The Storm Data undertaken in this analysis consists of different variables pertaining to storms. The objectives of the following analysis would be to analyse and create corresponding graphs that could answer questions pertaining to the type of events that can be generally considered harmful towards the population's health Another thing the analysis is trying to answer, is finding the economic impacts the different types of storms have caused towards the US economic market. This, in turn would provide some insights about possible preventative measures that can be undertaken when tied this analysis together with the measures undertaken after these events, and comparing the results.
The data for this assignment come in the form of a comma-separated-value file compressed via the bzip2 algorithm to reduce its size. You can download the file from the course web site:
Dataset: Storm Data [47Mb]
There is also some documentation of the database available. Here you will find how some of the variables are constructed/defined.
The events in the database start in the year 1950 and end in November 2011. In the earlier years of the database there are generally fewer events recorded, most likely due to a lack of good records. More recent years should be considered more complete.
# Load Libraries
library(ggplot2)
library(RColorBrewer)
library(dplyr)
library(lattice)
# Download and unzip the data
fileurl = 'https://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/repdata%2Fdata%2FStormData.csv.bz2'
if (!file.exists('./NOAA_Storm')){
download.file(fileurl,'./NOAA_Storm.csv.bz')
dateDownloaded <- date()
}
NOAA_raw <- read.csv(bzfile('./NOAA_Storm.csv.bz'), stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
head(NOAA_raw)
## STATE__ BGN_DATE BGN_TIME TIME_ZONE COUNTY COUNTYNAME STATE
## 1 1 4/18/1950 0:00:00 0130 CST 97 MOBILE AL
## 2 1 4/18/1950 0:00:00 0145 CST 3 BALDWIN AL
## 3 1 2/20/1951 0:00:00 1600 CST 57 FAYETTE AL
## 4 1 6/8/1951 0:00:00 0900 CST 89 MADISON AL
## 5 1 11/15/1951 0:00:00 1500 CST 43 CULLMAN AL
## 6 1 11/15/1951 0:00:00 2000 CST 77 LAUDERDALE AL
## EVTYPE BGN_RANGE BGN_AZI BGN_LOCATI END_DATE END_TIME COUNTY_END
## 1 TORNADO 0 0
## 2 TORNADO 0 0
## 3 TORNADO 0 0
## 4 TORNADO 0 0
## 5 TORNADO 0 0
## 6 TORNADO 0 0
## COUNTYENDN END_RANGE END_AZI END_LOCATI LENGTH WIDTH F MAG FATALITIES
## 1 NA 0 14.0 100 3 0 0
## 2 NA 0 2.0 150 2 0 0
## 3 NA 0 0.1 123 2 0 0
## 4 NA 0 0.0 100 2 0 0
## 5 NA 0 0.0 150 2 0 0
## 6 NA 0 1.5 177 2 0 0
## INJURIES PROPDMG PROPDMGEXP CROPDMG CROPDMGEXP WFO STATEOFFIC ZONENAMES
## 1 15 25.0 K 0
## 2 0 2.5 K 0
## 3 2 25.0 K 0
## 4 2 2.5 K 0
## 5 2 2.5 K 0
## 6 6 2.5 K 0
## LATITUDE LONGITUDE LATITUDE_E LONGITUDE_ REMARKS REFNUM
## 1 3040 8812 3051 8806 1
## 2 3042 8755 0 0 2
## 3 3340 8742 0 0 3
## 4 3458 8626 0 0 4
## 5 3412 8642 0 0 5
## 6 3450 8748 0 0 6
# Load Libraries