Thalloo Evidence-Mapping: A Jekyll Theme

This project provides an easy-to-use template for web visualisations of environmental evidence maps.

What is an evidence map?

Evidence maps provide a comprehensive overview - or map - of a particular topic. In environmental sciences, many maps are geo-temporal in nature, capturing evidence across space and through time. All evidence maps are created using evidence-based or systematic methodologies, providing rich datasets. However, exploration of these datasets can be challenging when interrogating the raw data itself.

What is Thalloo?

Thalloo is a combination of map components and a Jekyll theme that enable quick, simple, and customisable deployment of a web-based tool to display evidence maps. The framework has the following features:

• Visual clustering and display of categorical data. Given a display category (e.g. crop, commodity), and a custom colour palette, points are displayed on a map. Depending on the zoom level and extent, points are clustered dynamically for best display. Any cluster can be selected to see the full metadata about the evidence points it contains.

• Filtering. Data can be filtered by property in real time, using multiple filters within a property, and using multiple properties to filter.

• Slicing of dimensionality. Given continuous data (e.g. publication year, time, or an effect size), the map allows real time 'slicing' of the dataset along one or many dimensions.

• Abstract and funding logos. Provide attribution to your funders and partner institutions by including their logos at the top of your map view.

Technology

The mapping components are written using D3.js. The website is static, and can be compiled using the Jekyll static site builder. All code is TypeScript.

How can I use it?

You can host one or many evidence maps using GitHub Pages' free hosting.

Thalloo is provided as a Jekyll theme. The easiest way to get started is to fork the starter template:

1. Fork the starter template.
2. Activate GitHub pages on your fork.
3. Remove the example data and add your own.

A simple JSON configuration file is required, alongside a UTF8 tab delimited sheet of your coded data. Note that Thalloo currently only support geographical data, so each data row must have a latitude and longitude in decimal degrees.

Code being developed under MIT license here

An example instance is available to view here

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Developer Instructions

Use yarn to setup the development environment. A simple yarn install followed by yarn run build:dev will watch the files for any changes.