Group13 Report
ISSS608 Visual Analytics and Applications
Group 13 : Report
Economic Growth And Climate Change
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Contents
Abstract
In recent years, there has been rising incidents of climate disasters such as Hurricane Irma in Haiti, intense monsoon rains and flooding in south-asia, Hurricane Harvey in United States among many more. This paper presents exploratory analysis of vital indicators on greeenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, and economic development of OECD member countries. The indicators data were collected from OECD data portal for years 2002-2012. To gather deeper understanding of envionmental impact caused by these emissions, we employed advanced analytics concepts such as geospatial analysis, hierarchical clustering, and time-series analysis, mainly driven by interactive visualisation in RShiny Visualisation Framework. As part of analysis, we uncover some startling facts such as US, Australia, Canada being the leading economies of all emissions, Norway and Iceland generate most amount of their energy supply from renewable energy sources, and Japan having reported large number of respiratory diseases in recent years.
Introduction
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an intergovernmental economic organization with 35-member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade. Most OECD members are high-income economies with a very high Human Development Index (HDI) and are regarded as developed countries. As of 2017, the OECD member states collectively comprised 62.2% of global nominal GDP (US$49.6 trillion) and 42.8% of global GDP ($54.2 trillion) at purchasing power parity.
However, has this economic progress come at a cost? During this period, the reported greenhouse gas emissions has shown a rising trend. For instance, there was a large decrease in GHG emissions in 2009 due to economic recession, further enforcing our fears that human activities could have drastic impact on climate change.
Overall trend analysis of OECD
This section provides high-level overview of trends shown in indicators for OECD as group.
- Economic Development
Most of the OECD countries have shown constant growth in GDP, with slowdown in 2009 possibly due to global economic recession. While few countries such as Greece experienced consistent decline from 2009 onwards, Turkey showed significant improvement in its GDP during same period. However, FDI inflows and outflows showed inconsistent behaviour, with US, UK, Australia, Japan, Italy heavily involved in economic activities.
- Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The overall trend showed gradual decline in greenhouse gas emissions for OECD countries. However, HFC (Hydrofluorocarbon) observed significant rise during this period. In September 2016, the New York Declaration on Forests urged a global reduction in the use of HFCs, reported to have impact on global warming.
- Air Pollution
Most of the air pollutants such as Carbon Monoxide, CO2, Nitrogen Oxide, Non-Methane Volatiles and Sulphur Oxides have shown declining trend over the years, except for unconventional spikes in years 2005 and 2008. Nevertheless, PM2.5 and PM10 pollutants showed consistent growth during this period. The continued exposure to PM2.5 and PM10 have shown drastic impact on human health.
Country-wise analysis of individual indicators
In addition to overall trend analysis, we analysed individual indicators to understand their underlying patterns for individual countries using heatmap. For remaining indicators, we recommend visiting our R Shiny dashboard with interactive features.
- Carbon Dioxide
Most of the OECD countries experienced sudden decline in CO2 levels in 2009. Though Japan and United States have consistently produced large amount of CO2, few European countries such as Hungary, Portugal and Sweden showed consistent improvements in CO2 levels.
