Interactive Timelapse Maps

Awarded 'Best Interactive Map' award at Utah Geographic Information Conference 2021

Background

The goal for both of these web mapping applications was to show the growth and benefits of both industries, hardrock mining and oil and gas extraction. The environmental impacts are not to be ignored, but it is important to portray both sides of the coin. These industries are integral to Utah's economic development and have been for many years. The hardrock mining and oil and gas industries play an important role in Utah's economy, creating jobs, adding to the gross domestic product, providing funding to public schools, etc. Many of the jobs and benefits created by these industries must be taken into account as we discuss the transition to more sustainable energy sources. Economic info is shown in the main panel and production information is shown in the graphs below that. Further information per county and per industry location is available by clicking on the county or industry location of interest.

Final Deliverable

The final product of these codes are two interactive web applications viewed and used by the public. Each of them provides economic and production data for their respective industries. The user can use the time slider to explore different time periods or watch how the industries have changed through time. They can also view interactive graphs that correspond to the same time period as the time slider. This product is used by division staff, members of the legislator, operators of the industry, and the general public.

About the Data

This data was collected from the Utah Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining, the Bureau of Labor Statisitics, the Utah Geological Survey, Utah's School and Institutional Trust Lands Adminstration, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data was added as fields to the feature layers used in the web map application according to year the industry locations became active and were abandoned or retired. All of the statistics are averaged across the years that those locations were active.

About the Code

This code:

• Utilizes ArcGIS API for Javascript, HTML, and CSS

• Uses the time slider widget

• Utilizes view layers to calculate statistics on the client-side for faster rendering time

Room for Improvement

• Add options to the time slider to select for year time frames instead of the preset 1 year increments

• Make county pop-up well and mine counts dynamic

• Add media queries to account for different screen sizes

• Make CSS properties more dynamic (percentages of screen size instead of static pixel sizes)

  • Static pixel sizes could still be used with media queries if precentages didn't work well