Rachel Hollowgrass
Climate designer focused on making tools that make climate data available to researchers, modelers, policy makers and others
To advance climate science, I design tools that allow researchers to upload data about greenhouse gases to a central repository. Other researchers are then able to download the data, to test their models. Between the two steps are many steps related to data validation and processing. Crucial to data use is information about the instruments used, how they were sited, local factors such as agriculture and wildfire, etc. Crucial to the network's viability is attribution of data sources to principal investigators and host institutions.
Projects
Wind rose for instrument site
When preparing to measure greenhouse gas levels, the display of "wind roses" at research sites allows climate scientists to optimize sensor placement. This same data allows modelers to refine how they interpret the sensor data. I conducted a UCD process with researchers to determine tools that would best meet their needs for wind rose data. The result is a set of nine wind roses per instrument site, generated on the fly from the most recent data posted.
Case study »
Custom maps of instrument sites
When documenting their use of data in research publications, researchers benefit from being able to create custom maps of the instrument sites that provide that data. I conducted a UCD process with researchers to determine the mapping tools that would best meet their needs for custom sharable maps. The result is a "site sets" feature.