Tag Archive for: Visualization

In today’s world, businesses across various industries face the challenge of managing and reporting environmental data efficiently.

air-quality-laptop

Locus’ Air Quality app is designed to integrate with data sources to seamlessly calculate air emissions monthly or annually. Our application can then produce XML, CSV and other emission reports which can be uploaded directly to regulatory sites. 

emissions-charts-air-quality

Assets are compiled based on configurable templates. Each asset type has its own form with input values, and the associated emission factors and calculations are shown to transparently display the model used to calculate the asset’s emissions. To build out the model, data for every asset may be uploaded from Excel or migrated from legacy systems.   

Once created, the asset presents a self-contained, transparent view of the asset properties, data, emissions factors, calculations, results, with the capability to add more information. 

data-air-quality

emissions-calculations-air-quality

 

The current asset-types available include: 

  • Pumps 
  • Compressors 
  • Boilers 
  • Generators 
  • Scrubbers 
  • Pipelines 
  • Engines 
  • Tractors, Trucks 
  • Storage  
  • Fugitive sources 
  • Grain Terminals 
  • Flares 
  • Thermal Oxidizers 
  • Heaters 
  • Digesters 

Locus Technology’s flexible configuration tool makes reporting your organization’s Air Quality straightforward. 

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    Today is GIS Day, a day started in 1999 to showcase the many uses of geographical information systems (GIS). Earlier Locus blog posts have explained how GIS and maps support visualization of objects in space and over time. This post covers a specific visualization method called data dashboards.  

    A data dashboard is a combination of charts, maps, text, and images that enables analysis of data and thereby promotes discovery of previously unknown relationships in the data. Companies and organizations use dashboards to develop insight into the overall status of a company or of a company division, process, or product line. Dashboards are also a common function in ‘business intelligence’ applications such as Microsoft Power BI and Tableau. A printed dashboard is static, but an online dashboard can be dynamic; in a dynamic dashboard, interacting with one item on the dashboard causes the other items to update. Taken together, the visualizations on a dynamic dashboard can help you find the story in your data. 

    One reason dashboards are so helpful is that they allow humans to partially ‘offload’ their thinking. Cognitive research has shown that human ‘working memory’ handles at most four items at a time. A good visualization, however, reduces the number of items to process in memory. 

    Consider a large table of carbon dioxide emissions by country for multiple years; it can be difficult to keep all the numbers in mind if you are trying to find trends.

    If you plot the data in a graph, however, each series of data in the chart becomes just one line on the graph. It is much easier to compare lines on the chart than to compare columns of numbers.

    Now consider making a map with countries color coded by emissions. Again, for each country, the map reduces multiple numbers to a single color for that country on the map. You can compare country colors more easily than columns of numbers.

    A dashboard that combines multiple visualizations further enhances data analysis. Imagine a dynamic dashboard showing you both the emissions chart and map described above. If you select a country on the map, the chart can highlight the line for that country, so you compare its emissions to other countries over time. Similarly, if you select a line on the chart for a specific country, the map can highlight the selected country to show how its emissions compare to nearby countries. This interactivity lets you drill into your data more effectively than using either the chart or the map by itself.

    Here are three examples of effective dashboards that are available online:

    Locus includes data dashboards in our applications. One example is the Site Metrics dashboard in EIM, Locus’s cloud-based, software-as-a-service application for environmental data management. The Site Metrics dashboard lets you perform roll-up queries across your portfolio of sites. A map on the dashboard shows all states with active sites. If you select one or more states, the dashboard updates the charts and tables on the right to show total sites, user logins, and record counts. Other dashboards can support showing sample locations of certain chemicals or counts of regulatory limit exceedances.

    A further example comes from the Locus Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) application. ESG metrics are becoming increasingly important measures for an organization’s performance. Data dashboards can help companies quickly visualize trends in their ESG metrics using intuitive mapping tools.

    This dashboard illustrates both spatial and time trends and provides the raw data necessary for auditability and transparent decision making. Having these features on a single combined view provides users with instant access to the key inputs for ESG prioritization, planning, and project implementation.

    As these examples from Locus show, data dashboards with integrated mapping are important tools for maximizing the value of your collected environmental and ESG data. For any dataset with a geographic component, it’s important to incorporate mapping elements in the outputs, to highlight trends and patterns that may not otherwise be visible in a chart or table. Modern software can combine these output formats in a way that tells the story shown by your data.


    Interested in Locus’ GIS solutions?

    Locus GIS+ features all of the functionality you love in EIM’s classic Google Maps GIS for environmental management—integrated with the powerful cartography, interoperability, & smart-mapping features of Esri’s ArcGIS platform!

    [sc_button link=”https://www.locustec.com/applications/gis-mapping/” text=”Learn more about Locus’ GIS solutions” link_target=”_self” color=”#ffffff” background_color=”#52a6ea” centered=”1″]


    [sc_image width=”150″ height=”150″ src=”16303″ style=”11″ position=”centered” disable_lightbox=”1″ alt=”Dr. Todd Pierce”]

    About the Author—Dr. Todd Pierce, Locus Technologies

    Dr. Pierce manages a team of programmers tasked with development and implementation of Locus’ EIM application, which lets users manage their environmental data in the cloud using Software-as-a-Service technology. Dr. Pierce is also directly responsible for research and development of Locus’ GIS (geographic information systems) and visualization tools for mapping analytical and subsurface data. Dr. Pierce earned his GIS Professional (GISP) certification in 2010.

    Today is GIS Day, a day started in 1999 to showcase the many uses of geographical information systems (GIS). Earlier blog posts by Locus Technologies for GIS day have shown how GIS supports cutting-edge visualization of objects in space and over time. This year’s post explains how GIS supports augmented reality.

    Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that enhances how we experience the real world by overlaying your surroundings with computer-generated objects. It differs from virtual reality (VR) because in VR, everything you see is computer generated, but in AR, the majority of what you see is real – your experience of reality is enhanced (augmented) but not totally replaced.

    You are probably familiar with one AR application already if you watch American football. The ‘virtual’ first down line that appears on field before each play is projected there by computer and is not really painted on the field. If you follow soccer (or football to the rest of the world), AR is used by a Video Assistant Referee (VAR) to objectively determine tight offsides decisions. Digital lines are drawn across the field to show whether or not attackers are illegally past the last defender or not. Another AR example is the popular game Pokémon Go that shows cute virtual creatures in your living room or your front yard.

    To experience AR, you need something to project the non-real objects onto your view of the world. Many AR applications use mobile phones or other devices. An AR application uses the camera view to show you the world around you and then overlays virtual objects onto the view. Other devices such as head mounted displays, ‘smart glasses’, or even ‘bionic contact lenses’ can use AR, but have not been as popular as phones or other mobile devices. In contrast to AR, VR cannot be fully supported with just a mobile device and usually requires headsets to immerse you in a virtual world. Because of this need, AR is much less intrusive than VR is.

    Countless other examples of AR already exist in many fields. A few selected applications include:

    • Online shoppers at some e-commerce sites can use smart devices to project furniture into their home to see how the pieces look before making a purchase.
    • Some clothing stores can project clothing onto shoppers’ bodies to check appearance without having to change clothes. These applications require the user to be in a special dressing booth with full body scanning capabilities.
    • Urban planners use AR to display how planned buildings, cell towers, wind turbines, and other structures would look in the existing space. Planners can walk the streets and view how proposed projects would alter the existing cityscape.
    • AR is used in manufacturing to display operation and safety instructions in a worker’s field of vision using head mounted displays, which circumvents the need to refer to bulky paper manuals.
    • Utility managers can see underground pipelines, water lines, sewer pipes, electrical lines, and other infrastructure projected below their feet.

    So how does GIS relate to AR? There are three main uses of GIS in AR:

    • Location: Any AR application must know where the user is and where to place virtual objects. In most cases, full GIS capabilities are not needed; instead, the application accesses a GPS (global positioning system) to find locations. Consider the Pokémon Go application mentioned before. The game knows where the various Pokémon need to appear. When a user plays the game, it uses GPS to find the user, and then shows any Pokémon that are near the user based on their locations.
    • Layers: An AR application may need to show features that are not visible to the user, such as underground electrical lines, earthquake fault lines, property lines, or planned buildings. All these features can be stored as GIS map layers in the cloud and then displayed in the AR application as virtual overlays projected on the real world. Furthermore, a user could select a displayed item and view related attribute information in the GIS layer. For example, a user could view the condition, age, and repair status of a selected water pipeline.
    • Navigation: An AR application may also need to help a user get from point A to point B, for example in a crowded airport or in a large warehouse. Such navigation could be facilitated by showing virtual route markers and arrows on the real world.

    Locus has been exploring environmental uses of AR and GIS by adding AR to Locus Mobile, which is the Locus app for collecting field data, completing EHS audits, tracking waste containers, and completing other tasks requiring users to gather data out of the office. Locus Mobile now features an AR mode to assist users when taking field samples. When the user activates AR mode, the app uses the camera to show the user’s immediate area. The app then puts multiple virtual markers on the display corresponding to sampling points located in that direction. As the user moves or rotates the phone to change the viewing area, the markers change to reflect the locations in the user’s line of sight. Clicking a marker provides more information including the location name and the distance from the user.

    Locus Mobile uses all three ways to combine GIS with AR:

    • By using GPS to find the user’s location and the locations of nearby sampling points.
    • By using GIS to display the layer of sampling points.
    • By using GIS to assist with navigation to sampling points by showing distance and direction.

    Here is a sample image from Locus Mobile showing three nearby sampling locations along with information about past events or measurements at the locations. The three blue banners are the augmented reality displayed on top of the view of the nearby surroundings.

    Locus Augmented Reality

    By using GIS and AR to assist users in finding sampling points, Locus Mobile makes field personnel more productive. Samplers can find field locations quickly and can easily pull up related information. Locus continues to explore using AR to expand the functionality of its environmental applications.


    Interested in Locus’ GIS solutions?

    Locus GIS+ features all of the functionality you love in EIM’s classic Google Maps GIS for environmental management—integrated with the powerful cartography, interoperability, & smart-mapping features of Esri’s ArcGIS platform!

    [sc_button link=”https://www.locustec.com/applications/gis-mapping/” text=”Learn more about Locus’ GIS solutions” link_target=”_self” color=”#ffffff” background_color=”#52a6ea” centered=”1″]


    [sc_image width=”150″ height=”150″ src=”16303″ style=”11″ position=”centered” disable_lightbox=”1″ alt=”Dr. Todd Pierce”]

    About the Author—Dr. Todd Pierce, Locus Technologies

    Dr. Pierce manages a team of programmers tasked with development and implementation of Locus’ EIM application, which lets users manage their environmental data in the cloud using Software-as-a-Service technology. Dr. Pierce is also directly responsible for research and development of Locus’ GIS (geographic information systems) and visualization tools for mapping analytical and subsurface data. Dr. Pierce earned his GIS Professional (GISP) certification in 2010.

    The ability to visualize your field and analytical data across maps, logs, and charts is a crucial part of managing environmental information. Locus makes it easy to visually display and export data for sharing in reports and presentations. We’ve compiled 7 of the most useful visualization tools in our environmental information management software.

    Data Callouts

    View your data in easy-to-read text boxes right on your maps. These are location-specific crosstab reports listing analytical, groundwater, or field readings. A user first creates a data callout template using a drag-and-drop interface in the EIM enhanced formatted reports module. The template can include rules to control data formatting (for example, action limit exceedances can be shown in red text). When the user runs the template for a specific set of locations, EIM displays the callouts in the GIS+ as a set of draggable boxes. The user can finalize the callouts in the GIS+ print view and then send the resulting map to a printer or export the map to a PDF file.

    Locus GIS Data Callouts


    Graduated Symbols

    Locus GIS features high-quality and industry specific graduated symbols so that you can compare relative quantitative data on customizable maps. Choose graduated symbol intervals, sizes, and colors from a large selection of color ramps and create multiple layers for data analysis. It also features a location clustering option, ideal for large sites, a historical challenge for mapping.

    Intellus GIS+ maps


    Charting

    Multiple charts can be created in EIM at one time. Charts can then be formatted using the Format tab. Formatting can include the ability to add milestone lines and shaded date ranges for specific dates on the x axis. The user can also change font, legend location, line colors, marker sizes and types, date formats, legend text, axis labels, grid line intervals or background colors. In addition, users can choose to display lab qualifiers next to non-detects, show non-detects as white filled points, show results next to data points, add footnotes, change the y-axis to log scale, and more. All of the format options can be saved as a chart style set and applied to sets of charts when they are created.

    Screenshots of EIM chemistry plots menu with two sample plots


    Time Sliders

    Locus has adopted animation in its GIS+ solution, which lets a user use a “time slider” to animate chemical concentrations over time. When a user displays EIM data on the GIS+ map, the user can decide to create “time slices” based on a selected date field. The slices can be by century, decade, year, month, week or day, and show the maximum concentration over that time period. Once the slices are created, the user can step through them manually or run them in movie mode.

    GIS+ time slider in action


    Augmented Reality

    Locate and identify inspection and/or monitoring locations on your mobile device. View real-time and historical environmental data to quickly find areas of interest for your chemical and subsurface data. Use your camera to get precise geotagged information for spills, safety incidents, historical chemical sources, subsurface utilities, or any other type of EHS data.

    Locus Augmented Reality


    Boring Logs

    Create and display clickable boring logs of your sample data—using custom style formats and cross-sections. Show depth ranges, lithology patterns, aquifer information, and detailed descriptions for your samples.

    Locus GIS+ boring logs on groundwater contour lines


    Contours

    Create and visualize custom contours using multiple algorithms. Because visualizations let you chunk items together, you can look at the ‘big picture” and not get lost in tables of data results. Your working memory stays within its capacity, your analysis of the information becomes more efficient, and you can gain new insights into your data.

    Contour map for groundwater in Locus GIS+

     

    Contact us to see more

    Send us your contact information and a Locus representative will be in touch to discuss your organization’s environmental data management needs and provide an estimate, or set up a free demo of our enterprise environmental software solutions.

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      The Vapor Intrusion tools in Locus’ Environmental Information Management (EIM) software solve the problem of time-consuming monitoring, reporting, and mitigation by automating data assembly, calculations, and reporting.

      Locus Vapor Intrusion Solutions

      Quickly and easily generate validated reports in approved formats, with all of the calculations completed according to your specific regulatory requirements. Companies can set up EIM for its investigation sites and realize immediate cost and time savings during each reporting period.

      Locus EIM Devices

      Contact us to see the Vapor Intrusion tool in action

      Send us your contact information and a Locus representative will be in touch to discuss your organization’s environmental data management needs and provide an estimate, or set up a free demo of our enterprise environmental software solutions.

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        Maybe you are a user of Locus’ Environmental Software (EIM) and are looking to get more out of our product. Or perhaps you are using another company’s software platform and looking to make a switch to Locus’ award-winning solution. Either way, there are some features that you may not know exist, as Locus software is always evolving by adding more functionality for a range of customer needs. Here are five features of our environmental software that you may not know about:

        1. APIs for Queries

        Locus expanded the EIM application programming interface (API) to support running any EIM Expert Query. Using a drag and drop interface, an EIM user can create an Expert Query to construct a custom SQL query that returns data from any EIM data table. The user can then call the Expert Query through the API from a web browser or any application that can consume a REST API. The API returns the results in JSON format for download or use in another program. EIM power users will find the expanded API extremely useful for generating custom data reports and for bringing EIM data into other applications.

        Locus EIM API

        2. Scheduled Queries for Expert Query Tool

        The Expert Query Builder lets users schedule their custom queries to run at given times with output provided in an FTP folder or email attachment. Users can view generated files through the scheduler in a log grid, and configure notifications when queries are complete. Users can scheduled queries to run on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis, or to run after an electronic data deliverable (EDD) of a specified format is loaded to EIM. Best of all, these queries can be instantly ran and configured from the dashboard.

        Scheduled Queries in Locus EIM

        Scheduled Queries in Locus EIM

        3. Chart Formatting

        Multiple charts can be created in EIM at one time. Charts can then be formatted using the Format tab. Formatting can include the ability to add milestone lines and shaded date ranges for specific dates on the x axis. The user can also change font, legend location, line colors, marker sizes and types, date formats, legend text, axis labels, grid line intervals or background colors. In addition, users can choose to display lab qualifiers next to non-detects, show non-detects as white filled points, show results next to data points, add footnotes, change the y-axis to log scale, and more. All of the format options can be saved as a chart style set and applied to sets of charts when they are created.

        Chart Formatting in Locus EIM

        Chart Formatting in Locus EIM

        4. Quick Search

        To help customers find the correct EIM menu function, Locus added a search box at the top right of EIM. The search box returns any menu items that match the user’s entered search term.

        Locus EIM Quick Search

        Locus EIM Quick Search

        5. Data Callouts in Locus’ Premium GIS Software

        When the user runs the template for a specific set of locations, EIM displays the callouts in Locus’ premium GIS software, GIS+, as a set of draggable boxes. The user can finalize the callouts in the GIS+ print view and then send the resulting map to a printer or export the map to a PDF file.

        Locus GIS+ Data Callouts

        Locus GIS+ Data Callouts

         

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        Today is GIS Day, a day started in 1999 to showcase the many uses of geographical information systems (GIS). Earlier Locus blog posts have shown how GIS supports cutting-edge visualization of objects in space and over time. This post is going to go “back to basics” and discuss what makes GIS unique and how environmental data analysis benefits from that uniqueness.

        Spatial vs Non-Spatial Relationships

        So, what makes GIS unique? It’s the ability of GIS to handle spatial relationships, which goes beyond just putting “dots on a map”. You are probably familiar with non-spatial relationships such as greater than, less than, or equal to, and you probably use them every day. For example, suppose you want to buy the latest gaming console (PS5, anyone?). You need to compare the price of the console to your bank account. If the console price is greater than your savings, then you cannot buy the console.

        Or can you? With credit cards, you can pay later, so you go charge the console. At the time of the transaction, some software evaluates a non-spatial relationship and checks if the console price plus your current debt is less than your credit limit. If so, you can buy the console; if not, your purchase is denied.

        The key point about this example is that spatial relations play no part. It doesn’t matter where you are located or where the game console is sold from. (OK, there may be things like state taxes and shipping, but that just contributes to the price.) Now, if you were trying to find all gaming consoles for sale within a certain distance of you, that is a spatial relationship. There are multiple types of spatial relationship, but the most common are inside, contains, crosses, overlaps, and within a distance of. Standard relational database software does not handle these sorts of relations, but GIS can.

        As an illustration, let’s consider two current events: the 2020 US presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic. With non-spatial relationships, you can answer various questions such as “did Biden get more votes than Clinton?” or “is the number of positive COVID tests increasing?”. But with spatial relations, you can answer more interesting questions such as “did areas with COVID hot spots vote more predominantly for Biden or Trump?”. For this question you must see if voters lie inside a COVID hot spot; a GIS can perform this analysis and then map the results. While many votes are still being counted, as of this blog post, it appears Trump performed better in COVID hot spots.

        Spatial Relationships in Environmental Data

        Let’s look at some example of spatial relations in environmental data. Assume you have a database of tritium sampling results in water, along with various map layers of natural and manmade features. What kind of spatial relationships can you explore with GIS?

        To answer that, we’ll make some maps with the Locus GIS+ package in EIM, Locus’s cloud-based, software-as-a-service application for environmental data management. All maps shown here display wells with tritium samples, with the wells represented as colored circles. The color scale goes from blue through yellow to red, to indicate increasing tritium results.

        Figure 1 shows an example of an inside spatial relationship. The map answers the question “what wells with tritium results are inside the Mortandad Canyon watershed?”. The watershed is highlighted in blue on the map, and you can easily see the wells inside the watershed.

        Locus GIS | Wells with tritium

        Figure 1: Wells with tritium within a watershed

        Figure 2 shows wells with tritium results that are within a distance of a river. The map answers the question “what wells with tritium results are within 500 ft of the river?”. The river, highlighted in light blue, has a 500 ft buffer shown as a dotted blue line. The wells with tritium that lie within the buffer are shown on the map, so you can check if any high tritium results are close to the waterway.

        Locus GIS | Wells with tritium

        Figure 2: Wells with tritium within a specified distance of a river

        Figure 3 shows another example of within a distance of. Here, the map answers the question “what wells with tritium results are within two miles of a middle school?”. The two-mile radius is shown as a shaded blue circle centered on the school. You can see the wells are confined to the area southeast of the school.

        Locus GIS | Wells with tritium

        Figure 3: Wells with tritium within a specified distance of a school

        These three examples are just a small subset of what can be done with GIS and environmental data. Here are some other questions illustrating the kind of spatial analysis that GIS supports.

        • Have any spill incidents at my site been within a specified distance of a waterway?
        • Do any pipelines at my site cross protected waterways?
        • Do any remediation areas at my site contain wells that have recorded high chemical levels in water?
        • Does the underground plume from a chemical release overlap any aquifers?

        All these examples illustrate the power of GIS for analyzing spatial relationships, and these examples are just the beginning. GIS can also perform more sophisticated analyses that look at spatial relationships in different ways to answer questions such as:

        • How confident can we be in the results of the spatial relationship analysis?
        • Do all data records follow the spatial relationship, or are any outliers that fall outside the norms?
        • Has this spatial relationship changed over time? Has the relation grown stronger or weaker?
        • Can we predict the future of the spatial relationships?

        Locus continues to bring new analysis tools to our Locus GIS+ system for environmental applications. These applications let you take advantage of the unique ability of GIS to analyze spatial relationships in your environmental data.

        Acknowledgments: All the data in EIM used in the examples was obtained from the publicly available chemical datasets online at Intellus New Mexico.


        Interested in Locus’ GIS solutions?

        Locus GIS+ features all of the functionality you love in EIM’s classic Google Maps GIS for environmental management—integrated with the powerful cartography, interoperability, & smart-mapping features of Esri’s ArcGIS platform!

        [sc_button link=”https://www.locustec.com/applications/gis-mapping/” text=”Learn more about Locus’ GIS solutions” link_target=”_self” color=”#ffffff” background_color=”#52a6ea” centered=”1″]


        [sc_image width=”150″ height=”150″ src=”16303″ style=”11″ position=”centered” disable_lightbox=”1″ alt=”Dr. Todd Pierce”]

        About the Author—Dr. Todd Pierce, Locus Technologies

        Dr. Pierce manages a team of programmers tasked with development and implementation of Locus’ EIM application, which lets users manage their environmental data in the cloud using Software-as-a-Service technology. Dr. Pierce is also directly responsible for research and development of Locus’ GIS (geographic information systems) and visualization tools for mapping analytical and subsurface data. Dr. Pierce earned his GIS Professional (GISP) certification in 2010.