Metro Vancouver is home to Canada's largest and North America’s third-largest port, facilitating trade between Canada and more than 170 world economies. In 2017, the Port of Vancouver handled a record 3.25 million 20-foot-equivalent unit containers (TEUs), carrying more than $100 billion in cargo value.
The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority's Project Rationale document summarizes the role shipping containers play in serving Canada’s trade objectives, and the impact the growing trade of goods shipped in containers has on the economy. It describes the planning undertaken by the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority to meet increasing container trade, and the alternatives that were considered before it was determined that a new marine terminal at Roberts Bank in Delta, British Columbia was necessary to ensure that Canada can deliver on its trade commitments and ambitions.
A key design challenge was to produce a visually compelling report that is tailored to a variety of audiences including federal and provincial environmental assessment review panel appointees, Indigenous groups, stakeholders, media, and project opponents. It was critical that effective visualization be used to simplify the highly technical information into comprehensive, easy-to-understand graphs to allow these audiences to analyze the data and supporting evidence.
