LO 07: Data Visualization

For this week’s LO, I researched the 24 hour movement of air traffic over Europe, called Europe 24, found on Visual Complexity. It is a beautiful array of data, set over a geographically accurate representation of Earth to better reflect where each plane is going. Europe 24 was made by NATS, the leading organization in air traffic control in the UK, which oversees all airports in the country, especially the busiest airport in Europe, in Heathrow. The visualization is particularly important for a company such as NATS as it provides a representation of how flights move over the space they work to keep safe and allows them to identify areas of high traffic which could prove to be dangerous. It is also artistically pleasing, with soft blues and a beautiful almost-photorealistic graphic of the globe below each line. The entirety of the animation is very clean and professional, as befitting such an important organization, and the overall cleanliness of the work makes it more accessible to the public so they might understand the work of NATS in the UK. Individual planes are show as points of light to enhance clarity as they move, and so they are not lost in the blue trails others leave behind, and cities are highlighted so they stand out as well.