Armed Conflict in SouthEast Asia

Visualization about the conflicts in SouthEast Asia

WU YUFENG https://example.com/norajones
03-21-2021

1 Overview
Southeast Asia is often prone to conflict due to its relatively backward economic status and large number of small countries. This post mainly analyzes the frequency, region and type of conflict in Southeast Asia in recent years through the distribution map of conflict occurrence.

2 Critiques and Suggestion

2.1 Clarity
In this segment, we will explore ways we can improve the visual clarity of this visualisation.
2.1.1 No introduction about the visualization
There is no lead-in paragraph in this visualization, which means nothing can help reader to understand what exactly the chart express, 2.1.2 Dense and small dots
Due to the points on the map overlap each other (highlighted below), the map does not clearly show the frequency of events in each region.
2.1.3 Synchronised y-axis lable
The scale of the y-axis of these charts are not synchronised under different event. Besides, the y-axis tick marks are of varying scale for Armed Conflict Event by Type. Should the user miss to notice this, the user will be comparing the event counts and trends incorrectly.
2.1.4 No country name
There is no country name on the map which would make reader confused with the conflict location.
2.1.5 Toolip information not enough
The toolip information could include more useful information such as ‘notes’, ‘Event date’.

1.2 Asethetics
2.2.1 Single Filter
Reader could not get enough information or comparison between countries or different years due to the limit of the single filter.
2.2.2 Single color in different event types
The line chart should be colored accordingly by Event Type for consistency. There are different colors of Event Type in map, it should be same in line chart.
2.2.3 No indication of data source
There is no indication of data source in the map and chart.

3 Proposed Design

Improvements
3.1 Add some useful information into toolip like ‘Notes’, ’ Event date’, ‘Fatalities’.
3.2 Make three maps from conflict status, fatalities status and geolocoation aspect, which will give reader basic knowledge of conlicts condition in SouthEast Asia.
3.3 For better visualization, map and chart will use same color for different event types.
3.4 Three filters ‘Year’, ‘Event Type’, ‘Country’ give reader free space to choose what they want to analysis.

4 Step-by-step Description
4.1 Data Preparation

  1. Drag the data file ‘Southeast-Asia_2010-2020_Oct31’ onto Tableau.

  1. Change the Year to Date.

4.2 Analysis Preparation

  1. Create Parameter ‘Analysis Angle’.

  1. Create Calculation field ‘Chart Type Filter’.

  1. Create Calculation field ‘Confilct’ to count the number of conflicts.

4.3 Make Analysis of Geolocation

  1. Drag the existed measure value “Longitude” on columns and “Latitude” on rows instead of the longitude and latitude that tableau automatically generated for us.

  1. drag other measure names into the Marks.
  1. Drag ‘Country’, ‘Year’, ‘Event Type’, ‘Chart Type Filter’ into filter.

  1. For parameter ‘Analysis Angle’ click on show parameter and
    show the fiter ‘Country’, ‘Year’, ‘Event Type’. Here is the final map.

4.4 Make Analysis of Conflict and Fatalities Status

  1. Drag the existed measure value “Longitude” on columns and “Latitude” on
    rows as well and drag measure names into marks.

  1. Drag the filter values into Flilter and the final map is below.

  1. Duplicate ‘Conflict Status’ and change the Sum(conflicts) to Fatalities.

4.5 Make Analysis of Line Charts

  1. Drag the ‘Year’ to columns and ‘Confilct’ to rows.

  1. Drag the chart type filter into Filter and choose ‘Conflict Status’.

  1. Drag ‘Event Type’ onto colors and the final chart is below.

  1. Duplicate the ‘Conflict Line’ and replace the ‘Conflicts’ with ‘Fatalities’.
  1. Choose ‘Fatalities’ for ‘Chart Type Filter’.

4.6 Dashboard Design

  1. Drag ‘Vertical’ to the dashboard and then drag ‘Geolocation’ sheet into it, choose automatic for dashboard size.

  1. Hide the ‘Geolocation’ title.

  1. Drag ‘Conflict Status’ into dashboard and choose ‘Conflict Status’ in parameter ‘Analysis Angle’.

  1. Hide ‘Conflict Status’ title and then drag ‘Conflict Status’ into dashboard and choose ‘Fatalities Status’ in parameter ‘Analysis Angle’.

  1. Romove repeated filter and move ‘Country’, ‘Year’, ‘Event Type’ to the top of dashboard.

  1. Change the three filters’ value to Single Value(list).

  1. Drag the ‘Conflict Line’ and ‘Fatalities’ beside the map and add the name on the top-middle of the dashboard.

5 Observations

5.1 Conflicts in SouthEast Asia From the two graph below we can see that in South-east Asia, conflicts happened the most in Philippines, Myanmar. The rest region has relatively less conflicts and there are no conflicts happened in Singapore between 2010 and 2020.

Besides, in Geolocation map Philippines and Myanmar have more circles as well, which means there are lots of event occurred in this two places.

5.2 Conflicts in Myanmar
As we can see from the Conflict Status map, Myanmar has the Heaviest color in SouthEast Asia between 2015-2020. Besides, battles account for the largest proportion of them from the bar below.

5.3 Conflicts in Philippines The Philippines is another area that has a lot of conflicts every year in Southeast Asia. The difference from Myanmar is that ‘Violence against civilians’ account for the largest proportion of the conflicts.

However, from the bar below, we can see that ‘Violence against civilians’ in Philippines has a descending trend these years.