, from the National Interagency Fire Center.

It's also important to note that expenditures are not adjusted for inflation as provided. I've used the Consumer Price Index from the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank to adjust my figures to 2017 dollars.