Find yourself a safer place to swim or fish in the Bay Area

Another example of a web dashboard built using R comes from John Oram, a scientist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute. SFEI collects and monitors environmental data from the waters and wetlands of the Bay Area. By sampling the waters, sediments and fish of the San Francisco Bay and testing for toxins, pollutants and other hazards, they monitor the health of the environment for Bay Area residents.

"I can certainly imagine the day when your local surf-safety bulletin or fishing recommendations come from a tool like John's." —David Smith, Revolutions Computing

Making sense of such data could be a challenge: how do you translate random point-samples of pollutants taken over a long period of time into an overall picture of the environmental impact? John Oram has met this challenge in two ways more >