The Graphicacy team recently partnered with USA for UNHCR (The UN Refugee Agency) and Mapbox to design and build the Resettled Refugee Services and Data Explorer, an application that helps connect refugees resettled in the United States with resources and vital services, such as access to medical care and mental health treatment, English language learning, job training, and education. 

The development team, led by Chris Lanoue and Allie Littleton, applied expertise in data visualization, UX, and web mapping to create the application as part of the Lifting Up Families for Economic Success session of The Opportunity Project, hosted by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Census Open Innovation Lab.

The team built the application to support two user journeys: firstly, a resettled refugee searching for services within a short distance from their current location, and secondly, a refugee who is interested in exploring where in the U.S. other refugees from their home country have been placed.

Join us for this episode to learn more about the project, take a look at the architecture, and submit questions for the development team.

You’ll learn how to...

• Integrate Mapbox with React hooks using react-map-gl 
• Use turf.js to perform client-side analysis of features within a 50 mile radius
• Use WRAPSNET and Charity Navigator open-data sources in an app.
  

Resources

• Graphicacy blog post Visualizing Vital Resources to Support Resettled Refugees
• Video of Chris presenting this solution for The Opportunity Project
• Graphicacy blog post A performant Mapbox implementation of Census Tracts at all zoom levels
• GitHub repo for Mapbox GL Compare prototype using React and Mapbox
• GitHub repo for Resettled Refugee Services and Data Explorer
  

About Graphicacy

We tell engaging stories through data visualization. Our team combines storytelling, human-centered design & deep technical capabilities to build data rich digital projects. We provide data analysis and build and produce websites, interactive applications, data visualizations, information graphics and motion graphic videos. We specialize in open source solutions including Drupal, React, D3.js and Angular, and tailor our work to the specific strategic needs of your project. Learn more or follow @graphicacy_info on Twitter.

About Chris Lanoue

Chris Lanoue is a Creative Technologist and Data Visualization Engineer with over a decade of experience. Most recently, Chris led the data visualization team for the Fintech startup Kabbage, and prior to that he led data visualization engineering teams within both the Digital Innovation Lab and Center for Machine Learning organizations at Capital One. Chris holds multiple patents for his work on data visualization within augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) in the Digital Innovation Lab. Learn more or connect with Chris on LinkedIn.