We all know the most common ways to visualize data from column charts to bar graphs, but what if there were new and exciting ways to show data?

Visualizing data in a creative way can bring it to life and make it easier to understand for everyone (even for the non-InSAR wizards). Imagine using virtual reality or apps that have the ability to show data through your camera live feed. It would be a game changer for the InSAR world.

What we’re using…

Well at the moment we’re essentially using a bunch of colorful dots on a map to display deformation data, where both red and blue mean something is changing. The color coding of our deformation data is based on the Doppler shift concept (also called the Doppler effect), which in short is a change in the frequency of light or sound waves that are caused by movement. If the light is coming from a source moving further from you, the wavelengths get longer and if the source is coming towards you, the wavelengths get shorter - these are called redshift and blueshift respectively. You can learn about it more here, but simply put, if there’s subsidence you’ll see red dots and if there’s any uplift you’ll see blue dots. And well, if you see green it means the surveyed area is stable, congratulations! 

The name Doppler shift comes from the Austrian physicist named Christian Doppler, who first described it in 1842. We actually see the use of the Doppler shift in our everyday life. Police use it to track speeding cars, doctors use it to perform echocardiograms (ultrasound of the heart) and musicians use instruments that use the Doppler shift for producing sounds (eg. the Hammond organ).

We've noticed that sometimes this technique can be confusing, as red screams error, but blue might seem like everything is fine, although it isn't. 

Virtual reality and data

Using virtual reality to visualize data is a fairly new concept to many but studies show that it's highly effective. Having a 360 sphere of space to use gives us the ability to fully immerse in the content that we´re consuming, which means fewer distractions and a lot more space to display data.  Whether it`s charts or visual maps - the possibility of interacting with the data on our own by pushing buttons or walking around the area of interest, helps us grasp the information effectively.

Imagine being able to see deformation data in 3D - to "travel" to a place and see everything in real life around you instead of looking at dots on a map and stats on a computer screen, trying to figure out how that applies in the real world. We’re hoping this solution isn't too far off in the future :) 

Mobile apps - data on the go?

Now there are several apps to visualize data and access your information from anywhere, but it's still mostly in the form of graphs and charts. For a lot of people it’s important to have access to it on the go.

A cool way to display deformation data would be using live feed camera footage. Using both your location and the visuals, the app would show the data right then and there. Sometimes it's hard to locate the exact area of the issue so this would make it a lot easier. Nothing like this exists at the moment, at least to our knowledge, but it's nice to dream about future possibilities.

The sound of data 

Conveying information through non-speech audio is called sonification, there are two conditions for it to be called that. The first one is reproducibility - other researchers must be able to transform the data in the same ways and the result should be the same. The other condition is intelligibility, which means that the resulting sound reflects the original data. A 2015 study by Mark Last and Anna Usyskin showed that even people without any formal training in music can distinguish useful information from the sonified data.

To sonify data, there are several handy applications and websites - here we have used the app TwoTone to let our readers listen to the sound of InSAR from Tallinn and Rochester. You can click on the video to check it out!

We were inspired by this interesting take on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the stock market with the sonified data that you can listen to by clicking here.

Obviously, there are many more ways to visualize data, the possibilities are endless. If you want to take a look at other creative solutions people have come up with, you can check out this article that lists 16 captivating examples.

If you have any awesome ideas of your own, feel free to share it with us by leaving a comment here or contacting us by email @insar@eo59.com

Our guest author, Kaisi Välja

Kaisi is an animal loving technology fan who is fascinated by the promise of Earth Observation to improve life for ordinary people. Far from a developer, she has the gift of looking at these systems objectively to find innovation hidden by too much experience.