The graduated symbol maps represent the values for the five water footprint components per capita of 132 countries. Graduated symbol maps usually use symbols of different sizes, rather than color, placed within a region, country, continent, to denote the value ascribed to it. The choice of replacing the geographical world map with the diagram based on
a hexagonal grid comes from two main reasons.
The use of geographical map projections can be generally misleading for representing data, because the geographical structure constrains to place the graduated symbols according to an order that it is
not necessary to display the information.
That unnecessary order is responsible for misreading the graduated symbols and for having an overall misrepresentation of truth. Some areas of the geographic projections such as Eastern Europe will appear very dense of symbols, some others will appear almost empty, and the size of the symbols will be perceived differently according to the area within which they are placed. When we deal with volumes of water use, the only way to make a cross countries comparison is to consider per capita values. The use of a geographical map can be further problematic when we have to represent per capita values. Placing a graduated symbol within a country can lead to think that the symbol refer to the entire population, unless we read the index or the title of the map that will explain what sort of variables are representing. In order to avoid any mistake the use of a ‘per capita diagram’ can be incredibly successful. The diagram is designed to follow the principle that 1 country = 1 inhabitant = 1 unit grid. Click here for the Interactive Maps
