New to the wonderful world of big data, data visualization, and/or mapping? There are a number of easy to use, open source (free) programs to examine publicly-available datasets as well as create clean and communicative data visualizations to support your capstone project research. These is just a sampling of resources, there are others out there. Don’t be too discouraged by the length of this list, either. With just a bit of exploration, you will find the right tools and resources for your project objectives!

• Data:
  • Global population and demographic data is available by country (with source details) from Worldometer, though accuracy can vary by source and region.
  • If you need demographic data for the U.S. the Census is considered the best information publicly available. If you are new to using Census data and would like some additional support or just need some overall summary data, there are a number of tools available from the American Community Survey.
  • Our World in Data aggregates data from a number of international sources and can be useful for many reasons. Some data collected directly related to Sustainability projects include their GhG emission and CO2 reporting as well as global data on electric vehicles.
  • Large datasets maintained by New York City are publicly accessible through NYC Open Data. New York City’s Map PLUTO has property and building-level data for the entire city that can be easily dropped into GIS or Raw. If you aren’t sure how to make sense of this data or if you just need information for a single point, you can use NYC’s interactive Zoning and Land Use Map. This is also a great place to start if you’re unsure of what’s out there. For climate hazard considerations, you can also look up risk information on DCP’s Flood Hazard Mapper by property or the FEMA Region II Base Flood Elevation lookup. You can view historical data on hazard types and events in NYC through the NYCEM Hazard History and Consequence Tool.
  • The Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool uses primarily Census data to highlight disadvantaged census tracts across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories. This can be helpful in such background research areas as determining site selection or research justification.
  • The EPA Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool includes layers such as pollution and health indicators to analyze EJ concerns in specific locations.
• Data Analysis and Visualization:
  • Raw is a wonderful tool to play with if you have a large dataset, but aren’t sure what the best to make sense of it is, graphically. Raw lets you dump large .csv files into a web portal and choose the types of visualizations you can apply to the data and what variables you can show. You may instantly see the graphic output looks terrible or makes no sense, and it will immediately illuminate that this is not the best way to describe your information (without you doing a bunch of work first). You can then export graphics and deal with design matters in other programs.
  • If you are new to data analysis and would like to learn how to use such tools and programming languages as R or Python, Professor McDonald hosts a workspace for capstone students on DataCamp. DataCamp also hosts a series of educational modules on working with AI.
  • If you are into coding, Brackets is free and easy to use. This is especially helpful software if you want to have a living data visualization of some kind (one that has motion, involves user input, or is constantly updating from a live data source).
  • Geographic Mapping:
    • If you’ve used ArcMap or would like to start, there are a number of places you can access the licensed software on campus in the Spitzer Computer Labs or through virtual desktop.
    • QGIS is open source mapping software.
    • Tableau Public is a free data visualization and mapping software. It is especially helpful if you want to create maps from address information, but are not well-versed in GIS/Arc Map.
• As you make your maps and visualizations, if you need colors that just magically work together brought to your attention, you can use Colllor to generate color pallets that can be easily copied and pasted or Color Brewer specifically for maps.
  • Conceptual Mapping and Diagramming:
    • For diagramming research, creately has a wonderful template.
    • Miro is fantastic for diagramming.
    • You can try LucidChart for free to diagram elements of your project.
    • Dia is an open source diagram editor ideal for mapping out elements of your project or producing your own diagrams to explain research findings.
• Organization and Storage:
  • Notion is a really helpful tool for this and it works seamlessly with Miro so you can link concept maps and layouts with tasks and flowcharts.
  • If some element of your project needs a lot of scheduling and/or time-lining, Team Gantt lets you make Gantt diagrams for free.
  • Most projects maintain a Google Drive with a folder structure to keep resources and other content organized. It’s a good idea to set this up early.
  • CUNY Dropbox offers a place to store data and other big files easily shared with team members.
• Presenting:
  • For poster, banner, or presentation design, you can easily use Canva to pull everything together.
  • There are free options on Prezi for creating presentations that are a bit more engaging than Powerpoint.
  • The computer lab in the Spitzer Library has Adobe Creative Suite and is available to Sustainability students whenever a class is not in session there.