ISSS608 2017-18 T3 Assign Lim Wee Kiong Insights
VAST 2018 Mini-Challenge 2: Like a Duck to Water
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Question 1
Characterize the past and most recent situation with respect to chemical contamination in the Boonsong Lekagul waterways. Do you see any trends of possible interest in this investigation?
Insights from Data Visualization
The amount of readings taken over the years are uneven. There seem to be less readings in the distant past and the recent times, while more readings were taken of the middle years [2005 – 2008].
Taking an example of arsenic, data collection has also been sporadic. There are no data taken between 1999 to 2003, and 2005 to 2007. Extracting patterns from missing data will be inaccurate.
In an overview chart of all the measures taken for all locations, we can see that some values had huge peaks at certain times, e.g. iron in 2003 and increased deposits of dissolved salts from 2005. This data is inconclusive unless we delve deeper into each location and examine their seasonality.
For instance, heavy metals such as iron and zinc had interesting observations by comparing the past and present. These metals are potentially dangerous when found in high quantity in water.
Water Quality Measures are important as well, as dissolved minerals in high quantity could result in bacteria and viruses permeating through water, where animals and people can drink and be harmed.
When I looked at the seasonality of each measure over all the locations, we can find different trends between the past and present. For example, in selected locations, e.g. Achara, I found elevated levels of mercury from 2010 – 2011.
Or high levels of zinc in Kannika and Boonsri:
I also saw increased volatility in one location: Tansanee. The volatility seems to be apparent in a couple of measures: bicarbonates, chlorides, nitrates and total nitrogen.
The last observations for seasonality is that some data exhibit unstable readings in the early years and stable readings recently, e.g. chromium, and the reverse behaviour for some, e.g. total hardness. Water conditions differ through the years and over the different regions constantly.
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