Interactive dashboards for social and environmental good
Context & Objectives
The EU-FLEGT Action Plan is an initiative designed to combat illegal logging globally. Not only does illegal logging damage the environment, but it also has a significant negative economic and social impact.
We set out to build and implement the final piece of the puzzle: an interactive dashboard to present the data related to the FLEGT program.
The main objective of the dashboard is to determine what impact, if any, the program has had on forest infrastructure. Not only does the dashboard need to assist decision-making surrounding the future of the FLEGT initiative, but they also want to present the dashboard publicly.
We did not start from scratch for this project. The client already designed many of the visuals required for the dashboard. However, our task was to design a comprehensive, intuitive, and user-friendly interactive dashboard for a wider audience.
Approach
Our approach starts with first consolidating the data from multiple sources, and then we could build an interactive dashboard with particular attention placed on a user-friendly navigation system. The idea is to give the user the impression that they remain on a single page and navigate through the information and metrics in the data using buttons.
The tool we use to build the dashboard is Microsoft Power BI. This powerful business intelligence platform can embed the final dashboard in a webpage, making it ideal for sharing it with a public audience.
During the consolidation step, we need to combine around half a dozen CSV data files from two primary sources:
Compiled data: this is secondary data scraped or compiled from multiple web pages/sources.
Data collected in the field: this is data collected from interviews with individuals living in areas affected by illegal logging.
The approach we took to do this consolidation was with the Python programming language. This allowed us to write scripts that merge and transform the data from various sources. Furthermore, Python offers a highly flexible solution that can be updated whenever needed.
Next, we moved on to building the dashboard. Power BI allows you to use a data modeling technique known as a star schema to incorporate the data in a highly efficient manner. This method results in faster loading times of the visuals and a modular design that the client can quickly and easily expand on in the future.
To build an intuitive navigation system for the dashboard, we creatively used bookmarks and buttons with a user-friendly flow to minimize confusion about what buttons to press and in what order.
Results
This project highlights the importance of building dashboards to visualize KPIs. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a dashboard is worth a thousand more. In addition, using interactive visualizations makes the dashboard more engaging and user-friendly.
This dashboard raises awareness of the effect of illegal logging on local communities, the economy, and the environment. Indeed, there are far more eyeballs on this interactive dashboard than on a static, 30-page PDF report.
The same principles used here also apply to businesses in nearly every industry and function. As a result, employees throughout an organization are more likely to engage with and use interactive dashboards to assist with their decision-making than static reports.
You can find the final dashboard we built at this public link. Our client was able to determine the impact of their initiative on forest infrastructure as well as the social and economic impact on local communities.
We were able to build this dashboard in under 30 days. This demonstrates the speed at which a dashboard can go from idea to implementation, allowing businesses to reap the benefits of data visualization and business intelligence quickly.
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Written by Joleen Bothma
