Solomon Islands’ Aziel Orihao wins a Pacific Dataviz award for Ripple, exploring the lasting impacts of tropical cyclones.
From storm to recovery, a Solomon Islands data storyteller is using interactive visualisation to reveal how tropical cyclones affect communities across the Pacific long after they have passed.
Mr Aziel Orihao of Solomon Islands has won the Pacific Youth second prize in the interactive category of the 2026 Pacific Dataviz Challenge for Ripple, a visualisation exploring the lasting impacts of six major tropical cyclones that affected Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and Tonga between 2015 and 2024.
Mr Orihao received US$500 for his entry, which uses interactive maps and data storytelling to trace the paths of cyclones and compare their effects across countries, from communities and agriculture to livestock, energy and tourism.
His award marks the second consecutive year that a participant from Solomon Islands has been recognised in the Challenge, following the success of Mr Crispin Laka in 2025.
Mr Orihao received his award at a ceremony held this week at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji and streamed online.
Turning Pacific climate data into stories
Led by the Pacific Community (SPC) and partners, the Pacific Dataviz Challenge brings together science, creativity and storytelling, inviting people from across the Pacific and around the world to transform open data into visual stories about the region’s issues, opportunities and potential.
Now in its fifth year, the Challenge sees participation from students, educators, data professionals, designers, developers and artists, who create everything from posters and infographics to interactive apps, games and dashboards.
The theme of the 2026 Challenge was climate change. Participants used data to explore its effects—including on harvests, rainfall, coastlines and livelihoods—and make those complex patterns understandable to a broad public.
This largest edition to date brought together 463 participants from 50 countries and territories, with 16 prize recipients recognised for their work.
Tracing the lasting impacts of cyclones
Mr Orihao’s winning entry, Ripple, explores six major tropical cyclones that affected Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and Tonga between 2015 and 2024.
Recognising that nearly every Pacific Islander will experience a cyclone during their lifetime, the project looks beyond the immediate passage of a storm to examine its longer-term effects on communities and livelihoods.
Through interactive maps and data stories, Ripple follows each cyclone’s path and compares the different outcomes across affected countries. Its visualisations explore impacts on people, agriculture, livestock, energy and tourism, highlighting how the same type of event can produce very different consequences depending on the local context.
By comparing recovery journeys and acknowledging gaps in available data, the project also draws attention to the challenges of measuring vulnerability and resilience across the Pacific, while exploring how communities adapt to the effects of extreme weather.
“[My dataviz] was built with the idea that climate change does not create inequality, but rather it repeats it,” Mr Orihao said in his acceptance speech.
“I chose cyclones because they’re hard to ignore. Climate change is sometimes easy to sweep under a rug; a cyclone isn’t.”
Building a culture of data storytelling in Solomon Islands
Mr Orihao’s achievement builds on the success of Mr Crispin Laka, who received an award in the 2025 Pacific Dataviz Challenge for his visualisation exploring the digital divide.
Following his success, Mr Laka went on to establish Pacific Skillshare, a project focused on young people and data literacy. He has since shared his skills with students across three colleges in Solomon Islands, helping promote data visualisation and digital literacy in the country.
His journey illustrates how the Challenge can provide a platform not only to recognise creative uses of data, but also to encourage new initiatives that help others develop their skills.
Solomon Islands is also represented in this year’s Challenge through Mr Eddie Trevor Osifelo, deputy editor and weekend editor of the Solomon Star newspaper, who served on the 2026 judging panel.
Together, these contributions highlight the growing role of Solomon Islands in the Pacific’s data storytelling community, from creating visualisations that explore regional challenges to supporting the next generation of data communicators.
SOURCE// SPC PRESS RELEASE
