Assignments

IS428 Visual Analytics for Business Intelligenceand Applications

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To be a Visual Detective

The assignments require you to put the concepts, methods and techniques you had learned in class to solve real world problem using visual analytics techniques. Students should also use the assignments to gain hands-on experience on using the data visualisation toolkits I had shared with you to complate the assignment.

Overview

Mistford is a mid-size city is located to the southwest of a large nature preserve. The city has a small industrial area with four light-manufacturing endeavors. Mitch Vogel is a post-doc student studying ornithology at Mistford College and has been discovering signs that the number of nesting pairs of the Rose-Crested Blue Pipit, a popular local bird due to its attractive plumage and pleasant songs, is decreasing! The decrease is sufficiently significant that the Pangera Ornithology Conservation Society is sponsoring Mitch to undertake additional studies to identify the possible reasons. Mitch is gaining access to several datasets that may help him in his work, and he has asked you (and your colleagues) as experts in visual analytics to help him analyze these datasets.

Mitch Vogel was immediately suspicious of the noxious gases just pouring out of the smokestacks from the four manufacturing factories south of the nature preserve. He was almost certain that all of these companies are contributing to the downfall of the poor Rose-crested Blue Pipit bird. But when he talked to company representatives and workers, they all seem to be nice people and actually pretty respectful of the environment.

In fact, Mitch was surprised to learn that the factories had recently taken steps to make their processes more environmentally friendly, even though it raised their cost of production. Mitch discovered that the state government has been monitoring the gaseous effluents from the factories through a set of sensors, distributed around the factories, and set between the smokestacks, the city of Mistford and the nature preserve. The state has given Mitch access to their air sampler data, meteorological data, and locations map. Mitch is very good in Excel, but he knows that there are better tools for data discovery, and he knows that you are very clever at visual analytics and would be able to help perform an analysis.

The Task

General task

The four factories in the industrial area are subjected to higher-than-usual environmental assessment, due to their proximity to both the city and the preserve. Gaseous effluent data from several sampling stations has been collected over several months, along with meteorological data (wind speed and direction), that could help Mitch understand what impact these factories may be having on the Rose-Crested Blue Pipit. These factories are supposed to be quite compliant with recent years’ environmental regulations, but Mitch has his doubts that the actual data has been closely reviewed. Could visual analytics help him understand the real situation?

The primary job for Mitch is to determine which (if any) of the factories may be contributing to the problems of the Rose-crested Blue Pipit. Often, air sampling analysis deals with a single chemical being emitted by a single factory. In this case, though, there are four factories, potentially each emitting four chemicals, being monitored by nine different sensors. Further, some chemicals being emitted are more hazardous than others. Your task, as supported by visual analytics that you apply, is to detangle the data to help Mitch determine where problems may be. Use visual analytics to analyze the available data and develop responses to the questions below.

The specific tasks

• Characterize the sensors’ performance and operation. Are they all working properly at all times? Can you detect any unexpected behaviors of the sensors through analyzing the readings they capture?Limit your response to no more than 9 images and 1000 words.
• Now turn your attention to the chemicals themselves. Which chemicals are being detected by the sensor group? What patterns of chemical releases do you see, as being reported in the data? Limit your response to no more than 6 images and 500 words.
• Which factories are responsible for which chemical releases? Carefully describe how you determined this using all the data you have available. For the factories you identified, describe any observed patterns of operation revealed in the data. Limit your response to no more than 8 images and 1000 words.

Visualisation Software

To perform the visual analysis, students are encouraged to explore any one or a combination of the following software:

• Tableau
• JMP Pro
• Qlik Sense
• Microsoft Power BI

One of the goals of this assignment is for you to learn to use and evaluate the effectiveness of these visual analytics tools.

Submission details

This is an individual assignment. You are required to work on the assignment and prepare submission individually. Your completed assignment is due on 8th October 2017, by 11.59pm mid-night.

You need to edit your assignment in the appropriate wiki page of the Assignment Dropbox. The title of the wiki page should be in the form of: IS428_2017-18_T1_Assign_FullName.

The assignment wiki page should include the URL link to the web-based interactive data visualization system prepared.

Reference

• IS428 2016-17 Term1 Assign3 Gwendoline Tan Wan Xin
• IS428 2016-17 Term1 Assign3 Lim Kim Yong
• IS428 2016-17 Term1 Assign3 Tan Kee Hock

Assignment Q&A

Need more clarification, please feel free to pen down your questions.