Group02 proposal

Team

Proposal

Poster

Application

Research Paper

Version2|Version1

PROBLEM & MOTIVATION

Problem
When it comes to purchasing or renting a property, there are many factors that go into a buyer’s consideration before he makes the final decision. The primary concern for buyers is the pricing of the property [1]. However, our group identified that there are also secondary concerns such as the weather and the amenities available that do influence the buyer’s final decision to purchase the property. There are limited tools available to help property buyers to identify areas that suit their needs/preferences best. The current available tools are only optimal to suit one category of concern, but fails when we try to use more categories to make our visualization.

For example, different people have different preferences for the weather. Some may prefer sunny weather while others prefer it to rain all the time. Currently, there are tools to find weather information, and property prices information, but not both at the same time.

Motivation
Through our visualization, the group hopes to assist users to be able to easily visualize a home of his dreams in different aspects beyond mere prices. Our visualization will incorporate data from property prices, weather and amenities to identify the accessibility of the area and help our users to justify the real value of the property. With our visualization dashboard, users will be able to identify properties that they truly desire.

OBJECTIVES

We aim to provide an interactive visualization dashboard to assist pGeneral Public, people living in Singapore with understanding the weather of our country with visualization information such as:

1. Insights on the Rainfall Precipitation of the whole of Singapore and each postal area for the past 20 years.
2. Insights on the Temperature of the whole of Singapore and each postal area for the past 20 years.
3. Insights on the relationship of the Rainfall Precipitation and Temperature in the different months/seasons yearly.

Target Group:

• General Public, people living in Singapore

DATASET

The Data Sets we will be using for our analysis and for our application is listed below:

Data/Source	Variables/Description	Rationale Of Usage
Temperature and Rainfall Data (Jan 2012 - Dec 2019) (http://www.weather.gov.sg/climate-historical-daily/)	Stations Date Daily Rainfall Highest 30-min/60-min/120-min Rainfall (mm) Mean/Minimum/Maximum Temperature (°C) Mean/Max Wind Speed (km/h)	This dataset covers a good time series of Singapore's weather from 2012 to 2019 across different weather categories. Our team wish to spot the trend or pattern of Singapore's climate in every town if possible.
Amenities Location Data (https://api.data.gov.sg/v1/environment/rainfall) (https://api.data.gov.sg/v1/environment/air-temperature)	Station ID Station Name Latitude Longitude	The data set will be used to anchor the amenities available for the selected property in a specified range

BACKGROUND SURVEY OF RELATED WORK

Below are a few visualizations and charts we considered making for our projects.

Visual Considerations	Insights / Comments
Title: Qualitative Thematic Map Source: https://mapdesign.icaci.org/2014/12/mapcarte-353365-life-in-los-angeles-by-eugene-turner-1977/	One of the items that we looked at is this qualitative thematic map that was covered in class. From our initial brainstorming of ideas, we intend to look at various factors that a buyer will look at, giving the buyer a high-level overview of the different areas and whether it fits the criteria that he chooses. How we will adapt ideas from this graph is for us to allow the users to make a few selections of multiple factors. Then based on which criteria the different properties in the different subzones can meet, we can choose different shapes, colours to represent the zone.
Title: Whisker plot of temperature Source: https://www.ck12.org/statistics/box-and-whisker-plots/rwa/The-Ways-of-Weather/	We can see the temperature for the selected area over a year. The whisker plots can show the upper and lower boundaries of temperature, and we can observe that the temperature gradually rises to a peak from Jan to Aug, before decreasing until December. We hope to apply this chart to display the rainfall for a selected area over a year. This allows buyers to be able to better understand the rainfall pattern in the area so that he can better understand if the area suits his preferences.
Title: Heatmap of rainfall Source: https://www.shanelynn.ie/analysis-of-weather-data-using-pandas-python-and-seaborn/	This is a heatmap of daily rainfall. Darker colours of red represent heavier rainfall. Another way to have a visualization to understand the patterns of rainfall. Through this, we can quickly see how many days in a year where there is rain for a selected subzone. Assuming that a potential buyer is interested in a property that sees more sunlight, he will be more interested in a subzone where the graph looks brighter. On the other hand, if the buyer is interested in a property that is always rainy, he would be interested in an area where the graph looks darker.
Title: Spatial Interpolation Source: https://www.srx.com.sg/heat-map/	This graph shows the property prices in Singapore for different property types. The user can choose to select different property types, and the graph will update to show only the selected property type. A variety of colours are chosen here to display different levels of prices. Based on our problem, there are 2 key aspects that we are looking at: Prices and Weather. One way this kind of visualization could be utilized by our group is for us to use this to display prices or Weather in Singapore across all subzones. By charting either prices or the various weather types over a map of Singapore, the user will be able to quickly gain an understanding of how the different criteria that he can choose will be like across Singapore.

KEY TECHNICAL CHALLENGES & MITIGATION

No.	Challenge	Description	Mitigation Plan
1.	Software Challenge	Unfamiliarity of visualisation tools such as R, R Shiny, Tableau.	Github Learning Stackoverflow research Self-directed and peer learning Watch video tutorials from YouTube Hands-on practice using the different training platforms such as Data Camps
2.	Programming Challenge	Inexperince with data cleaning and transformation using R	Trial and error Read online articles and forums for guidance Watch video tutorials on how to fully utilise packages such as lapply, tidyr and dplyr
3.	Workload Constraint	Time and Workload Constrains	Design reasonable project timeline based on everyone's ability and capacity. Set milestones and adjust the timeline accordingly based on the team's progress.
4.	Dataset Complexity	Our have different data from multiple sources in multiple different formats, hence we foresee a huge challenge in standardizing the data Note: Our current dataset is looking at 49 areas over the spread of 8 years of data, for every year there are 12 months of data. This gives a total of 4,704 CSV files to consolidate and clean for weather data alone.	Make use of data preparation tools such as tableau prep Make use of our database management skills to normalize all data tables into third normal form

STORYBOARD

Dashboards	Description
Dashboard 1: Qualitative Thematic Map of Singapore property	Our group plans to do an interactive Qualitative Thematic Map which reflects different faces based on the year, price, weather, amenities filters adjusted by the users. This chart will show the data at a high level for users to identify which area meets their needs in a glance. Users can also view the map based on the postal area or zone. Filters used includes: Sliders Year Transacted Price Amenities Single Dropdown List Weather Map level of detail Multiple Drowndown List Property Type Based on User’s adjustment for the filters, the map would reflect the user 3 different data types: Weather When the postal area/zone’s selected weather is above the median of Singapore’s data over the selected year, the chart will reflect a circle face shape. However, if the postal area/zone’s selected weather falls in the median or is lower than the median of Singapore’s data over the selected year, the chart will reflect a circle face shape with devil horns. Pricing When the postal area/zones have houses with pricing over the selected year that meets the requirements of the user based on his/her filter, the chart will reflect a smiling face. However, if the postal area/zones have houses with pricing over the selected year that is lower than the requirements of the user based on his/her filter, the chart will reflect a blank face. Lastly, if the postal area/zones have houses with pricing over the selected year that is more than the requirements of the user based on his/her filter, the chart will reflect a sad face. Amenities When the postal area/zone’s number of amenities in the selected year meets the requirements of the user based on the filter, the chart will reflect the faces to be shown in green colour. However, if the postal area/zone’s number of amenities does not meet the requirements of the user, the chart will reflect the faces in blue colour. With this visualisation, users will be able to identify and shortlist the area(s) that meets their requirements the best.
Dashboard 2: Property prices in Postal Areas{Based on Users selected areas in storyboard 1}	The purpose of this chart is to show a detailed breakdown of the properties that meet the requirements of the Users based on his/her filters and User's shortlisted area(s) in the chart from Dashboard 1. This chart shows all the properties and their prices for all the properties that meet the requirements of the Users based on the filter’s range and the shortlisted area(s). Filters used includes: Sliders Year Transaction Price Amenities Single Dropdown List Property Type Sorted By The chart will be able to help users better understand the property prices based on his/her shortlisted area(s) and make a decision on which area’s property to purchase. X-Axis: Transacted Properties’ Name Y-Axis: Transacted Pricing This chart will be shown together with the chart on Dashboard 3 to help the buyer make the best-informed decisions.
Dashboard 3: Distribution of Rain Precipitation Amount/ Temperature/ Wind Speed in Postal Areas{Based on Users selected areas in Dashboard 1}	The purpose of this chart is to show a detailed breakdown of the weather (which includes Rain Precipitation Amount/ Temperature/ Wind Speed) for User’s shortlisted area(s) from the chart in Dashboard 1. Filters used includes: Sliders Year Month Single Dropdown List Level of Detail The user can adjust the filters to identify any patterns or trends of the weather based on the short-listed areas in Singapore. This chart can help the user better identify which area best suits the user based on his preferences and needs. X-Axis: Level of Detail(Sub-zone/ Postal Area/ Zone) Y-Axis: Rain Precipitation Amount/ Temperature/ Wind Speed This chart will be shown together with the chart on Dashboard 2 to help the buyer make the best-informed decisions.
Dashboard 4: Comparing Rainfall {selected weather} and the median pricing of All Properties{selected property type}	The chart in this storyboard reflects a combination of two thematic maps, a bar chart map as well as a spatial interpolation map. Similar to the chart in Dashboard 1, this chart will show data at a high level for users to identify which area meets their needs in a glance. However, this chart is more-straightforward as the results shown in this chart is more clear cut and less informative. In this chart, the user will be able to compare: The weather of the user’s choice in each zone/postal area. Median pricing of their selected property type in each zone/postal area. Filters used includes: Sliders Year Single Dropdown List Level of Detail Weather Property Type With the visualization, users will be able to compare all the areas in Singapore to make an informed decision. By doing so, the chart can help the user in shortlisting the area that they wish to zoom into in another view of light as compared to the chart in Dashboard 1 where detailed comparison of the whole Singapore is limited.

MILESTONES

COMMENTS

No.	Name	Date	Comments
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