Dr. Juan Salamanca, Associate Professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, investigates how social and material conditions foster or hinder cooperative and collaborative social practices. His research employs data visualization and agent-based modeling to examine how design influences the attainment of unexpected collective goals.
This research visually represents the impact of agrarian systems on environmental, epidemiological, and economic indicators in the Brazilian Amazon since 2000. Utilizing the Trajetórias dataset, which spans 17 years of environmental, epidemiological, and socioeconomic indicators for all municipalities in the Brazilian Legal Amazon, the study provides a set of maps and an interactive visualization accessible via a public website called "Amazon Views." Drawing on multi-layered experimental data visualization techniques, the interactive cartographies create conceptual spaces that enable users to explore and visually correlate indicators across indicators. The cartographies serve as a valuable resource for researchers and the general public to monitor environmental and social trends, thus facilitating a deeper understanding of the relationships between climate, health, and population changes.