Maps Mania

Building America's Transcontinental Railway

2019-08-23T13:00:00.000-05:00

At the same time as the American railroads were being constructed in the Nineteenth Century the new technology of photography was also being developed. The railroads made good use of this new technology to document and promote their drive to build routes from the east to west coast. Which is why the Library of Congress has been able to combine vintage maps and photographs in this story map

Who is Still Smoking?

2019-08-23T11:00:00.000-05:00

Despite the rise of vaping it appears that many Europeans still like to smoke. According to World Health Organization data, despite the dangers to health, smoking rates are still very high in many countries around the world. However it also appears that in many countries women are paying more attention to the dangers of smoking and are actually giving up quicker than men. Smoking is more

Iran and the Strait of Hormuz

2019-08-23T08:55:00.000-05:00

The United States, the United Kingdom and Australia have all now sent ships to help protect international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Twenty percent of the world's oil is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has been accused of sabotaging tankers in the Strait and last month seized a British oil tanker which it claimed had strayed into its waters. In June Iran also shot down a US

Mapping the Burning Rainforest

2019-08-22T13:00:00.001-05:00

Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) uses satellite data to assess the levels of wildfire in the Amazon rainforest. Inpe says that this data shows an 84% increase in wildfires in the Amazon this year over the same period in 2018. One fairly clear indication of wildfires in the Amazon (and elsewhere) is the concentration of carbon monoxide. When carbon burns it produces water

How Far is a Mile?

2019-08-22T11:00:00.000-05:00

One thing I nearly always omit from the interactive maps I create is a distance scale. This could be a big mistake. It turns out that most people are pretty bad at estimating distances on maps. Including me. You can find out how good you are at estimating distances on a map using this Distance Perception Study interactive map. The map simply asks you to draw a circle with a radius of one mile

Mapping America's Area Deprivation Index

2019-08-21T13:00:00.001-05:00

The Area Deprivation Index (ADI) is a measure of neighborhood disadvantage compiled by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The index ranks neighborhoods based on data taken from the American Community Survey Five Year Estimates. The ten ranks in the index consider local measures of income, education, employment, and housing quality. You can view the ADI scores at

Europe Stinks

2019-08-21T11:00:00.000-05:00

OdourCollect is an interactive map which is dedicated to recording the smells of the world. The map is part of a citizen science project to build an odour map of the world. Apparently, after noise complaints, bad smells are responsible for the second most environmental complaints across the globe. OdourCollect has been designed so that it can be used by communities which are affected by bad

Mapping the English Premier League

2019-08-21T09:00:00.001-05:00

Sky Sports has mapped the birthplaces of all 557 football players registered to clubs in the English Premier League. According to Transfermarkt 368 of those 557 players were born overseas, In Where were Premier League players born? Sky has plotted the birthplace of every single player in the EPL. If you click on the markers on the map you can learn more about the individual players, such as

The Dot Map of American Education

2019-08-20T13:00:00.000-05:00

Educational Attainment in America is a dot map which visualizes the level of education achieved by the American population across the whole United States. Using the map you can zoom in on any town or city and see the local distribution of educational attainment. The map shows five levels of educational attainment ranging from those who didn't finish high school to those with graduate degrees.

Burning the Amazonian Rainforest

2019-08-20T11:00:00.000-05:00

Fires in the Amazon have grown by an horrendous amount this year. Satellite imagery from NASA show a 65% increase in fires in Brazil since the beginning of 2019, when compared to the same period in 2018. There is a direct link between the fires and deforestation in the Amazon. Of the 10 areas that have recorded the largest fires in 2019, seven are areas with the highest number of deforestation

Greta Thunberg's Real-Time Map

2019-08-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

Greta Thunberg is just about half-way through her two-week journey to the United States. The young climate activist is crossing the Atlantic by solar-powered yacht in order to attend the Climate Action Summit in New York on 21-23 September. You can follow Greta's journey on a real-time interactive map. Team Malizia shows the real-time position of the yacht Malizia II as it crosses the Atlantic.

1% of the World Lives Here

2019-08-19T13:00:00.000-05:00

If you've ever visited Map Porn on Reddit you will do doubt have seen the endless maps which highlight the most densely populated areas of a country and which have a title along the lines of '...% of this country lives here'. These maps can be quite interesting but on the whole their ubiquity is a little tedious. Having said that I do really like this World Population 3D globe. Spin this globe

The Proper Pronunciation of Placenames

2019-08-19T10:56:00.002-05:00

Have you ever experienced the embarrassment of mispronouncing the name of a town or city while traveling abroad? Well you now no longer have to worry about how a difficult place-name should be pronounced. Using the Spoken Word interactive map you can now just simply click on a location to listen to the place-name being spoken by a native speaker. The Spoken Word was created by Michael McNeil

A Game of Hungarian Thrones

2019-08-19T05:45:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow Hungary will celebrate St. Stephen's Day. The day commemorates the foundation of the Hungarian state. On this day Hungarians remember Stephen I, the first king of Hungary and founder of the Kingdom of Hungary. St Stephen became king of Hungary in 1001. For the following 917 years Hungary was ruled by a succession of monarchs, until Charles IV renounced participation in state affairs in

The 3D Building Age Map

2019-08-17T08:30:00.000-05:00

Bert Spaan's Netherland's Building Age Map, created for the Waag website, is one of my favorite interactive maps of all time. This map visualizes the age of a staggering 9,866,539 buildings in the Netherlands. This is very impressive in itself but its use of distinct colors for buildings of different construction ages means that the map also has a striking visual impact. Inspired by Spaan's

Coral Bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef

2019-08-16T13:00:00.000-05:00

Since 1981 the Great Barrier Reef has suffered from four major mass bleaching events. Bleaching happen when very high sea temperatures cause the coral to release the colorful algae that lives inside its tissue. The algae is extremely important for the health of the coral. Without the algae the coral starves. In 2016 93% of the Great Barrier was effected by coral bleaching. Carbon Brief's Can

3D Terrain Mapping

2019-08-16T11:00:00.000-05:00

Vladimir Agafonkin, the creator of the Leaflet mapping platform, has released a JavaScript library for real-time terrain mesh generation from height data. MARTINI allows you to render terrain in 3D. MARTINI builds a 3D terrain using Right-Triangulated Irregular Networks (RTIN). Check out this MARTINI: Real-Time RTIN Terrain Mesh Observable notebook which both explains what this means and

Mapping Earthquake Scenarios

2019-08-15T13:00:00.000-05:00

The LA Times has released an interactive map which allows you to visualize a number of different earthquake scenarios on top of any California location. To create the map the newspaper worked with the U.S. Geological Survey to identify 14 different significant earthquake scenarios which could strike along California's fault lines. If you enter a California address into the What would a

Berlin: The Divided City

2019-08-15T04:44:00.001-05:00

They may have torn down the wall but Berlin remains a city painfully divided - by football. In the eastern red half of the city live the faithful supporters of FC Union Berlin. In the opposite, western blue half of the city reside the fans of Hertha BSC. Last season FC Union Berlin secured their first ever promotion into the Bundesliga. The result is that this season Berlin will have two

Right Whale Spotting

2019-08-14T11:00:00.000-05:00

The NOAA Right Whale Sighting Advisory System is an interactive map of right whale sightings in the North Atlantic. The system has been designed to help reduce collisions between ships and the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. Using the map mariners can see where right whales have most recently been sighted off the east coast. The map includes a tool which allows you to see all

John Snow's Cholera Map in 3D

2019-08-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

John Snow's map of cholera victims during the 1854 cholera outbreak in London is one of the most famous examples of effective data visualization. By plotting the homes of cholera victims on a map Snow was able to identify a water pump in Broad Street as the cause of all the local cases of cholera. Snow's map essentially proved that cholera was spread by contaminated water and disproved the

Two Degrees Warmer

2019-08-13T15:00:00.000-05:00

In 2015 countries from around the world signed the Paris Agreement, an agreement to try to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. In 2019 many locations across the United States have already surpassed 2 degrees of warming. Two years ago President Trump announced that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The Washington Post has today released a

Animated Wind Maps

2019-08-13T13:00:00.000-05:00

Animated wind maps have become very popular over the last few years. Earth: and Windy are just two examples of interactive maps which use weather data from the Global Forecast System to create real-time animated maps of global wind conditions. US Wind Patterns is another interesting example of an animated wind map. However US Wind Patterns uses historical weather data to visualize the last 72

Where's the Sun?

2019-08-13T11:00:00.000-05:00

Under the Sun is an animated map which shows the daily journey of the Sun as the Earth rotates around its own axis. The map shows the exact point on Earth right now where the sun is at its Zenith. The map updates in real-time. So as you watch the map the sun slowly travels westwards across the land or sea. Under the Sun also includes information on the current time and the latitude and

The Impossible Burger Real-Time Map

2019-08-12T11:00:00.000-05:00

Imitation meat by Impossible Food is inexplicably very popular. As a vegetarian of 40 years I struggle to see the attraction of processed food which has been designed to taste like meat. However there are obviously many people who do want to eat fake meat. In fact so many people want Impossible Burgers that it has become nearly impossible to find an Impossible Burger. Which is why Bloomberg