Infographic: What Is Your Water Footprint?

Winner of the 2011 Urban Water Design Challenge, sponsored by Visualizing.org and Circle of Blue.

For their interactive water footprint graphic, Joseph Bergen and Nicki Huang—students at the Harvard Garduate School of Design—earned top honors in the Urban Water Design Challenge, sponsored by Circle of Blue and Visualizing.org. The winners were announced on March 22, the eighteenth annual World Water Day.

Infographic © Joseph Bergen and Nicki Huang for Circle of Blue and Visualizing.org

“What Is Your Water Footprint?” was awarded top honors and $5,000 in the 2011 Urban Water Design Challenge, sponsored by Visualizing.org and Circle of Blue. Click the interactive image to enlarge and play with the data.

The winning graphic, “What is Your Water Footprint?”, explores water consumption based on location and lifestyle. In the first cartographic profile, users can scroll over different nations to compare details of urban population, water supply, and water usage by country. The second portion of the graphic depicts the virtual water embedded in different items, such as coffee and a computer chip.

See the other winning designs here.

Did you miss your chance to participate? Designers can continue to share their visualizations throughout the year by uploading to visualizing.org.