In my Studio 2 course at Northeastern University, we spent many weeks working on an interactive project under the umbrella topic of migration. With my longstanding interest in climate disasters and population shifts in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, I decided to educate myself further on the country of Tuvalu.

This project highlights Tuvalu, a Pacific island nation often overlooked in Western media, yet pioneering a transition to becoming the world’s first digital nation. It provides essential context about Tuvalu’s geography, population, and vulnerability to climate change. Through visualizations, this exploration traces the impacts of rising sea levels on both the land and its people, featuring observed internal displacement and documented international migration trends. By combining data with speculative futures, it illustrates how environmental events are shaping the Tuvaluan experience. This work aims to elevate awareness and understanding of Tuvalu’s unique situation in the broader global climate and migration discourse.

I used Python to explore and clean my giant dataset, and I also used it to scale the population circles. I used ArcGISOnline for my basemaps, Adobe Illustrator for layout, HTML for site-building, and D3 and Javascript for interaction and functionality. This project was mostly for learning and experimenting, so I wouldn’t say it’s absolutely polished. But it works!