2B

Exposing lobbying activities of "carbon fat cat" companies through data visualisation

Patrick Craston

In Europe, big polluters need a permit for every tonne of carbon dioxide they emit. Unfortunately the huge multinational corporations owning these polluting factories and power plants have been aggressively lobbying politicians. This has resulted in too many permits being given out. With too many permits in the system factories often have no need to reduce their emissions, which is good for the corporations - as it saves them a lot of money - but bad for the environment! Although the EU releases the emissions data publicly, the complexity of the data creates a lack of transparency, which benefits the big corporations and their polluters. At Sandbag we have been using a range of techniques to visualise this data (e.g. sandbag.org.uk/emissionsmap). Our new map exposes the 10 "carbon fat cat" companies that benefit most from having been given too many pollution permits (after all, the system was created for the benefit of the environment!). Future work aims to tie in data on company lobbying activities and see how this directly relates to those companies being allocated too many permits. As this is still work in progress, we would love to get feedback (ideas or data) from OpenTech.
http://www.sandbag.org.uk/

Visualising Big Data - itoWorld

Christopher Osborne

Talking about the challenges and potential of visualising big data - mobile, realtime, crowdsourced or just plain old big. How with intelligent visualisation, data can be used to engage communities in planning the future of their cities. Showreel of our visualisation work, as featured on BBC Joy of Stats, Tim Berners-Lee's TED talk and Wired Magazine:
http://www.itoworld.com