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Data Vis Dispatch
September 19th, 2023

Data Vis Dispatch, September 19

The best of last week’s big and small data visualizations

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Rose Mintzer-Sweeney

Welcome back to the 111th edition of Data Vis Dispatch! Every week, we’ll be publishing a collection of the best small and large data visualizations we find, especially from news organizations — to celebrate data journalism, data visualization, simple charts, elaborate maps, and their creators.

Recurring topics this week include the cost of war, urban heat, and catastrophic flooding in Libya.

The Libyan city of Derna was devastated by floods last week after two dams collapsed during a massive storm. We saw many visualizations incorporate satellite imagery to explain the disaster:

Reuters: Devastation in Derna, September 14
The New York Times: Dire Warnings About Libya Dams Went Unheeded, September 16
The Washington Post: See why Libya’s floods were so deadly in maps and videos, September 14
Financial Times: ‘All should resign’: Derna disaster unleashes wave of anger in Libya, September 15
The New York Times: Mapping Where Floods Have Devastated a Libyan Port City, September 14

There was similar imagery of the destruction in Morocco following the previous week’s earthquake:

Reuters: Buried under the bricks, September 15

The dam collapses in Derna were a result of Storm Daniel, which had already caused major flooding in Greece, Turkey, and Bulgaria:

Financial Times: Climate graphic of the week: Catastrophic Libyan flooding fuelled by warming oceans, September 16
The Wall Street Journal: Libya Flood Disaster That Killed Thousands Was Decades in Making, September 14
SPEIGEL: Wie Sturmtief »Daniel« Libyen die Katastrophe brachte, September 13
Le Figaro: Avant/Après : les images impressionnantes des inondations en Libye, September 13

We also saw visualizations from the Atlantic hurricane season:

The Washington Post: The 5 hurricane categories, explained, September 13
USA Today: Follow Hurricane Lee’s path with our tracker. Storm to bring rip currents, storm surge, September 15

And charts and maps of the usual droughts, wildfires, and heat waves:

Le Monde: Sécheresse : à la fin de l’été, un bilan contrasté, et des niveaux encore « préoccupants » dans certaines zones du Sud, September 14
Les Echos: Sécheresse : 40.000 personnes sont privées d’eau potable en France, September 14
CNN: Wildfires in Canada led to dangerous air quality in parts of the US for the first time, September 17
The Wall Street Journal: How Crops Survived Drought, Deluge and the Hottest Summer on Record, September 13
Le Monde: La « saison » des vagues de chaleur s’allonge et s’intensifie sous l’effet du réchauffement climatique, September 13

Two beautiful illustrated stories focused specifically on the problems of urban heat:

The New York Times: How to Cool Down a City, September 18
South China Morning Post: In summer of 2023, Hong Kong sweltered as world set heat record, September 18

And these visualizations covered housing and land use:

The New York Times: What Happens When Wall Street Buys Most of the Homes on Your Block?, September 16
Financial Times: Repeat after me: building any new homes reduces housing costs for all, September 15
FAZ: Frankfurter Allgemein Boden – begehrt, begrenzt, (un)bezahlbar, September 18

On war and what we could have instead:

The Wall Street Journal: The Unexpected New Winners in the Global Energy War, September 19
The Wall Street Journal: Hypersonic Missiles Are Game-Changers, and America Doesn’t Have Them, September 18
Jason Forrest: “Just stumbled across this great chart *inspired* by Buckminster Fuller. It effectively looks at the total amount of money spent on the military globally in 1999 and shows just how little of that would be needed to pay for solving ‘all human needs,'” September 17 (Tweet)

And on politics:

The Economist: Global democratic backsliding seems real, even if it is hard to measure, September 12
The Washington Post: Term limits would upend Congress as we know it, September 16

Other charts covered everything from Amazon’s next big thing to recent developments (well, not that recent) in infectious disease:

The Wall Street Journal: Amazon Searches for Its Next Big Hit, September 15
The Wall Street Journal: Banks Load Up on $1.2 Trillion in Risky ‘Hot’ Deposits, September 12
Financial Times: In charts: Threat from infectious diseases eases across the world, September 14

And the final category is… pink:

The Markup: Twitter is Still Throttling Competitors’ Links—Check for Yourself, September 15
The Washington Post: How deeply did prescription opioid pills flood your county? See here, September 12
Le Monde: La Méditerranée centrale redevient la première porte d’entrée irrégulière en Europe, September 19

What else we found interesting

The Washington Post: How Lego bricks went from five colors to nearly 200, September 14

Applications are open for…

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Rose Mintzer-Sweeney
(she/her, @rosemintzers) is a data vis writer on Datawrapper's communications team. She likes words, numbers, pictures, and all possible combinations of the same. Rose lives in Berlin.

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