In this work the traffic of Lisbon is portrayed exploring metaphors of living organisms with circulatory problems. Rather than being an aesthetic essay or a set of decorative artifacts, my approach focuses on synthesizing and conveying meaning through data portrayal. This portrayal is embodied in the visualization: The Blood Vessels in the traffic of Lisbon. I use an adaptive physics system to build and manipulate the road network – the thickness, the color and the length of the vessels are excited by the number of vehicles and average velocity in each road. With this system I try to bypass the strictness of contemporary visualizations that depict data accurately through direct mappings.
The road network of Lisbon was queried from OpenSreetMap, parsed and filtered. Using this information, a spring based physics system is build for the road network and a filling structure of each vessel. The data is overlaid on the resultant structure to determine the road where each vehicle is at a given moment. This allows to inject data at runtime and excite the system as follows: a greater number of vehicles on a vessel tend to make it thicker, higher speeds tend to contract its length (an vice-versa). The latter behavior was chosen in order to transmit a global impression of the perceived distances within the city. This behavior shrinks the city when the traffic velocities are higher, and distends it in the rush hours when the city faces congestion problems. In what concerns coloring, lower speeds imply the darkening of a vessel, expressing slower circulation and stagnant blood.
The vessels’ visualization, with crude aesthetics that are innate to the visual metaphor of an organism with circulatory problems, pulsates for each rush hour and stresses precisely which roads are congested. The project was re-implemented in order to react to data more accurately, implementing my own model for a contiguous edge-based cartogram. This cartograms that distorts with the velocities of the vehicles on the roads, is used to map two visualization models: one more classic and the blood vessels one. The vessels themselves were improved, pulsing with traffic and having particles traveling inside them which represent traffic density. The new vessel’s features were implemented by António Cruz.
For the curious, this project had several failed attempts to attain this metaphor using swarms and particles.
Comments
46 responses to “Lisbon’s Blood Vessels: a cartogram and a metaphor”
Striking OpenStreetMap road network visualisation http://t.co/MHBSysGt
Striking OpenStreetMap road network visualisation http://t.co/MHBSysGt
Pedro Miguel Cruz's Lisbon dataviz, OpenStreetMapped (Box2D?) skeleton of the city w/ traffic blood vessels http://t.co/eRAJmJN7
Great data visualization Traffic in Lisbon like blood vessels: http://t.co/HJmpv67L #Visualization #dataviz
Visualização de Dados – traffic of Lisbon portrayed exploring metaphors of living organisms with circulatory problems. http://t.co/ZWGURanX
.@Shyznogud isto é muito muito fantástico http://t.co/Wvky9B3d
Lisbon’s Blood Vessels | Visualization et al. http://t.co/sNWlggLT
RT @pmcruz: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://t.co/Rt3osj8U
The Blood Vessels in the traffic of Lisbon. 1524 GPS traces in the city: http://t.co/FA4dc9Xk via @digitag
CARACA! Ó pra isso!!! RT @andrelemos: Muito interessante. A cidade como organismo: RT @pmcruz: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://bit.ly/lsSEAv
Muito interessante. A cidade como organismo: RT @pmcruz: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://t.co/QQ8VuP7
Muito interessante. A cidade como organismo: RT @pmcruz: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://t.co/QQ8VuP7
RT @andrelemos: Muito interessante. A cidade como organismo: RT @pmcruz: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://t.co/QQ8VuP7
RT @andrelemos: Muito interessante. A cidade como organismo: RT @pmcruz: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://t.co/QQ8VuP7
Muito interessante. A cidade como organismo: RT @pmcruz: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://t.co/QQ8VuP7
Muito interessante. A cidade como organismo: RT @pmcruz: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://t.co/QQ8VuP7
RT @pmcruz: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://t.co/1zcWziu
RT @pmcruz: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://t.co/1zcWziu
RT @pmcruz: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://t.co/UZ3oFx0 This is really beautiful.. in a strange way : )
Lisbon's blood vessels: http://bit.ly/fykNuQ
amazing visualisations of Lisbon's traffic network #datavisualisation http://j.mp/lZCvkU
RT @pmcruz: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://bit.ly/ghQ9V5
[…] patterns in Lisbon, perfectly conveys a number of profound truths about how donors connect. First watch the video, then consider these […]
Lisbon traffic as blood vessels… cool #data #visualization ! http://bit.ly/dLynS3
[…] by bengood4000 on February 16, 2011 · Leave a Comment Today I stumbled across this lovely visualisation by Pedro Cruz who took the Lisbon traffic system and turned it into a ‘living’ cardiac […]
Visualizing Lisbon's traffic network as blood vessels http://bit.ly/ekZSDf via FlowingData
RT @andreslajous: RT @oso: Traffic in Lisbon: http://bit.ly/gUZMHk < wow, la arterias viales como arterias de un sistema cardiovascular
las arterias viales como arterias de un sistema cardiovascular via @andreslajous & @oso: Traffic in Lisbon: http://bit.ly/gUZMHk
RT @andreslajous: RT @oso: Traffic in Lisbon: http://bit.ly/gUZMHk < wow, la arterias viales como arterias de un sistema cardiovascular
RT @matthiasrascher: Lisbon’s traffic visualised as blood vessels. http://bit.ly/dIKfMT #traffic #Lisbon #animation http://myloc.me/hMuhI
RT @oso: Traffic in Lisbon: http://bit.ly/gUZMHk < wow, la arterias viales como arterias de un sistema cardiovascular
RT @pmcruz: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://bit.ly/ghQ9V5
RT @mocost: Lisbon traffic visualized as blood vessels http://j.mp/fykNuQ
RT @pmcruz: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://bit.ly/ghQ9V5
RT @mocost: Lisbon traffic visualized as blood vessels http://j.mp/fykNuQ
Lisbon traffic visualized as blood vessels http://j.mp/fykNuQ
[…] Cruz puts a twist on the traditional map approach to visualize traffic in Lisbon as blood vessels: In this work the traffic of Lisbon is portrayed exploring metaphors of living organisms with […]
[…] you hear the full explanation for how he made The Blood Vessels in the traffic of Lisbon, but here it is if you’re curious: […]
[…] you hear the full explanation for how he made The Blood Vessels in the traffic of Lisbon, but here it is if you’re curious: […]
[…] you hear the full explanation for how he made The Blood Vessels in the traffic of Lisbon, but here it is if you're curious: More » blood, Blood Vessels, Blood Vessels in traffic of […]
[…] Pedro M Cruz has been experimenting with differents kinds of visualizations of Lisbon’s roads, based around mutating and morphing the network according to traffic flows. […]
RT @ppeccatte: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://mondeguinho.com/master/information-visualization/lisbons-blood-vessels via @brainpicker
[…] Via Pedro Cruz: […]
Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://mondeguinho.com/master/information-visualization/lisbons-blood-vessels via @brainpicker
RT @pmcruz: Lisbon's Blood Vessels http://bit.ly/ghQ9V5
Lisbon's blood vessels: http://mondeguinho.com/master/information-visualization/lisbons-blood-vessels