Group10 proposal

Proposal

Project Poster

Project Application

Research Paper

About Port of Singapore

In view of the recent talks of forming a new canal in the upper north side of Malaysia, Singapore has to relook at its trading position and to what extent will it be heavily impacted. The country's two key ports, Port Klang in Selangor and Port of Tanjung Pelepas in Johor Bahru, have emerged in recent years as Singapore's closest rivals for transhipment volumes in South-east Asia. Malaysia, for instance, wants to build a giant port on an island next to its main Port Klang, while a new East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) has been touted as an "alternative trade route" that could see a projected 53 million tonnes of cargo bypass Singapore annually by 2030. If the Kra Canal truly becomes a reality, ships would certainly consider by-passing the Strait of Malacca and Singapore altogether, making Singapore's all-important geographical location redundant. We may truly become a third world country after all.

It is widely known that the greatest contributor to Singapore’s GDP would be from the trading industry. Therefore, our group has decided to look into this sector and see what other alternatives Singapore has or what potential strengths that Singapore can leverage on to maintain our current trading position in the world.

Project Motivation

Trade in Singapore can be a contentious topic. There are complaints about situations with trade agreements that do not seem fair to Singapore. Some may say that the water agreement between Singapore and Johor is not an equal trade off. However, the reality is that Singapore is dependent on other countries to survive, as a country with little natural resources. We realize that Singapore’s ties to other countries, particularly those within the same region, are crucial. Through tools such as Excel, Tableau, and R, we aim to explore them to draw competitive insights. Some of the questions that guided us: (1) Who are our major trade partners? (2) Which trade partners have been growing over the years? (3) What are the hot commodities for the future within ASEAN? Hence, our group seeks to identify some trends and insights based on the data of the shipping industry in the ASEAN region and the world.

Dataset

We want to see the breakdown of Singapore’s domestic exports, re-exports and imports by country (oil, non oil) and commodity. We split export into domestic exports and re-exports, and only country by oil and non oil. We will be using data from a single source: https://insights-ceicdata-com.libproxy.smu.edu.sg. However, not all data is available. As such, we change our scope accordingly.

Dataset	CEIC Table
1. Singapore’s domestic exports by country by oil	Domestic Exports: Oil: By Country (Table SG.JA030)
2. Singapore’s domestic exports by country by non oil	Domestic Exports by Country (Table SG.JA021)
3. Singapore’s overall domestic exports by country	Domestic Exports by Country (Table SG.JA021)
4. Singapore’s domestic exports by commodity	Domestic Exports by Principal Commodity Item (Table SG.JA028)
5. Singapore’s re-exports by country by oil	Re Exports Oil: By Country (Table SG.JA034)
6. Singapore’s re-exports by country by non oil	Missing
7. Singapore’s overall re-exports by country	Sum Commodities in Re-Exports by Country by Commodity (Table SG.JA035)
8. Singapore’s re-exports by commodity	Sum Countries in Re-Exports by Country by Commodity (Table SG.JA035)
9. Singapore’s imports by country by oil	Imports of Oil by Country (Table SG.JA020)
10. Singapore’s imports by country by non oil	Missing
11. Singapore’s overall imports by country	Imports by Country (Table SG.JA016)
12. Singapore’s imports by commodity	Imports and Exports by Commodity Section (Table SG.JA019)
12. Singapore’s exports by country by oil	Missing
14. Singapore’s exports by country by non oil	Missing
15. Singapore’s overall exports by country	Exports by Country (Table SG.JA015)
16. Singapore’s exports by commodity	Imports and Exports by Commodity Section (Table SG.JA019)

Storyboard

Illustration	Details of Storyboard
Choropleth Map of Singapore's Trade Balance	With a choropleth map, viewers will be able to see the trade balance differences between trade partners easier with a color gradient scale Package(s) to be used: rworldmap
Magic Quadrant of Singapore's Trade Partners	A magic quadrant would be able to show which trade partners have a low/high import/export with regards to Singapore's trade. By pressing the "play" button, viewers will be able to view the shift in export/import percentiles over the years as well. We also intend to show the names of countries among the scatter plot. (Note: At the end of our project, we were not able to integrate label text with ggrepel together with plotly) Package(s) to be used: ggplot2, plotly, ggrepel
Time Series Analysis of Singapore's Trade by Country and Commodities	By using a time series chart, we hope to find trends within Singapore's imports/exports/re-exports/domestic exports over the past ~50 years. Package(s) to be used: ggplot2, plotly
Treemap of Singapore's Imports/Exports by Commodity	A Treemap can help us visualize what are Singapore's top commodities. We also intend to give viewers a slider to select which year they would like to view, and which commodity category they would like to see. Package(s) to be used: treemap

Background Survey of Related Work

Reference of Other Visualization	Learning Points
Title: Hub of the World Source: https://flowingdata.com/2011/04/11/the-city-in-real-time/	This map shows the trading partnership that Singapore engages with Pros: Clear colour indication on the outgoing and incoming shipments from all over the world to Singapore. Cons: End point of the shipments of the colour line is quite arbitrary as it does not pin-point or show the exact country. The visualisation does not show the full list of the variables as the colour fades off nearing the bottom of the graph Does not really point out any specific point of focus, it just gives a generic understanding on the trading shipments that Singapore is trading with.
Source: https://www.vox.com/2016/4/25/11503152/shipping-routes-map	This dashboard shows the demand for shipping Pros: enter text Cons: enter text
Source: https://www.singstat.gov.sg/modules/infographics/singapore-international-trade	This visualization shows the relation .... Pros: They utilize the data visualization method of a magic quadrant to show two things at once namely the merchandise trade value and the trading partners with Singapore in 2018. At one glance, it is easy to determine which is the highest import and exporter from Singapore based on the bubble size and position. Cons: Lack of interactive elements as the data only shows for the year 2018. Including other years would give the readers a better understanding. The bubbles overlap each other hence the actual size is not easily determined. Opaque bubbles make it even harder to determine the size of the bubble, hence reducing the opacity would be clearer. At one glance, it may seem quite messy as the elements are combined, namely; bubbles and legend.

Technologies to be used

* Technologies to be used are tentative

Key Technical Challenges

Key Technical Challenges	Mitigation Plan
Limited knowledge of R and R Shiny	Peer learning and pair coding Research, online tutorials and consultations
Unfamiliarity with data cleaning and visualization	Research to find the right tools for our data visualizations Online tutorials on data cleaning and visualization
Lack of knowledge in jargon and terminologies used in shipping industry	Conduct research on the shipping industry Keep up with the latest news on the shipping industry within Singapore

Project Milestones