Visualising alignment of Pilot MER programs and SP-SC framework

For a few months now, we have been exploring ways of visualising the alignment between local monitoring and evaluation programs with the strong people strong country framework. Because This is a key outcome of the project, selecting and developing an appropriate tool has been a priority.

As such, we wanted to produce something that would:

• be highly visual and easily digestible
• show a general picture of alignment (or lack thereof)
• demonstrate where the alignment is strongest within and across local programs, i.e. which SP-SC hubs are represented most commonly in local MER programs
• be interactive and easily interrogated (at least in its digital form)
• highlight that connections exists between values and hubs that might not otherwise be expected (i.e. that connections exist between biophysical/environmental, cultural, socioeconomic, and community development elements of local plans and the SPSC framework).

We've settled on a data visualisation tool called a Sankey chart or alluvial diagram, which can be seen here. We feel that the array of connectors that traverse the charts from local values to hubs achieves the outcomes listed above.

To produce this set of charts, we worked with each Pilot group to connect their indicators with any attributes from the SP-SC framework that they related to. This was done using the groups database and produced a set of relationships between local indicators (and their respective values) and the SPSC framework’s attributes (and their related hubs).

The Sankey charts that you see are a visualisation of these relationships, which are represented at the level of values and hubs but shows the number of indicators that are aligned between these values and hubs.

Some analysis of these relationships and what these charts show will be done in the following Blog post…