Project Link: https://ngottlieb.github.io/colorado-water-rights-visualization/
This project is an interactive visual interpretation of how existing and historical legal constraints on the Colorado River impact the actual allocation of water amongst the top-level stakeholders (basin states and Mexico). The user can experiment with changing annual flows — a simplified analog for total water supply – to see the how they impact water availability around the southwest.
I created it in November, 2017 for an online contest hosted by the Bureau of Reclamation. I was notified in March, 2018 that the project was chosen as a winner of the contest; the press release is here.
Technical Information
This visualization is written in Javascript and HTML. The base-layer of the map is provided by Mapbox and a library called Leaflet.js is used to manage the display of data on the map. Brunch.io was used as a build platform to package the HTML and Javascript into production-ready code. It is hosted on Github Pages.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Dr. Jack Schmidt at Utah State University, Daphnee Tuzlak, Alex Walker, Maggi Kraft, Ryan Choi, and Sammy Lyster for their valuable input and feedback.
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