Arctic Yearbook 2015 | Page 62

62 Arctic Yearbook 2015 From structured information to visualization To begin we needed to find a platform upon which to develop the flexible and user-friendly tool. Mike Bostock6 created D3.js, which is unlike classic visualization libraries in that it allows information to be communicated in much more powerful ways. The almost endless options for data representations make the library itself a tool. From the D3.js library we chose a visualization based upon hierarchical edge bundles (Holten 2006). The data are represented in a wheel format, which is composed of nodes and edges all coloured in light grey. The data are grouped into eight bundles: seven represent the stakeholders organized by the scale(s) at which they operate (see Table 2) and the eighth represents the interests. The nodes within each bundle are the stakeholder groups that operate at those particular scale(s), and each is linked to its interests (Figure 5). Figure 5. The foundation of the visualization tool showing all connections between stakeholder groups, and between groups and their interests. Each node (SG or interest) acts as both a source and target. When the user passes their cursor over either a stakeholder group or an interest (the source), it becomes highlighted in black. The colour of the edge (connecting line) and the target(s) will be different, though, depending on whether the selected source node is an interest or a SG. If the user passes their cursor over a SG, the edge(s) and the target node(s) become highlighted in red if it is an interest, or in purple if it is another SG (Figure 6a). In contrast, if the user passes their cursor over an interest, the edge(s) and the target node(s) will become highlighted in blue (Figure 6b). Maritime Activities in the Canadian Arctic