Sankey Diagrams – Page 74 – A Sankey diagram says more than 1000 pie charts

Statistics Canada in its “Report on Energy Supply-demand in Canada” for 2005 shows two Sankey diagram in the annex (HTML version of the two Sankey diagrams). They show the energy flows for Canada 2005 and 2004 in Petajoules per year.

I have featured similarly structured diagram for other countries here before: Japan, Scotland, Ireland, and the United States.

Out of 21380 PJ of total energy produced in Canada and imported, some 9641 PJ (45%) are exported, while 11739 PJ (55%) are national consumption. If you have the impression that the proportions are not 45:55, you are right, they are more like 39:61! From a graphical perspective this Sankey has more peculiarities worth a mention: the magnitude of the Sankey arrow changes and just before the arrow head they become narrower. The flows labeled “Steam” and “Adjustments” seem to have been added at a later stage as they don’t merge into the other arrow. Steam is represented on the production side as well as in the breakdown of energy carriers with a small, but not unsignificant width, however the quanity is given as zero.

Fakes, Samples

Sun Energy Reloaded (or: Make it Look Nicer)

phineasJuly 1, 2008August 17, 20121 Comment

This diagram of sun radiation being absorbed and reflected when hitting earth (from Solar Energy Facts website) is a rather weak remake of the original Nasa diagram.

I find the floating powerpointish arrows kind of disturbing, and with the arrow magnitudes not to scale, would even call it misleading. Took the time to prepare two new versions of it (actually I am beta testing the new version 2.0 of e!Sankey at the moment – so this was a nice little test case).

The first version sticks more to the original idea of the diagram shown above, but the arrow magnitudes are corrected and to scale.

The second version is closer to the original ‘Breakdown of the incoming Solar Energy’ diagram by User A1 that can be found on Wikicommons. The latter one has the flow for energy being absorbed by atmosphere (33 PW) branching off as the first arrow horizontally.

Samples

History of Parties and Armies

phineasJune 16, 2008June 16, 20082 Comments

A company named HistoryShots offers some fine diagrams, that show the development of political parties in the U.S. and two historical graphs of the civil war (1861 to 1865) that remind of Sankey diagrams. Prints of these maps can be purchased from their site.

The ‘History of the Confederate Army’ and ‘The History of the Union Army’ how armies were formed, regrouped or significantly lost men in battles. The width of the ‘arrow’ with an implicit direction along the time line (shown at the bottom of the chart) represents the number of men. Additionally, the diagram is split into three main geographical areas (Western Theater, Eastern Theater and Trans Missisipi Theater).

History of the Union Army (by HistoryShots)

These diagrams are inspired by the famous Minard chart, which shows the loss of men on Napoleon’s march to Moscow and during the retreat.

The other two graphs are in the ‘Political’ section of the HistoryShots webpage, and show the development of political parties in the U.S. from 1730 to 1892 and from 1892 to 2005 respectively. On these graphs the widths of the “bands” don’t represent votes or seats. The popularity of each party is shown as the amplitude on the unlabeled x-axis.

History of Political Parties (by HistoryShots)

Democrats and Republicans are like sinus and cosinus waves over time, a picture that continues on the 1892 to 2005 map. Or one might also be reminded of the intertwined DNA double helix structure…

Note: I presented a similar diagram for the development of political parties in Slovakia 1990 to 2008 here on the blog before.

Samples

Energy Flow in Norway Municipality

phineasJune 4, 2008August 17, 20122 Comments

ENOVA is a public enterprise owned by the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy. It advises the ministry in questions relating to energy efficiency and new renewable energy.

One of their services is the practical development of energy and climate plans (Kommunal energi- og klimaplanlegging) for Norwegian municipalities. On their website they present a sample Sankey diagram to visualize energy flows.

The Sankey diagram shows the energy flows in the Stor-Elvdal municipality in GWh (probably per year, a year is not given). This is very interesting, as the municipality can cover almost all of its energy for industry and private households from renewable energy sources, such as biomass and wind. Energy from fossil sources is consumed through almost entirely transportation. Stor-Elvdal produces 47.5 GWh within the municipality, and imports another 35,8 GWh from wind from outside the municipality.

A small typo can be found in label on the the orange flow (saying 85,8 where it should read 95,8), but this doesn’t spoil the overall quality of this diagram painted with SDraw, I guess.

Download the publication (in Norwegian) as PDF file

Samples

Odum’s Energy and Matter Flows in Ecosystems

phineasJune 2, 2008August 17, 20121 Comment

A visitor to this blog pointed me to the work and life of system ecologist Howard T. Odum.

Odum “in his early work used a diagramming methodology very similar to the Sankey diagrams used in chemical process engineering. In this model energy and matter flows through an ecosystem”.

In Odum’s ‘Silver Spring Study’, he

…mapped in detail all the flow routes to and from the stream. He measured the energy input of sun and rain, and of all organic matter – even those of the bread the tourists threw to ducks and fish – and then measured that gradually left the spring. In this way he was able to establish the stream’s energy budget. (Wikipedia)

This diagram shows the energy flows in the ecosystem. The main contributors are sunlight and other biomass imports. Energy “leaves” the system as exports (extraction of animals and biomass) and mainly as decomposed matter. There are no absolute figures in this diagram, but the proportions seem to be represented by the arrow magnitudes.

The diagram has a nice “natural touch” to it, and at first sight one might think that you are looking at the arms of a river delta…

Publications

Article on Sankey Diagrams in JIE

phineasMay 29, 20081 Comment

A two-part article on ‘The Sankey Diagram in Energy and Material Flow Management’ was published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology (JIE). The author, Mario Schmidt is a professor at Pforzheim University in Germany. The first part focuses on the history of Sankey diagrams, while the second centers on ‘Methodology and Current Applications’.

Abstracts and links to the full articles are available at the publisher’s website.

Mario Schmidt (2008) The Sankey Diagram in Energy and Material Flow Management. Part I: History Journal of Industrial Ecology 12 (1) , 82–94 doi:10.1111/j.1530-9290.2008.00004.x

Mario Schmidt (2008) The Sankey Diagram in Energy and Material Flow Management. Part II: Methodology and Current Applications
Journal of Industrial Ecology 12 (2) , 173–185 doi:10.1111/j.1530-9290.2008.00015.x

I am not a subscriber, but maybe someone with access to these publications wishes to post a summary comment.

Samples

Visio Pre-Wired Sankey Diagram Shape

phineasMay 27, 2008August 17, 2012

Visio Guy has been “messing around with … Sankey Diagram Shapes for Visio again — because [he] just couldn’t resist”. 😉

The result is a pre-wired Sankey diagram shape, in which five flows exit from a process box. The flows scale automatically according to the user input.

VG’s example is fun, showing cost of living and what money is being spent on. I just hope his food spendings don’t spread 60/40 on chips and coffee… 😀

Read the full blog post. There is a download link for this Visio shape at the end.

History, Samples

Estimated Budget Chart

phineasMay 23, 2008January 30, 20202 Comments

A similar Sankey-style diagram to the one I presented in my last post can be found on the visualcomplexity.com website.

It shows the estimated budgeted costs and earnings and was published by IBM back in 1940 (original source: H. Arkin, Graphs: How to make and use them (Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York, ed. Revised, 1940).

I am not sure if this fully qualifies as a Sankey diagram, since the flows are not directional. The earnings from sales of different products are broken down into arrows of different magnitude from/to the left. Costs for producing the products and overhead costs are on the right side. This chart thus constitutes a graphical representation of an accounting system, with values given in percent rather than as absolute figures.

These distribution diagrams are also known as ‘Spaghetti diagrams’. See this detail:

Manuel Lima’s visualcomplexity website has more interesting diagrams, and one can spend hours browsing the projects. I will be presenting a few more of them that qualify as Sankey diagrams here on the blog in the future.