Informatics

Commerce: Global Exports

ClimateTemperatures

 

Application of Informatics

International trade has existed since Marco Polo traveled on Silk Road in 13th century, or even earlier. In the last few decades its significance for Australia has increased dramatically, partially driven by cheap transport and partly by the dropping of trade barriers. The nature of our global trade shapes both the strategy of international relationships, and domestic policies. Australian's mining boom (that has so far contributed ~$A300 billion to our economy), generally accepted to be driven by the expansion of the Chinese economy, is an example how Australian foreign policy and prosperity are tied to our international trade.

 

Informatics in Action

The following example illustrates the trend of Australian export. The table below contains the historical data of our export value (in AUD million dollar) to the top seven countries (from 1998 to 2006). The data is acquired from Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Year China India Japan Korea New Zealand Taiwan United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States of America Total
1988 1078 576 11488 2021 2138 1468 229 1485 4445 42370
1989 1194 524 12443 2488 2519 1747 307 1660 5207 47007
1990 1293 642 13443 2984 2558 1780 259 1831 5801 50891
1991 1522 663 14821 3366 2633 2330 326 1717 5367 53721
1992 1874 840 14750 3659 3109 2561 328 2279 5134 58377
1993 2296 922 15627 4359 3691 2779 423 2852 5068 62739
1994 2816 874 15991 4707 4391 2849 397 2368 4645 64775
1995 3131 1099 16566 6060 5303 3300 429 2496 4628 71670
1996 3877 1224 15565 7305 5659 3428 573 2759 4978 76982
1997 3977 1692 16814 6763 6179 4059 891 2435 6338 84790
1998 3792 2148 17384 6104 5691 4267 939 4753 8477 88987
1999 4091 1515 16706 6280 6675 4163 809 3737 8411 86893
2000 6010 1833 21804 9045 6567 5557 1010 3752 10982 110355
2001 7581 2425 23723 9530 7182 5377 1273 5198 11914 122531
2002 8372 2482 22176 9980 7938 4746 1280 5607 11547 119458
2003 9087 3338 19686 8084 8146 3724 1121 7403 9454 107956
2004 11014 5430 22219 9170 8769 4091 1292 5053 9546 117773
2005 16129 6978 28460 10960 9002 5520 1235 4968 9262 139080
2006 20373 8816 32442 12351 8941 6258 1953 8114 10081 163753

View data in XML format.

Investigating the data in textual form is not an easy task. That is when visualization of data comes handy. The following visualization display exactly the same data. But using this one, a user can have a sense of how our international trade with a particular country evolves over time. For example, export to China grows about six folds, from 2% to 12% of our total export. At the same time, export to USA grows weaker from 10% to 6%. We can also see that Australia now has closer economy ties to Asia: the top three export destinations are Japan, China, and Korea. In 1988, those three positions were held by Japan, USA, and New Zealand. Move the year scrollbar to see the movement of the export data.

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Resources

The visualization above was made using processing, initally developed by MIT Media Lab.

Data
Code
Other Resources