The GCAM Dashboard is a scenario explorer for GCAM. Its purpose is to provide a way to give users a quick view of the data in a collection of scenarios. You can get a listing of the scenarios in a data set and the queries available for each scenario, or available jointly for a collection of scenarios. You can plot the queries for a single scenario in a map view or over time, or you can plot the difference in output values between two scenarios in either of the same two views.

The easiest way to run the GCAM Dashboard is using the R Studio IDE. Download and install R Studio. Start a new session in R Studio, and install the devtools package, if you don't have it already. You can do that by entering:

install.packages('devtools')

Next, install the GCAMdashboard package:

devtools::install_github('JGCRI/GCAM-dashboard')

This should install all of the required packages that the GCAM Dashboard needs to operate for you automatically.

To run the GCAM Dashboard, from the R command console enter GCAMdashboard::run().

The GCAM Dashboard gets its data from the project data files created by the rgcam package. Add one or more GCAM scenarios to a project data file using that package. In the panel at the left of the app's display you will see a widget for uploading your project file. Select your project file using the file explorer, and it will be uploaded into the app. The Project Info tab will show the name of the data file and the scenarios contained in it. You can also select one or more scenarios to see a list of all of the queries common to those scenarios.

Switch to the Map View tab. The control panel at the left of the display has widgets for selecting a scenario to plot and a query to plot. Select the scenario and query you wish to plot, and the map will be updated. You can also choose to show a difference plot using the check box. If you do, then a selector for the difference scenario will appear.

At the bottom of the map there are controls for the display. The slider bar selects the year to plot. There is also a selector box for choosing what part of the map to display (global, or several regions of interest).

The Time View tab provides a view of the query variable over time. It uses the same controls on the left panel to select the scenario and query to display. As before, you can display either a single scenario or a difference between two scenarios.

Below the plot you will find controls for additional plot options. The selector box labeled "Break totals into subcategories by:" allows you to change the bar plot into a stacked bar plot, with the elements making up the stack coming from the variable you select. There is also a check box for filtering the data to certain regions. Selecting it will cause a list of regions to appear, and you can select the ones you want to include in the plot. Note, however, that if no regions are selected, the plot will instead display all regions, the same as if the filter regions check box were not selected.