Visualisation practice - six years after the closures of 10 fire stations in London

The primary aim of this project was to apply visualisation theory and good practice principles. What theories were applied?

• The monthly (year-to-date) average response times form a time-series. Therefore, it is presented in a line-chart.
• Colour hue was used to three main time-series: the highest, the middle and the lowest. The reader would be able to see the trends avoiding unnecessary details.
• The target responses were coloured in red to highlight when a time-series exceeds the target.
• Chart-junk has been removed.
• Simple story is being told: the closures might have caused increase in average year-to-date responses, but after one year the response times started falling back to pre-closure levels.
• Visual deception is avoided: the vertical access starts from zero, only one scale is uses, colour hue is used to highlight particular patterns, bounds were used to group observations together.