Trase.

Client

Stockholm Environment Institute

Global Canopy

Client type

Government & Public sector

Topic

Climate

Nature

Services

Custom Digital Tools

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Tracing sustainable supply chains.

Trase is revolutionizing the understanding and management of agricultural commodity supply chains. Using publicly available data, Trase brings unprecedented transparency and traceability to supply chains and their link with deforestation and environmental impacts.

Creating clarity for opportunities for change.

Mapping global supply chains driving deforestation.

A major investigation by The Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism using Trase data discovered that Brazilian beef linked to deforestation was being sold by a company that supplies McDonalds, Burger King, and UK supermarkets.

Global impact.

By promoting deforestation-free commitments and fostering collaboration, Trase contributes to the global fight against deforestation, habitat loss, and climate change.

Inform action.

Trase equips stakeholders with actionable intelligence to identify and address environmental and social risks associated with commodity production.

‍Rising to regulation.

From EU Deforestation Law to the evolving CSRD, Trase data helps companies map their impacts and effectively focus their due diligence efforts.

Developing the Trase platform.

The brief.

The Trase initiative was created to connect consumer markets to on-the-ground impacts. Its data-driven approach empowers action and accountability, catalyzing positive change across critical commodity export markets. Backed by scientific expertise from Stockholm Environment Institute and Global Canopy and a wider partnership of 34 organizations. We joined the development team to turn this vision into an impact driven platform.

Our role.

At the heart of Trase is a beautiful, interactive sankey diagram that visualizes the export and import of 13 commodities that are linked to deforestation, including soy, beef, coffee, and cocoa. The datasets that feed this visualization are immense and we had to resist the urge to cram in as many features as possible. Instead, we carefully selected features that would allow people to explore the complex relationships between the data points without being overwhelmed. Pushing technology to the limits, the sankey diagram is the perfect way to fully appreciate the global demand for agricultural commodities.

The Trase dataset is immense and the relationships between the data points are convoluted, but that doesn’t mean the user experience should be complicated. We took great care with the design of the map and sankey interface, incorporating simple hover and click interactions so users can perform complex filters that help them draw insights. More recently, we designed a new feature for the Trase platform that allows users to create their own data dashboard with custom options.

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Delivered with impact.

Outstanding flexibility.

D3 is an obvious choice for building complex data visualisations and Trase uses the latest iteration of this library with a completely customised layout for the boundary-pushing sankey diagram. In just a few lines of code, D3 turned a static sankey into a fully animated visualisation of trade data. Using Redux alongside D3 helped us deal with complex interaction flows within the data and meant we could keep the entire application state— including enabled filters, selected nodes and selected regions on the map—in a simple Javascript object and open up the option to share detailed stories drawn from the data.

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