E3CI Data Station

The European Extreme Events Climate Index (E3CI) provides insights into significant weather-related hazards experienced across European countries. It offers a comprehensive overview by combining seven components: Extreme Max and Min Temperature, Drought, Extreme Precipitation, Hail, Fire, and Extreme Wind, with data from January 1981 until today.

datastation.climateindex.eu ↗

In recent years, the definition of Extreme Weather Events has become a recurring theme in our daily news. The landscape and occurrence of seasons are being reshaped by severe tornadoes, floods, droughts, heat waves, fires, etc. The concept of 'extreme' is fast becoming the 'new normal,' marking the profound impact of climate change during the early 21st century.

The European Climate Index emerges as a new reference tool, providing insights into the significant weather-related hazards experienced across European countries. Each of the seven components (Max and Min Temperature, Drought, Precipitation, Hail, Fire, and Wind) uses an indicator as a proxy for various hazards. The reference values are computed based on the 1981-2010 timeframe, while the E3CI presents a monthly standardised anomaly relative to these benchmarks. In simple words, climate events with values over 1 are considered extreme.

Structure
The platform presents up-to-date weather information organised into three administrative units: country (including all European nations), region (for the twenty Italian regions), and province (only available for the Emilia Romagna region). The geo-referenced data points, spanning seven key indicators, are gathered on a monthly basis. The interface allows users to seamlessly integrate time, geographical location, and index components on every page, providing comprehensive insights for Europe, Italy, and Emilia Romagna.

For each administrative level, a landing page summarise the latest data. The box containing the name of the geographical area and the index value serves both as a snapshot of information and as a clickable button to access the related dashboard page.

The dashboard
An interactive dashboard presents the latest data of each administrative unit (nation/region/province) through different visual models: a map, a plot chart, a table and a bar chart. The varying shades of color and the size/position of each data point convey the intensity of weather events, providing a comprehensive and visually engaging overview.

Users can:
- download the data (filtered on the selected country and component)
- download the separate charts and maps as .jpg files
- embed the dashboard view on other blog or web pages

The map view can be scaled to download images at higher resolution.

At the lower section, an interactive bar chart presents historical data, which can be filtered by selecting a specific time period or visualising only the extreme weather events.

Mean Value
The index provides a general overview of the hazards by calculating the Mean Value of the seven components. Represented as shades of grey, it is not based on geographical data.

Comparing extreme events
For each administrative unit, it is possible to compare the seven components through a bee swarm plot. The chart shows only the extreme weather events arranged in chronological order, with varying circle sizes based on thier intensities.

Light and Dark Mode
The platform is available with a light and dark theme that switches automatically based on user preferences, ensuring optimal readability in all lighting conditions.

Use of colours in weather visualisations
When comparing climate maps and charts from reputable sources (such as space agencies like ESA and NASA, or news media like BBC, Reuters, The New York Times, etc.), it becomes evident that there is a lack of standard rules for weather representations. Common practices like using a divergent color bar (from hue A to B) or a rainbow colour scale (with 7 or more hues) persist, despite causing perceptual issues for people with visual impairments.

The design of the data station highlights data through the use of color and charts. Given that climate events are classified as extreme when their value exceeds 1, using a continuous color range establishes a clear hierarchy based on the intensity of weather events. Additionally, each colour has been assessed with web accessibility tools to ensure readability in both Light and Dark themes.

Technical insights
Efficiently navigating between months and countries is a key element of the user experience on the website. However, employing on-the-fly data filtering for each request would have posed challenges due to its slowness and resource-intensive nature. To address this, a custom backend has been developed to generate and locally cache 3GB (and counting) of JSON files, ensuring swift access to monthly data across Europe.​​​​​​​
Mapbox was adopted for all map-related requirements thanks to its versatility, ease of use, and theming abilities. Instead of loading a new map for each page, which would have been expensive in terms of cost per view and performance, the same instance is shared across the website as much as possible by leveraging the templating flexibility of Nuxt 3. While the initial page load involves processing considerable JavaScript, subsequent pages demand minimal data to be rendered. ​​​​​​​

Credits
E3CI is a project by IFAB (International Foundation Big Data and Artificial Intelligence for Human Development). Implemented by Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC), Leithà Gruppo Unipol. Distributed by Hypermeteo, and Radarmeteo.

datastation.climateindex.eu
UX/UI design, data visualisation: Cinzia Bongino, with the supervision of climate data scientist Federica Guerrini
Development: A. Arlandi

climateindex.eu
Design and development: Tracce Year
2024

Fun fact
This project was born during a 24-hour hackathon in January 2023. Check the original idea here ↗.