The Scenario Data Selector is a Perl script that makes it easy to serve data from scenario studies on the web. It is ideal when you have
The script will automatically aggregate data over regions, and will calculate growth rates and indices for the indicators you specify.
Try it out online! or just Download it
The Scenario Data Selector is open source, released under the MIT license. Please see the distribution files for the license.
You supply a data file and an indicator definition file. You also supply a configuration file with some information about your installation. Then when the Scenario Data Selector script (sds.cgi) is run, it generates the HTML.
The data file data.csv contains the actual numbers. It has a simple format, as shown in this sample:
scenario,region,macroregion,year,gdp,pop Baseline,Africa,Asia and Developing,2000,1898.466892,793.627 Baseline,Africa,Asia and Developing,2010,2762.736319,994.001 Baseline,Africa,Asia and Developing,2020,3949.87246,1224.11 Baseline,Africa,Asia and Developing,2030,5560.424619,1480.77 High Growth,Africa,Asia and Developing,2000,1898.466892,793.627 High Growth,Africa,Asia and Developing,2010,3185.028353,959.343 High Growth,Africa,Asia and Developing,2020,5248.960122,1140.29 High Growth,Africa,Asia and Developing,2030,8515.775634,1331.42 Low Growth,Africa,Asia and Developing,2000,1898.466892,793.627 Low Growth,Africa,Asia and Developing,2010,2465.622288,1022.63 Low Growth,Africa,Asia and Developing,2020,3146.354897,1295.58 Low Growth,Africa,Asia and Developing,2030,3954.130772,1612.22 ...
The data should all be for variables that can be added up across regions, such as GDP, population, total emissions, land area, etc. This is what makes it possible for the Scenario Data Selector to automatically aggregate across regions.
The values that are actually reported in the table are defined in indicators.csv. Heres a sample:
Population,millions,Demographics,YYY,pop,1 GDP,trillion 1995$PPP,Economics,YYY,0.001 * gdp,1 Income,1995$PPP/capita,Economics,YYY,1000 * gdp/pop,0
Each line defines an indicator, by specifying
The configuration file, sds.cfg, gives some information about the installation:
For the CSS stylesheet, you can either keep the default (it points to a stylesheet stored on this site), or you can create your own stylesheet.
This is an open-source project hosted on SourceForge. Go to the Scenario Data Selector download page to download the files.
The script is currently in beta, because it requires some care for the person preparing the data and indicator files. However, once the files are set up and tested, it should work without problems for the final end users.
For more details about installation and configuration, please see the information in the project files. You can also contact the author at eric@kb-creative.net.