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John E Jones IV edited this page Jun 25, 2018 · 29 revisions

Table of Contents

  1. About
  2. Technical Overview
  3. Setup
  4. Deployment
  5. Platform in Detail
    1. Back End
      1. Data Flow
      2. Database Schemas
      3. Creating New Data Sources
    2. Front End
      1. Data Flow
      2. Caching

About

In 2017, the we launched the Impacting Investing Network Map to showcase “who is active and what have they done?” in the realm of impact investing. The Network Map demonstrates the publicly available transactions between investors and companies within impact investing. We believe that by bringing the connections between actors to life – looking specifically at the investments that connect them – we can foster a better understanding of the size, breadth, depth and, importantly, the enormous potential of this field.

We're excited to be bringing the power of the Network Map to everyone by open sourcing the code powering it. Now, other impact investing communities - or anyone wishing to visualize transnational relationships like investing - may use our open source code base to build their visualization.

Technical Overview

Network Map Logical Diagram

The Network Map project consists of two distinct parts:

  • The back end, powered by the Laravel framework, collects impact investment information from various data sources and merges those data sets into one schema stored in a Neo4j database. The back end also relies on MySQL for storing a user database and metadata and a Redis database for caching.
  • The front end, powered by WordPress, houses the visualization. The visualization itself runs in React and uses Sigma.js to render the many thousand nodes shown in the original Network Map. WordPress requires a MySQL database to function.

Included in this wiki are articles that detail how the Network Map functions, how to set up a local copy of the code, and suggestions for how to set up a production system.

Table of Contents

  1. About
  2. How to Use IIRMa
  3. Technical Details
    1. Overview
    2. Getting Started
      1. Setup
      2. Deployment
    3. Back End
      1. Data Flow
      2. Database Schemas
      3. Creating New Data Sources
    4. Front End
      1. Data Flow
      2. Caching

The Origins of IIRMa

In 2017, The Case Foundation launched the Impact Investing Network Map, with data partners Impact Space and CrunchBase, to present the best publicly available data on impact investments to better inform the sector of the size, breadth and depth of the impact investing ecosystem. We believed that incorporating engaging data visualizations to display connections between investors and companies would not only bring greater accessibility and transparency to Impact Investing data but would demonstrate growth and inspire action in this catalytic movement.

We are appreciative of the resources and expertise provided by our advisors to build the initial product and their influence can be seen throughout IIRMa. We utilized elements of the CASE Smart Impact Capital, Impact Capital 101: Supply and Demand diagram to help illustrate the flow of capital between the supply and demand side actors. Check out the full video to learn more on capital flows within Impact Investing.

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