Show, don’t tell - a project’s story through data visualisation

Thankfully, there are several digital solutions that can help a team tell the story of their project in a way that more aptly captures the process than words ever could. I am talking about real-time digital visualisation: displaying data in the form of a picture or graphic, to help people process difficult-to-grasp concepts and situations.

Increasingly businesses are understanding the value of placing analytics at the fingertips of project stakeholders. The data visualisation paradigm shift is now in full swing. In what we are calling the Fourth Industrial Revolution (the name given to the current trend of automation and data exchange in organisational technologies) we are continually moving from static formats to interactive visualisation, cloud services, trend analysis and near real-time data.

Accessibility to this data has increased, and the power at our fingertips is stronger than ever before. Combining reliable data with maps, text, images and multimedia content ensures more engaged and informed stakeholders and ultimately leads to more confident and precise decision-making.

By using tools such as interactive dashboards and story maps, stakeholders can actively engage with a project throughout its lifecycle. Interactive visual representations of data allow us to present the right data, to the right people, at the right time, while real-time information and advanced analytics help to communicate the results clearly and effectively to decision-makers, clients and stakeholders.

When it comes to data visualisation, it is essential to select the digital application that works best for sharing your project’s story.

Web maps are online maps that allow the user to work and interact with geographic content organised as layers. They can be accessed via the web or internal systems and can be viewed on computers, smartphones and tablets.

The purpose of a web map is to provide a central data collection portal which provides status classification and data collection over a vast land mass. The information can come in the form of spreadsheets and other forms of raw data but the result, once this data is attributed, is uniform and easy to understand. It results in user-friendly and intuitive information that is accessible and secure. Most importantly it provides a central point of truth that enhances the user experience.

Story maps combine maps and narrative text to create engaging and inspiring stories. They are limited only by your imagination and can include places, locations, and geography. Embedding a wide variety of multimedia materials including videos, images, texts and shapes help to guide the project narrative.

When it comes to large projects, a story map is especially useful to describe a system’s details without losing sight of the high level picture. They allow an engineer to tell their story in a personal style, one that not only complies with the requirements of the project but connects with the people behind them.

A digital dashboard is an electronic interface that aggregates and visualises data from multiple sources, such as databases, locally hosted files, and web services.

Dashboards allow stakeholders to monitor a project’s performance by displaying trends, actionable data, and real-time metrics, giving stakeholders the right information at the right time.Place text

As we know, organisations are becoming increasingly more data-driven in their approach. The use of models, analytics, data visualisations, and dashboards should be an integral part of decision making.

Data visualisation software not only helps people to analyse and understand vast amounts of data, but also saves time by enabling quick decision-making by providing a multi-faceted view of a project or asset’s performance and dynamics.

Data visualisation tools such as web maps, story maps, and interactive real-time dashboards offer clients real value and significantly increased project knowledge, and are an essential element of any modern engineering, environmental, and construction project.