Bonn Water Lecture on Using cartograms to visualize water resources as well as climate change risks and responsibilities by Prof. Dr. Petra Döll
November 23, 2017 | 17:00 h - 18:30 h
We kindly invite you to our next Bonn Water Lecture with Prof. Dr. Petra Döll (Institute of Physical Geography, Goethe University Frankfurt) who will talk about
“Using cartograms to visualize water resources as well as climate change risks and responsibilities”
Date: Thursday, November 23, 2017, 5:00 p.m. - 6.30 p.m.
Venue: ZEF, Genscherallee 3, 53113 Bonn
About this lecture:
Cartograms are distorted thematic maps that convey information by changing the size of spatial units according to some attribute of this unit. The presentation will explore the potential of global-scale contiguous cartograms for visualizing the global water resources situation as well as climate change risks and responsibilities. The visualized data include output of the global water resources and use model WaterGAP as well as CO2 emissions of countries. By distorting 0.5° grid cells according to the number of people that live within the cells, water resources are visually related no longer to land areas but to the (human) water users in need of water resources. Communication of climate change risks can be improved by showing hazard by color and exposure by distortion of grid cells according to population. Sets of cartograms instead of individual cartograms are most informative, e.g., visualizing the correlation between the countries’ wealth and their cumulative CO2 emissions by distorting country polygons according to these attributes. Viewers of such a cartogram set visually recognize the lack of global equity and that the countries’ wealth has been built on harmful emissions.
