Al Shaw is a Senior News Application Developer at ProPublica. He uses data and interactive graphics to cover environmental issues, natural disasters and politics.
A year before Hurricane Harvey devastated Houston, Shaw was part of a team that produced “Hell and High Water,” which warned of the region's vulnerability to coastal storms. The project won a Peabody Award in 2017. Shaw's project, “Losing Ground,” about the century-long erosion of Louisiana's coast won a Gold Medal from the Society for News Design. His interactive maps surrounding FEMA's response to Hurricane Sandy were honored with the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi award. Before joining ProPublica, Shaw was a designer/developer at the political news website Talking Points Memo.
On California’s fall fire days — days with high temperatures and wind speeds, as well as low humidity — all it takes is a spark from a downed power line to start an inferno. New research indicates that they’re about to become a lot more common.
According to new data analyzed by ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, warming temperatures, rising seas and changing rainfall will profoundly reshape the way people have lived in North America for centuries.
We asked experts to watch videos showing officers using tear gas, pepper balls and explosives on protesters. Police actions often escalated confrontations.
The CARES Act temporarily protects millions of renters from being evicted, and many states and cities passed their own rules to help those struggling to pay rent. Use our new database to find out if eviction bans might apply to you.
We’re tracking how many New York City residents have tested positive for the coronavirus in every ZIP code and how each neighborhood compares with others.
How soon regions run out of hospital beds depends on how fast the novel coronavirus spreads and how many open beds they had to begin with. Here’s a look at the whole country. You can also search for your region.
To see the complex navigation system aboard the USS John S. McCain is to wonder how any amount of training would have been enough for sailors to have been confident using it.
Camden’s waterfront sat vacant for decades, but George E. Norcross III helped to usher in lucrative tax breaks. The land went to his friends and allies. Now, federal investigators are looking into some of the deals.
ProPublica and The Times-Picayune and The Advocate investigated the potential cancer-causing toxicity in the air. Using EPA data, public records requests and more, we found that some of the country’s most toxic air will likely get worse.
Data from an EPA model indicates that communities along the lower Mississippi River corridor already face severely elevated cancer risks from industrial activity. Massive new chemical plants are slated to be built there anyway.
For the first time ever, ProPublica and the Gazette-Mail used software to show over 5,000 permitted wells and the pads on which they sit. Here’s what they look like.
In the wake of hurricanes like Florence, the U.S. government pays to dump truckloads of sand onto eroding beaches, in a cycle that is said to harm ecosystems and disproportionately benefit the rich.
After discovering that the resumes of political appointees include information not revealed on their financial disclosure forms, Property of the People used data from Trump Town and Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain as many staff resumes as possible.
When the worst flood in nearly a century hit Cairo, Illinois, in 2011, the Army Corps waited before following an emergency plan designed to save a city of 2,800 people. See how that week unfolded and the delays and indecision that cost millions in avoidable damage.
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