Transborder Pharmaceutical

Brooklyn, NY, USA

By Scott Goodwin
borders, trade, pharmaceutical, transportation

Legal phamaceutical trade at US border ports visualized

Over 13.5 trillion dollars worth of goods legally crossed the northern and southern borders of the United States by truck or train in 2015. Pharmaceutical products comprised approximately 126.7 billion dollars of total trade-value that year, as recorded by the US Department of Transportation.

Transborder Pharmaceutical is an information visualization and data explorer for the web that describes the recent-historical movement of pharmaceutical commodities between the United States, Canada and Mexico by land. The information presented is derived from government customs documentation, and expresses trade volume in dollar amounts from the past eight years (2007-2015). Total trade data and pharmaceutical trade data are organized comparatively by port. The viewer may choose to filter information based on the United States’ trading partner (Canada or Mexico) or through trade type (total trade, imports or exports). A time-slider allows for exploring trends over time and recognizing irregularities. Statistical representations of time-series trade information are presented port by port. A secondary map provides an up-close satellite view of each US Customs location along the border.

This visualization is meant as a first step in exploring international infrastructures of everyday commodities. Additionally, locating quantitative information in entry and exit points along national borders proves a unique understanding into how individual commodities exist and move within a nation: ports serve as condensers and archivists of goods – through them, we gain insight into the scattered and distributed in a moment as they are bottlenecked and documented before dispersing again. Investigation into trade items along boundaries may reveal local or national narratives about how, where and why commodities are produced, distributed and consumed.

This project utilized data provided by the United States Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics. One hundred and four land ports (including ferry ports) along the northern and southern US borders were sorted from a complete collection of port locations, and visually geolocated via satellite imagery. Data for each port regarding total and pharmaceutical trade, imports and exports were gathered for truck and train transportation modes and aggregated annually.