Project Iteration I

Data Story

Overview

Burning Too Close to Home began as a data-driven storytelling project developed for the course Visualizing Data at The New School.

Using publicly available wildfire records from CAL FIRE, this phase examined the accelerating severity of California wildfires between 2013 and 2021. The project centered on an interactive, map-based visualization highlighting the twenty most destructive fires per year—defined by total acreage burned—allowing viewers to explore how wildfire size, duration, and geography have intensified over time.

In addition to the primary interactive map, the project included a series of supporting visualizations that analyzed California’s most destructive and largest wildfires on record, as well as cumulative burned acreage over multiple decades. Together, these visuals established a data-backed foundation for understanding wildfire as a systemic and worsening condition, rather than a series of isolated events.

View Iteration I on Medium:
Burning Too Close to Home: California’s War on Wildfires

    • Public wildfire incident datasets from CAL FIRE

    • Annual records spanning 2013–2021, with historical reference data extending further back for comparative charts

    • Compiled and standardized multi-year datasets with inconsistent formatting

    • Addressed missing and incomplete records

    • Created a filtered dataset of the twenty most destructive fires per year, defined by acreage burned

    • Added latitude and longitude coordinates for geospatial mapping

  • Interactive map of California displaying the top twenty most destructive fires per year

    • Fires represented by triangular markers

    • Marker size scaled to total acres burned

    • Marker color mapped to days until 100% containment (range: 1–814 days)

    • Hover and click interactions reveal fire name, year, ignition location, county, duration, and acreage

    • Custom code used to enable interactivity and dynamic pop-ups

    • Bar charts of the top twenty most destructive wildfires in California history

    • Bar charts of the top twenty largest wildfires by acreage

    • Treemap-style and comparative visuals showing relative fire size by year

    • Pictograph comparing cumulative acres burned across multiple decades, highlighting sharp increases in the past ten years

    • Datawrapper

    • Flourish

    • Excel

    • Medium

Project Evolution

  • Academic Presentation (2023)

    Presented at the 2023 Dean’s Honor Symposium, this iteration reframed wildfire through social and political context, extending the original data research into narrative synthesis.

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  • Undergraduate Thesis (2024)

    Reimagined as a multimedia book centered on the 2018 Woolsey Fire, integrating personal narrative, survivor interviews, archival research, and fire data.

    Developed and presented as an undergraduate thesis project.

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  • Expanded Manuscript (2025– )

    Ongoing revision and expansion for publication.

    Preview coming soon.

  • Data Story (2021)

    An interactive data visualization built from a decade of CAL FIRE datasets, tracking the escalating frequency and severity of California wildfires.

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