Circle of Blue and Qlik Team Up for White House Climate Data Initiative
QlikView Dashboard Visualizes and Compares California Water Reserves as Part of Choke Point: Index Coverage of Global Water Crises
Qlik (NASDAQ: QLIK), a leader in user-driven business intelligence (BI), and Circle of Blue, a team of award-winning journalists and researchers reporting on water and worldwide resource issues, announced that a new data dashboard (https://www.circleofblue.org/CPX/) powered by QlikView is being featured today in Washington, DC as a supporting effort to the White House Climate Data Initiative. The application is part of Circle of Blue’s Choke Point: Index, a series of in-depth reports about the competition between water, food and energy in a changing climate. Circle of Blue combines in-depth reporting with collections of fresh and historically relevant data to provide greater context for decision-making.
The new application, drawing on public data sets, visualizes current and past levels of California water reservoirs and is designed to be scaled to compare hyper-local information and research with national and global trends. Researchers, journalists, water managers, and the public will have immediate access to strategic data about the systems that regulate their water sources, information that will allow for comparisons of present and historical water supply conditions.
Mass amounts of data, particularly water-related, are often compartmentalized within agencies and not available in comparative, visual formats. The QlikView dashboards and their sophisticated and engaging, state-of-the-art graphics – combined with Circle of Blue’s on-the-ground reporting, online networks, and participatory convenings – will help officials make informed decisions and better understand, monitor, compare and manage the nation’s most vulnerable water supplies in an era of climate change. The application also includes reservoir data from water-challenged areas of Australia.
“We face a time when climate change is stressing our water, food and energy systems, causing billions of dollars of disruptions and testing human and ecological resilience globally,” said J. Carl Ganter, managing director of Circle of Blue and member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Water Security. “Our capacity to respond is in doubt unless we dig deep into the connections and combine the best of reporting, data gathering, and participation to understand the scope of the challenges and responses. We need to activate the best, most creative thinking to understand and respond.”
The World Economic Forum Global Risks Report 2014 ranks “water crises” among the planet’s top three most urgent issues. Water scarcity and supply are particularly influenced by climate change, and are emerging as serious threats to people, business, the environment and political stability across the world, including the United States.
“In the current era of mass data streaming and unprecedented data flow, we simply cannot afford to keep the realities of today’s environmental challenges locked in static documents or silo’d collections,” Ganter said. “QlikView is helping us empower individuals with meaningful context about the decisions they make every day.”
Circle of Blue’s most recent Choke Point: Index reports on how trends in water availability have put the freshwater supply in a precarious condition for three iconic American farm regions, including California’s Central Valley. The California drought – now in its third year – looks to be a significant test of the capacity of residents, farmers, businesses and governments to ensure the state’s water security.
“By providing a means for interactive, relevant, searchable visualizations, Circle of Blue is not simply delivering statistics, but putting the power to act in response to the water crisis into the hands of decision-making organizations and individuals worldwide,” added Anthony Deighton, CTO and senior vice president of products at Qlik. “We’re thrilled that Circle of Blue is using QlikView to bring its important research findings and larger freshwater issues to the public.”
The Choke Point: Index data visualizations are made possible through Qlik’s “Change Our World” Grant Program. Qlik will showcase this application as part of its sponsorship at Gigaom Structure Data, March 19 and 20, in New York City.
The White House Climate Data Initiative has identified private, philanthropic, academic, and nonprofit sector commitments to leverage data and data-driven insights that can support communities, companies and citizens prepare for the impacts of climate change, including system shocks such as floods, droughts, wildfires and heat waves.
For more information or to test drive the new QlikView-powered application that is part of Circle of Blue’s Choke Point: Index, please visit: https://www.circleofblue.org/CPX/.
