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Opening up a world of trade and policy data

Working with the Energy, Environment & Resources department at Chatham House, we crafted two data platforms comprising over 40 million data points. The ambitious projects visualise the trade of our planet’s natural resources, and uncover the policy and trade dynamics that drive the circular economy.

Until now, there’s been nowhere you could explore the global trade in natural resources in one place.

Felix Preston Senior Research Fellow, Chatham House

Uniquely derived from the United Nations Comtrade database, ResourceTrade.earth contains 1300 natural resources across 270 countries.

The interface had to display an almost limitless number of visualisations and trade dynamics, covering commodities from lithium to palm oil.

Through a series of prototypes, we refined the final data visualisations and user interface.

A sister platform, CircularEconomy.earth, explores the policy and trade dynamics associated with transitioning from a linear to circular economy.

A clear distinction between the two platforms is made through a bold pair of complementary colour palettes.

Design system UI kit

The trade flow dashboard is supported by articles, with embedded maps and graphs, authored through the Applied Charts editor.

The result is a clear and striking data visualisation platform legible to expert and non-expert users, becoming a well recognised resource to many organisations working on global trade.