GIS Dashboards & Story Maps: From Situational Awareness to Place-based Narratives
Organizations use GIS dashboards for real-time decision-making and story maps for persuasive, place-based communication. Below is a concise guide to what each excels at, how they complement one another, and the technology stacks Codexal uses to build them—plus design and governance tips.
What’s a GIS dashboard?
A dashboard brings location-based analytics into one screen—maps, charts, indicators, and filters—to monitor status, spot trends, and act quickly. Products like ArcGIS Dashboards are configurable and widely used for operational, strategic, and public dashboards.
What’s a story map?
A story map combines maps with narrative text, images, video and embeds to tell an interactive story. ArcGIS StoryMaps provides an easy builder for linear “scrollytelling” stories and slide-based briefings, with customizable themes.
When to use which?
- Dashboards: live KPIs, incident response, operations centers, public transparency portals.
- Story maps: campaigns, reports, project showcases, heritage & tourism narratives.
- Together: link a dashboard for monitoring with a story map for outreach and context.
Stacks to build GIS dashboards & stories
- No/low-code: ArcGIS Dashboards, ArcGIS StoryMaps.
- Open-source & custom: Leaflet, Mapbox GL JS, deck.gl, kepler.gl. For interoperability, expose data via OGC API – Features for standard feature access.
Design checklist
- Right map for the job: choropleth for rates/ratios; proportional symbols for counts; consider clusters/heatmaps.
- Progressive delivery: use vector tiles (e.g., Mapbox GL JS) for smooth zooming at scale.
- Performance: prefer server-side filtering or tiled data; for big data visualizations, leverage GPU frameworks like deck.gl.
- Accessibility: high-contrast palettes, alt text, keyboard navigation; avoid color-only encodings.
- Mobile-first: simplify panels and use responsive card layouts.
Governance & publishing
- Data pipelines: scheduled refresh or streaming; keep metadata and units clear.
- Versioning: keep a change log for published dashboards/stories; snapshot key releases.
- Open standards: publish read APIs with OGC API – Features to enable reuse by partners.
- Analytics: instrument events to learn which views/filters users rely on.
How Codexal helps
We deliver end-to-end GIS experiences: data modeling, scalable tiles & APIs, design systems for dashboards/stories, and secure hosting. Explore our services: Digital Transformation, Web & Mobile Apps, Integrations & DevOps, AI. Talk to us via Contact.