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RICardo Project : Exploring XIX Century International Trade

Paul Girard, Béatrice Dedinger, Donato Ricci, Benjamin Ooghe, Mathieu Jacomy, Guillaume Plique, Grégory Tible

We present the RICardo data visualization application (http://ricardo.medialab.sciences-po.fr) designed to explore a XIXth century international trade statistics database. The tool offers 3 levels of exploration: a World trade level, a Country level detailing the commercial partners of a chosen country, and a Bilateral level revealing the differences in mirrored trade flows. We discuss the design choices made to provide an exploratory data analysis tool which respects and represents the data uncertainty and heterogeneity of our historical database. We briefly present the opportunities offered by our tool for researchers and students, and explain our own transdisciplinary research method combining skills from History, Economy, Information Technology and Information Design.