Live Singapore: Hub of the World

Singapore is the world's largest trans-shipment container port and one of the busiest airport hubs in the world. How is the country affected by this constant stream of people and goods passing through? Where do these flows come from and go to, and how much of it stays in Singapore. My role on this project was designing and developing the visualization. The concept of a vortex through which people and containers pass through inspired the visual form that the application took on. The map of the world is laid out on a 2D plane which rotates in 3D space. As the map rotates, the incoming content travels in towards Singapore as bright blue arcs on the front of the map, and outgoing content travels from Singapore as orange arcs from the back of the map. The thickness of the arcs represents the number of passengers on the plane, or the number of containers given an aggregated hourly interval from or to the same port. The ebb and flow of content is illustrating over time revealing trends in airport and seaport activity seen from different angles.

The project is part of an exhibition featured at the Singapore Art Museum from April 7th to May 1st, 2011. The project was developed by the MIT SENSEable City Laboratory in conjunction with the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology.