DESIGNING A PRIVACY-PRESERVING GEOVISUALIZATION OF CITIZEN-COLLECTED ENVIRONMENTAL DATA

Abstract

This thesis project is a web-based map of environmental data from a citizen science study. The data includes soil and water contamination values from collection sites across four Arizona counties. The main priority of the visualization was to protect the privacy of the initial study participants, while still providing an engaging and accurate mapping. This objective was addressed by using census block groupings to obscure the exact location of the data collection sites, and coloring those blocks with average values. Other design considerations included how to handle the color scale across the different maps, how to communicate the magnitude of the data, and how to represent the distribution of data within a grouping. Each of these design considerations was explored in detail before completing the final design. The next steps for this project include replication with a similar data set, and final deployment on the web.