My first one relies on this previous weblog publish about how residents of Houston used a Whataburger location map to determine which elements of Houston have been with out electrical energy following Hurricane Meryl.
Right here is how I offered it to my college students:
You by no means know the place beneficial knowledge visualizations will come from!
As an example, following Hurricane Beryl, Texans used the Whataburger app to trace energy outages throughout Houston. Whataburger is a well-liked restaurant chain within the South. Its app has a function the place customers can shortly see open or closed areas. Usually, that is utilized by hungry folks to seek out the closest, open location. HOWEVER: There are SO MANY Whataburgers in Houston that customers may use it to trace energy outages since areas with out energy (in grey) would point out {that a} neighborhood did not have energy, whereas a location in orange signifies {that a} neighborhood did have energy.
See the Tweet under for an instance fo what it appeared like throughout hurricane restoration in Houston:
| https://x.com/BBQBryan/standing/1810509150842974308 |
This info from the app was by no means supposed to assist Americans get better from a hurricane. Personally, as an information nerd, I really like this. I really like that quick support was given to folks in Texas, and nobody needed to hassle the electrical firm for updates, and it’s only a intelligent repurposing of knowledge.
MY DISCUSSION FOR YOU THIS WEEK:
- Here’s a map of all Whataburger areas:
What different pure disasters occur within the Whataburger parts of the nation? Below what different circumstances may the poweroutage map assist out Individuals?
2. Take into consideration our a part of the nation. What shops/eating places might be used to trace energy outages in NW PA? If you wish to discuss shops/eating places in your hometown, go forward and accomplish that (simply tell us the place you’re from).
3.Who else may gain advantage from this form of knowledge? Apart from particular person folks simply making an attempt to trace energy availability of their city, how else may this, or related knowledge, be utilized by bigger organizations?
