Aviation Incident Visualizations

By Michal Jagodzinski - May 1st, 2023

Welcome back to Star Coffee! Super quick post today. I've been getting back into data visualization (as can be seen with my last post), and I stumbled on a good dataset from the Aviation Safety Network. So I decided to use this dataset to practice my data visualization skills some more.

I hope you enjoy these visualizations, and hopefully you learn some new tricks to implement for your own work.

First Visualization

Data wrangling:

data <- raw_data %>%
  mutate(
    fatalities = as.integer(fatalities),
    year = as.integer(year),
    operator = as.factor(operator)
  )

fig1_data <- data %>%
  filter(!str_detect(operator, "AF|Air Force|Navy")) %>%
  group_by(year) %>%
  summarize(
    total_accidents = n(),
    total_fatalities = sum(fatalities, na.rm = TRUE)
  ) %>%
  mutate(fatalities_per_accident = total_fatalities/total_accidents) %>%
  drop_na

Visualization code:

ggplot(data=fig1_data, aes(x=year, y=total_fatalities)) +
  geom_point(aes(size=fatalities_per_accident,colour=fatalities_per_accident), shape=18) +
  scale_colour_gradientn(
    colours=c("#003f5c", "#ff6361"),
  ) +
 guides(
  color=guide_colorbar(
    title.position = "top",
    title.hjust = .5,
    barwidth=unit(20, "lines"),
    barheight=unit(.5, "lines"),
  ), size="none")+
  labs(
    x="",
    y="",
    title="Yearly Fatalities of Non-Military Aviation Passengers",
    subtitle = "",
    colour="Fatalities per Incident",
    caption="Source: Aviation Safety Network Dataset",
  ) +
  coord_cartesian(clip="off") +
  theme_minimal() +
  theme(
    legend.position = "top",
    text = element_text(family="Atkinson Hyperlegible"),
    panel.grid = element_blank(),
    axis.line = element_line(colour = "lightgrey", linewidth = 0.25),
    axis.ticks = element_line(colour = "lightgrey", linewidth = 0.25),
    plot.title=ggtext::element_textbox_simple(
      size=rel(1.5), face="bold",
      margin = margin(0, 0, 0.5, 0, "lines")
    ),
    plot.caption=ggtext::element_textbox_simple(halign=0)
  )

Second Visualization

Data wrangling:

fig2_data <- data %>%
  mutate(operator = case_when(
    str_detect(operator, "AF|Air Force|Navy") ~ "Military",
    TRUE ~ "Non-Military"
  )) %>%
  mutate(operator = factor(operator, levels=c("Non-Military", "Military"))) %>%
  group_by(year, military) %>%
  summarize(
    total_incidents = n(),
    total_fatalities = sum(fatalities, na.rm = TRUE),
    .groups = "keep"
  ) %>%
  mutate(fatalities_per_accident = total_fatalities/total_incidents) %>%
  drop_na

Visualization code:

regions <- tibble(x1=1939, x2=1945, y1=-Inf, y2=+Inf)

ggplot(data=fig2_data, aes(x=year, y=total_fatalities, group=operator, colour=operator)) +
  geom_line() +
  geom_point(aes(shape=operator)) +
  labs(
    x="",
    y="",
    title="Yearly Fatalities of Aviation Passengers",
    subtitle = paste0("Comparison between <span style='color:", "#ff6361", "'>military</span> and <span style='color:", "#003f5c", "'>non-military</span> flight operators"),
    caption="Source: Aviation Safety Network Dataset",
    colour="Operator",
    shape="Operator"
  ) +
  coord_cartesian(expand=FALSE, clip="off") +
  theme_minimal() +
  theme(
    legend.position = "top",
    text = element_text(family="Atkinson Hyperlegible"),
    panel.grid = element_blank(),
    axis.line = element_line(colour = "lightgrey", linewidth = 0.25),
    axis.ticks = element_line(colour = "lightgrey", linewidth = 0.25),
    plot.title=ggtext::element_textbox_simple(
      size=rel(1.5), face="bold",
      margin = margin(0, 0, 0.5, 0, "lines")
    ),
    plot.subtitle=ggtext::element_textbox_simple(margin = margin(0, 0, 0.5, 0, "lines")),
    plot.caption=ggtext::element_textbox_simple(halign=0)
  ) +
  scale_x_continuous(breaks = scales::pretty_breaks(n = 10)) +
  scale_colour_manual(values=c("#003f5c", "#ff6361")) +
  geom_rect(
    data=regions, inherit.aes=FALSE,
    mapping=aes(xmin=x1, xmax=x2, ymin=y1, ymax=y2),
    color="transparent", fill="#ff6361", alpha=.1
  ) +
  ggrepel::geom_text_repel(
    data = tibble(x=1945, y=2000),
    aes(x=x, y=y), label = "WW2", colour="#ff6361", inherit.aes = FALSE,
    nudge_x = 7,
    nudge_y = 50,
    segment.curvature = -1e-20,
    arrow = arrow(length = unit(0.015, "npc")),
    min.segment.length = 0
  ) +
  ggrepel::geom_text_repel(
    data = tibble(x=2001, y=649),
    aes(x=x, y=y), label = "September 11 Attacks", colour="#003f5c", inherit.aes = FALSE,
    nudge_x = 15,
    nudge_y = 1000,
    segment.curvature = -1e-20,
    arrow = arrow(length = unit(0.015, "npc")),
    min.segment.length = 0
  ) +
  ggrepel::geom_text_repel(
    data = tibble(x=1977, y=1847),
    aes(x=x, y=y), label = "Tenerife Disaster", colour="#003f5c", inherit.aes = FALSE,
    nudge_x = 2,
    nudge_y = 800,
    segment.curvature = -1e-20,
    arrow = arrow(length = unit(0.015, "npc")),
    min.segment.length = 0
  ) +
  ggrepel::geom_text_repel(
    data = tibble(x=1985, y=2358),
    aes(x=x, y=y), label = "Japan Air Lines Flight 123", colour="#003f5c", inherit.aes = FALSE,
    nudge_x = 30,
    nudge_y = 300,
    segment.curvature = -1e-20,
    arrow = arrow(length = unit(0.015, "npc")),
    min.segment.length = 0
  ) +
  ggrepel::geom_text_repel(
    data = tibble(x=1985, y=2358),
    aes(x=x, y=y), label = "Japan Air Lines Flight 123", colour="#003f5c", inherit.aes = FALSE,
    nudge_x = 30,
    nudge_y = 300,
    segment.curvature = -1e-20,
    arrow = arrow(length = unit(0.015, "npc")),
    min.segment.length = 0
  )