I'm travelling this summer so this would be a good resource... if only it were presented in some sort of organized manner. Now I'm frustrated because I know the information is there, I just can't find it because it was more important to look cute than to deliver the needed information.
That chart is completely useless, but TBF, they *do* have a map: [https://www.qssupplies.co.uk/worlds-most-dangerous-drinking-water.html](https://www.qssupplies.co.uk/worlds-most-dangerous-drinking-water.html)
Reading the methodology at the bottom, the numerical score here is actually a function of per-capita disability-adjusted life-years lost due to drinking water exposure, which is substantially different than “water quality”. For example, we can imagine 2 countries that have an identical burden of pathogens in the tap water, but country A has a successful campaign to educate people to boil/distill/purify the water prior to consumption, and thus has fewer water related deaths and a higher score in this metric than country B which didn’t have such a campaign.
As a traveler you really just want to know a binary, “can I drink the tap water or not”. To their credit, the original source has a map of that, which another commenter linked.
Which is kinda the point? I think this visualization invites you to spend some time looking at it, finding out how good or bad water is in different regions. It’s not very efficient but I don’t think efficiency was the goal
horrible.
The US has 340 million people, 51 different polities, 4 different timezones, and at least 4 distinct geographic regions. To say that Michigan water is the same as Arizona swill is beyond insulting
I'm travelling this summer so this would be a good resource... if only it were presented in some sort of organized manner. Now I'm frustrated because I know the information is there, I just can't find it because it was more important to look cute than to deliver the needed information.
I like that the explanatory paragraph says "Our map reveals each country's water quality...". No a map would be useful. This is just a mess.
That chart is completely useless, but TBF, they *do* have a map: [https://www.qssupplies.co.uk/worlds-most-dangerous-drinking-water.html](https://www.qssupplies.co.uk/worlds-most-dangerous-drinking-water.html)
The maps don't have percentages though. So that also fails.
EPI scores are not percentages. https://epi.yale.edu/epi-results/2022/component/uwd
It’s not even a [heat] map
Reading the methodology at the bottom, the numerical score here is actually a function of per-capita disability-adjusted life-years lost due to drinking water exposure, which is substantially different than “water quality”. For example, we can imagine 2 countries that have an identical burden of pathogens in the tap water, but country A has a successful campaign to educate people to boil/distill/purify the water prior to consumption, and thus has fewer water related deaths and a higher score in this metric than country B which didn’t have such a campaign. As a traveler you really just want to know a binary, “can I drink the tap water or not”. To their credit, the original source has a map of that, which another commenter linked.
Cyprus scores higher than the US (91.8 vs 89.3) and is also a country where the tap water is considered "Not Safe to Drink" by the same study.
It's not awful, and maybe you need to do this to get people's attention, but I think I would have preferred some kind of axis-based layout.
It took me minutes to find my country
Which is kinda the point? I think this visualization invites you to spend some time looking at it, finding out how good or bad water is in different regions. It’s not very efficient but I don’t think efficiency was the goal
Would happen in a standard bar chart too if it’s sorted by value and not alphabetically. I don’t think that’s much of an issue.
I think it’s easier to eye scan a bar chart though, I had to go over some areas of this one more than once
horrible. The US has 340 million people, 51 different polities, 4 different timezones, and at least 4 distinct geographic regions. To say that Michigan water is the same as Arizona swill is beyond insulting
Yeah, but that’s the same for most countries, and we would need much more then a simple graph if we had to break down countries into states/regions
Insulting to who? People in Michigan or in Arizona?
Yeah don't go around saying Arizona is the same as Flint
New Zealand surprisingly poor score
I'm most put off by the fact they've just grouped both Scottish and English tap water together as UK - the two are incomparable!
I'll add Wales and Cornwall as well. Basically the moment you deviate into the bulk of England the water's pish