How to measure supplier risk? a GIS approach

Data-driven environmental stories have a communication problem. The people who most need to understand the results — decision-makers, community representatives, policy teams — are often the least equipped to interpret a GIS report or a statistical table.

Story maps offer a different contract with the reader: instead of presenting evidence and asking the reader to draw conclusions, they guide the reader through a spatial narrative that makes the conclusion feel inevitable.

What Makes a Story Map Effective

After working on several story map projects for environmental clients, three patterns consistently distinguish effective ones:

1. Anchored in place, not in data

The temptation when you have rich geospatial data is to show all of it. Effective story maps resist this. They anchor the narrative in specific, recognizable places — a watershed, a village, a forest edge — and use data selectively to illuminate what happened there.

2. Sequential, not simultaneous

Interactive maps that let users explore freely are powerful for analysts. For general audiences, sequential storytelling — where each scroll reveals the next piece of the narrative — is far more effective. The reader is guided rather than expected to navigate.

3. Context before evidence

Showing a deforestation map to someone unfamiliar with the region provides no useful information. Effective spatial stories establish why this place matters before showing evidence of change.

I had seen maps of the area before, but this was the first time I understood what the numbers actually meant for the communities living there.

From a stakeholder interview

Technical Patterns I Use

My current workflow for building lightweight story maps:

• Scrollytelling — Intersection Observer API to trigger map state changes as the reader scrolls
• Map library — Maplibre GL JS (open-source, performant for vector tiles)
• Hosting — Static site on GitHub Pages (no server required)
• Data — PMtiles for vector data (single-file tile format, works without a tile server)

The goal is always the same: a story that works on a phone, loads fast, and doesn’t require the reader to know what a CRS is.

An Honest Limitation

Story maps simplify. That’s their strength and their weakness. A well-designed spatial narrative will inevitably omit uncertainty, caveats, and methodological details that matter to technical readers. The answer is not to avoid simplification, but to be honest about it — linking to full methodology documentation for those who want to go deeper.

I’ll be writing more about specific technical implementations in future posts.

This tool cut our reporting time in half. I can now get answers that used to require a dedicated GIS analyst and two days of processing.

Project Manager, Field Operations

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