Manifest is "an investigative toolkit for researchers, journalists, students, and scholars interested in visualizing, analyzing, and documenting supply chains, production lines, and trade networks."
Hoping to find others interested in working on this, teaching with this, etc. Get in touch! Expect Bugs! Big thank you to my summer research students and to @coletteperold for using an earlier prototype in her class.
Here's another preview image, showing some other visualizations.
Manifest can load a large number of supply chains, visualize by quantitative data (like water use) in an extensible visualization framework (now, graphs, chords, and flow diagrams). It can load arbitrary layers (like train routes) and supports live tracking points (like ships)
Manifest files are just simple json files-you can make them anyway you'd like. We provide a basic editor, but Manifest isn't a database. It doesn't keep any of the data people might load on it (unless you want to just, you know, manually email it to me).
Here is a picture with some shipping lines, shipping traffic, and some rail lines.
Here are some Amazon fulfillment centers (2016 data) sorted by known number of employees (left) and known square footage (right).
Here we are tracking the pesky Ever Given.
This is a map for one of those old-timey "spinning disk" hard drives.
And here's that map visualized a few other ways.
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What's going on with global supply chains? (aka "why are we running out of everthing," "why is shipping so slow," "why are things more expensive"). A link roundup thread:
1/ The stories that started appearing over the summer about the state of global supply chains have been ramping up, and I thought it would be worth it to collect some of the articles documenting the disruption/catastrophe/reality of it all.
2/ There have been some good overview pieces on this, like Alana Semuels "Why Is Everything More Expensive Right Now? Let This Stuffed Giraffe Explain" which follows the journey of Jani, a 4-foot plush giraff, through the pandemic-era supply chain. time.com/6088033/why-in…