Early Warning Project

The Early Warning Project (EWP)

This is a Rails + Backbone app that was designed and built at the DALI Lab for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2013. The site is driven by statistical models developed by the Dartmouth Department of Government and the Center for the Prevention of Genocide. The models attempt to predict the risk of atrocities over time and place; our site aims to communicate this data to a large audience.

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The site features a map as a central component: this map serves as both a data visualization and the primary navigation. By interacting with the map, users can explore blogs, graphs, expert opinion pools, as well as metrics of real-time country-based concern. Through the novel cartographic interface, users navigate compelling data to gain insight into the prevention of global atrocities. As users scroll through content, the map remains stationary while updating dynamically to show relevant information.

We developed it using Ruby on Rails, Backbone.js, Leaflet.js, Bootstrap, SASS, d3.js, Highcharts, and ofcourse jQuery.

I was lead developer and Teagan Daly was lead designer on the project. We had a team of students including: Rebecca Leong, Tian Li, Cooper Thomas, Graeson McMahon, and Kayla Gilbert.

The development version of the site can be found here: ewp.dali.dartmouth.edu

Some press about it here

Some of the most interesting technical and design components were the ever present map/navigation as well as the visualization of realtime concern (instrumented map clicks from,to countries by IP address) as flight paths (implemented as animated code generated svg paths).

The bulk of work on the site was done over a period of a couple of months in winter 2013.