WNA Reactor Database

The World Nuclear Association are a trade body representing the nuclear industry. Among the large amounts of data they curate is a database of nuclear reactors and their ongoing performance data. Cottage Labs helped WNA in making this data more publicly available and usable through search and data visualisation

Challenge

Nuclear performance data can be dense and mostly of relevance to experts. Nonetheless, WNA has a remit to communicate with the public about activities in the nuclear industry. As such, they wanted to find a way to make their reactor and performance data available and understandable for members of the public, as well as journalists and science communicators, as well as for industry professionals.

Solution

We worked with WNA to design several layers of data visualisation and reporting which would satisfy their three key user classes: the public, journalists, and industry professionals. We designed a data management pipeline which allowed them to continue to manage their reactor and performance data in spreadsheets, and to periodically publish it to visualisations embedded in their commercial CMS. This included a standard search interface, as well as potted reports for individual reactors, entire countries, and arbitrary data selected from search. We also provided a visualisation generator, that would allow WNA administrators to define the parameters of a visualisation, and then embed a code snippet anywhere in their website which would then present live, interactive data in context.

Success

We have been through several rounds of development with WNA to further extend and enhance the visualisations. The system continues to provide relevant and up-to-date data to all the end user stakeholders.

Themes

Search Technologies Python JavaScript Data visualisation