Infinite Lambda is a data and cloud consultancy that helps organizations around the world setup modern data stacks and build out analytics functions. Their goal is to make cutting-edge cloud and data technology accessible to people and businesses for innovation that impacts humanity.
One of their recent projects was for the World Health Organization (WHO) which wanted an interactive report on emissions data from around the world on their vehicles. They had statistics on overall emissions data but were not able to drill in to understand how emissions varied between countries, cities, vehicles, and driver behavior.
Infinite Lambda was looking for a way to deliver this project quickly while providing transparency in the data preparation/transformation process, and ensure cost-effectiveness of the insights for the WHO.
Infinite Lambda chose Hex to build this interactive report for the WHO. Hex allowed them to use SQL and Python in a notebook style interface and build an interactive app on top. What really made the difference for them was the ability to provide both technical transparency and an intuitive experience for non-technical stakeholders.
Technical Transparency
The WHO cares a lot about the data being exactly right, that means even when you present a dashboard or interactive report they want to review every step of how the data was processed. In tools like excel this can be almost impossible since field can get overwritten in the process and each change must be separately documented to try to recreate it. In tools like Jupyter Notebooks the order of execution is unknown making them difficult to reproduce.
In Hex every step is a cell which can be reviewed and Hex Notebooks run on a DAG so that the order of execution is the same every time. This made it easy for the WHO to investigate and reproduce the work to validate it.
Intuitive Interactive Reports
The WHO wanted the report to be accessible throughout their fleet services org so that decision could be easily made and understood. They wanted simple graphs and controls anyone could use.
In Hex even though every piece of code is in the logic view, they don't have to be and are often completely left out of the final report. You can simply choose the visualizations, controls, and context that’s needed, nothing more. After completing the report it can be shared with a link or embedded wherever the WHO needed.
This ability to have full in depth technical documentation and an easily shareable usable dashboard achieved the WHO’s expectations.
With the interactive reports built in Hex by Infinite Lambda, the World Health Organization is now able to dig into granular emissions data and provide guidance and recommendations around the world. They can determine best and worst practices by interacting with the report and tell a clear story about how to reduce unnecessary emissions.
Nina Anderson, Head of Pre-Sales Engineering
Infinite Lambda