# Global trade flows

Published: 2013-07-01

What is the big picture of how global trade flows have changed over the last decade? This project was developed for citibank to investigate and demonstrate insights about mid-term economic trends.

## Key visuals

- Global Trade Flows app, map view with 40 countries as circles connected by trade-flow arcs, plus legend
- Map view with China selected, exports 1.56trn and imports 1.04trn, blue arcs highlighting its trade partners
- Map view with Saudi Arabia selected, exports 169bn and imports 87.5bn, arcs to its trade partners
- String view sorted by trade balance, countries in a row from US to China with arcs showing trade flows
- String view sorted by longitude, countries in a row with colored arcs showing import and export flows

The application shows the development of imports and exports in 40 selected countries over the last decade. Users can play back the last ten years on a world map or an ordered display of the countries similar to beads on a string, sorted by trade volume, balance, or latitude.

![Network map of 40 countries sized by trade volume, with colored arcs showing import and export flows, Saudi Arabia selected]()

The raw data was acquired from the [UN comtrade](http://comtrade.un.org/db/) database and comprise the self-reported import and export statistics for each country.

![Detail panel with area charts of a country's trade volume (exports 169bn, imports 87.5bn) and growth rates from 2001 to 2010]()

In addition to the overview visualizations that allow perception of global patterns and shifts, precise values can be read from tooltips and a detail panel on the bottom.Finance buffs will appreciate how the detail panels show not only the absolute numbers over time, but also the relative change from year to year (first derivative), as well as the "change of the change" (second derivative).

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[View on truth-and-beauty.net](https://truth-and-beauty.net/projects/citi-trade-flows)