Syrian Refugee Informal Settlement Animation

This is an animation of the growth in Syrian refugee informal camp settlements in Lebanon over the past several years.  You can see from the .gif that the growth was most dramatic in terms of the number of settlements in the Summer of 2013.  The border has recently been closed and the number of additional settlements you can tell has dramatically decreased (opening in new window may be better for viewing).   

This was inspired by a much cooler animation by Nathan Yau of Walmart/Sams club store locations over time.  But this was my best attempt using what I knew in R, code here.  Special thanks to Kay Cichini for his helpful examples/tips and Yihui Xie for creating the awesome 'animation' package.

Syrian Refugee Density in Lebanon

I've done a few posts on Syria and have used data provided by the UNHCR for different analysis or visualization.  There are several links on their Syrian refugee data portal that communicate the breadth of this crisis numerically and visually.

One such link had the locations of settlements in Lebanon and the number of people in each settlement.  This information is undoubtedly helpful for coordinating the location of services within camps and in general tracking how they grow.  I was interested in seeing the growth of these camps, where and during what time periods the most growth is seen.

Below is a map of the country (or most of it) showing where all the tents are located that have been documented by the UNHCR.  Overlaid is a density plot communicating the concentration of structures (tents) with the number of people housed per structure.

The concentration of settlements has clearly been just outside of a town called Zahle.  If we look more closely at Zahle we can more clearly see the number of people per tent in this settlement.  On average across Lebanon there are over 6 people per tent based on this UNHCR dataset, some as high as 12.

If looked at year by year, we can see how during different years this area was settled more heavily.  2013 was a year where a significant amount of tents were constructed or setup.  

No doubt this data is being used to coordinate the location of different public facilities such as clinics, etc.  Data such as this provided by UNHCR serves burgeoning communities with much needed information in how to setup a town or "plan" for how this settlement could be organized or mitigated differently.  The code for this data and graphs, or at least most of it is available on my Github account.  

Syrian Refugee with googleVis

In a previous post I showed the timeline of refugees leaving Syria for other countries.  The number of refugees leaving Syria is remarkable.  Understanding the strain this presents on countries is difficult to grasp.  Below I've attempted to visualize the population and proportion of refugees each of these countries hosts.  The tree map below shows the number of refugees (color:  red (lower) - green (higher) ) when compared between countries and the relative size of the host country (population) being represented by square size in the plot.  To the right of the tree map is a sankey diagram showing the relative volume of refugees in different countries in different times.  Notice how the volume to Lebanon increases dramatically from 2012 to 2013.

Though the number of refugees would strain any countries' economy, Lebanon is experiencing a unique proportion of the burden in this regard.  The number of refugees has had a considerable impact on the overall population percentage of the country.  The weight of hosting this many refugees is particularly straining to Lebanese laborers, rent prices, and other resources of the country.  

Syria Timeline

The UNHCR has provided a portal for tracking when refugees have left Syria and where they have gone.  The display of data in the graph below is in no way endorsed by the UNHCR, but was aggregated from their portal

As seen in a previous post, neighboring countries and specifically Lebanon has played a significant role in the process of relocating refugees.  The flow of people to these countries over time is remarkable considering that the demographics of most refugees entering neighboring countries, over 50% of the refugees are under the age of 18 (validity of this number also available at the UNHCR portal).  The chart below is interactive, but set to a setting that shows the growth over time of refugees from Syria moving to other countries.  You may notice the specific months where this spikes as well.  The data from the portal began in 2011 for the countries being tracked, and at that point some countries were already facilitating camps or other accommodations for Syrian refugees.

Lebanon shouldering Syria

The crisis that is Syria has had an incredible regional affect geopolitically, economically, and has required a significant response in humanitarian aid.  As the mass evacuation has occurred, surrounding countries are found hosting thousands of people, many of them children.  The UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) has setup an inter-agency portal for tracking where refugees are going in the region.  Keep in mind, these people they are tracking are those that have registered with the UN.  It's safe to assume for one reason or another that many people in fact do not register.  Those that have registered and the approximate number of those that haven't total the "Total Persons of Concern" figure that the UNHCR puts out.  Below is a map that shows the "Total Persons of Concern" number with the number of persons indicated by the circle size in each city they are located.

You may notice that Turkey hosts the most refugees in one location, albeit there are many different camps in Turkey but that is not portrayed on the UNHCR website.  The camps hosting the refugees vary in their funding, some from the UN and some from the country itself.  Refugees in Lebanon seem to be hosted in four different cities as indicated by the UNHCR.  Lebanon also hosts the most Syrian refugees out of any country.

A couple remarkable things about the Lebanon's role with Syrian refugees.  First, the country itself has just over 4 million people.  Again, according to the numbers retrieved from UNHCR, there are about 1 million Syrian refugees (persons of concern) living in Lebanon.  That means 1 in 4 people in Lebanon are Syrian refugees.  Let's look at these numbers a different way and consider comparable US cities (just so we can have a comparison to understand the gravity of these numbers).

Keep in mind all the different needs for these populations in the US.  Then imagine facilitating these needs in refugee camps...simply staggering.