Mapping the Ganges & Its Pollution

Reuters reports that the Indian government has pledged to spend nearly $3 billion on cleaning up the Ganges. The Ganges is of huge religious and cultural importance to millions of Indians. Millions of Indians also depend on the river everyday to supply their water needs. Unfortunately the river is also hugely polluted by industrial waste and plastics (some of this comes from religious offerings wrapped in non-biodegradable plastic).

In The Race to Save the River Ganges Reuters claims that the Indian government has not spent most of the money that it has promised to cleaning the Ganges. In fact untreated sewage is still being dumped in the river in huge quantities. The Reuters report includes an animated map which traces the course of the river Ganges from the pristine waters at its source in the foothills of the Himalayas to its entry into Bangladesh. This map also shows the extent of the Ganges' tributaries across Tibet, Nepal and Bangladesh. A population density overlay on the map shows how the river basin is a vital source of water for over 400 million people. A polluted Ganges is a very big problem to millions of people.

Under the story map in the Reuter's report is a fabulous flow map of the river Ganges. As you scroll through this flow map of the river you can see where sewage-drains, factories and other rivers pour pollution into the river as it moves downstream. There is an element of Minard's famous visualization of Napoleon's March on Moscow to this flow map. As you move down river on the strip map the size of the river grows to show the accumulated levels of wastewater discharged into the Ganges as the river flows across India. The daily amount of wastewater entering the river every day is 6.07 billion litres.

Who Will Win the Global City Race?

Animated bar chart races have suddenly become a very popular method for visualizing data over time. Their recent popularity owes much to John Murdoch's 18 Years of Interbrand’s Top Global Brands.

This animated bar chart race shows the brand value of the top global brands from the years 2000-2018. As the animation plays out each brand's bar on the chart grows or shrinks to reflect the brand's value. The bars also re-sort themselves automatically to show the most valuable brand at the top and the least valuable brand at the bottom. If a brand falls out of the top twelve most valuable brands then it falls off the bar graph. This method of visualization is very effective in showing the sudden rise or sudden fall in the value of a brand in comparison to the world's other large brands and the performance of these brands over time.

John Murdoch has now released another impressive animated bar race. This one shows The Most Populous Cities in the World from 1500 to 2018. This bar chart race is an incredibly interesting visualization of the world's most populated cities. There is something hypnotically fascinating watching different cities move up and down the chart over time as their populations rise and fall in comparison to other cities around the world. The bar chart is accompanied by a map which shows the location of the currently displayed most populated cities. Each city's bar on the chart is also colored by global region. The colors on the chart and the map help to reveal any regional patterns in the relative rise and fall of city populations.

As fantastic as John's visualization is I hope that there is more to come. I'd love a date control so that I could manually navigate to view the most populated cities in specific years. I'd also love some historical commentary with the visualization to provide some context or explanation as to why different cities rise or fall in the visualization. For example, when the visualization starts in 1500 Vijayanagar is the second most populous city in the world. It then suddenly drops off the chart in 1565. According to Wikipedia "In 1565 ... the city fell to a coalition of Muslim Sultanates. The conquered capital city of Vijayanagara was looted and destroyed, after which it remained in ruins.". An annotated version of The Most Populous Cities in the World would keep me happy for days.

As it is The Most Populous Cities in the World is totally awesome. What is even better is that it has been built and released as an Observable Notebook. That means anyone can fork, use and adapt the code. If you click on the 'dataset' line in the code you can see how the data for the visualization is formatted and click through to view the csv file where the data is held. This means that it would be a relatively trivial matter to adapt the visualization to work with your own data. Therefore you could create your own bar chart race, for example to show the most populated countries in the world over time or to show the most populated cities in your country over time. You could use economic data to show the GDP per capita of cities or countries over time. You could show the average life of death in cities or countries over time. In fact the bar chart race method is a great way to visualize lots of different types of data that has a time element.

The Deathscapes of China

The huge level of development in twenty-first century China has been bad news for the dead. The high premium on land in the country has resulted in a kind of graveyard gentrification, where those who had thought they had reached their final resting place have had their graves forcibly relocated to other locations. In fact around ten million graves have been exhumed and moved in just the last ten years.

Chinese Deathscape: Grave Reform in Modern China by Thomas S. Mullaney, Professor of Chinese History at Stanford University, explores the reasons behind this modern policy of grave relocation and burial reform in China. The essay examines the incentives and punishments imposed by the central government to encourage regions to meet their grave relocation quotas. It also looks at how these grave relocations have been reported by the media and have been perceived by the Chinese people.

Accompanying the essay is an interactive map of the locations around China where graves have been exhumed. The size of the markers on the map reflects the number of graves relocated at each location. The annotated locations in the text are particularly impressive. If you click on an underlined passage in the essay then the map will center on the mentioned location. In addition a line is drawn from the text to its actual location on the interactive map. If you select locations on the map you can view details on the date of the relocation and the numbers of graves exhumed.

Who Owns NYC?

Lots of buildings in New York City are owned by shell companies, which are used by landlords to maintain anonymity in order to hide themselves from tenants and avoid repercussions. That is why JustFix.nyc has launched Who Owns What in NYC?, a service which reveals the buildings owned by individual landlords and by management companies.

If you enter a New York address into Who Own What in NYC? you can view an interactive map which shows all the other buildings in the city which your landlord might own. Select any of the highlighted buildings on the map and you can view the name of the registered owner and their business address. You can also view details about the building, including the name of the site manager, the year the building was constructed and the number of violations and evictions associated with the building.

The map also includes a button to connect with JustFix.nyc if you are having issues with an individual building. Pressing this button will allow JustFix.nyc to send a certified letter of complaint to the landlord about your issues with the property.


If you are having problems with a New York landlord you might also be interested in some of the data visualizations released by the Acting Public Advocate of the New York City Council concerning New York's residential evictions. One of these, Evictions: NYC residents are affected by evictions every day, allows you to explore New York's eviction rates by year, zip code, or district.

There were over 19,000 people evicted in New York City in 2018. If you select individual markers on the interactive eviction map you can view the eviction property's address and the date that the eviction notice was executed. The Bronx has the highest rate of evictions in New York City. Brooklyn has the second highest rate, closely followed by Queens in third place.

A second Building History interactive map allows you to explore 2018 evictions by building type, year of construction and by rent stabilized properties. The map menu on this interactive map also allows you to view the buildings with the most evictions in 2018. 16 Richman Plaza was the individual property with the most evictions last year. This property, owned by River Park Residences, had 60 evictions.

If you enter the address "16 Richman Plaza" into Who Owns What in NYC? you can view a map of all 84 buildings owned by this landlord in New York. Eugene Schneur appears to be the landlord associate with all 84 of these buildings. Interestingly Eugene Schneur isn't even in the top 100 worst landlords in New York, based on the 2018 NYC Landlord Watchlist from the Public Advocate for the City of New York.

The Rising Temperatures of Europe

Since 1960 every European city has become hotter. Lisa Charlotte Rost has used historical temperature data from Berkeley Earth to visualize how much the average temperature has risen or fallen in every European city since 1960. The interactive map in Which European cities have gotten warmer? (Spoiler: All of them) uses colored markers to show the average temperature difference in European cities. If you hover over a city's marker you can view the name of the city and the number of degrees centigrade that the average temperature has risen in the city since 1960.

There appears to be some geographical differences in the extent to which average temperatures have risen in Europe. North-eastern Europe has seen the highest rises in average temperatures. The three European cities which have seen the highest rises (Orsha, Minsk & Gomel) are all in Belarus. Chernihiv in neighboring Ukraine has witnessed the next highest rise in average temperatures. The lowest average temperature rises are all in south-east Europe. Six cities, all in Greece, have the lowest average rises on the map. Cities in neighboring countries such as Cyprus, Bulgaria and Macedonia also appear to have warmed by a smaller degree than Europe as a whole.

The average temperature rise in Patrai, Greece since 1960 is 1.59 degrees centigrade. This is the smallest rise recorded on the map. The highest average temperature rise was in Orsha, Belarus. The rise recorded there was 3.33 degree centigrade.

John Ogilby's Cartography

Earlier this week Layers of London, a website dedicated to visualizing London's history, added a new vintage map layer to their interactive maps. The new layer allows you to explore Layers of London's historical events on top of John Ogilby and William Morgan's 1676 map of London.

Ogilby and Morgan's map was created after the Great Fire of London in 1666. The map was originally intended to assist in the planning out of land in the City after the fire. It is believed to be the first map to show every building in London in plan (rather than through an oblique bird's eye pictorial view).

The screenshot above shows the plan of the new St. Paul's Cathedral. The old cathedral had been destroyed in the Great Fire of London. Work on the new cathedral had begun in the 1670's (when this map was surveyed) but was not completed until 1711. Ogilby & Morgan's map therefore presumably uses Sir Christopher Wren's own plans to show where the completed cathedral would soon stand.

You can view another online interactive application of Ogilby and Morgan's map on the British History Online website.



Ogilby & Morgan's map of London was published one month after Ogilby's death in 1676. As a cartographer Ogilby is probably better known for his Britannia Atlas. This atlas of roads in England & Wales is presented in a series of scrolls. Each scroll includes just one journey, shown as a strip map, from one British town to another. The Britannia Atlas includes 85 routes and provides a guide to navigating over 7,500 miles of road. The Britannia was therefore Britain's first proper road atlas. In the 1670's the finished atlas cost £5 to buy, or the equivalent of around £700 in today's money.

Late in his life Ogilby was appointed 'Cosmographer and Geographic Printer' to Charles II. However cartography was only a small part of Ogilby's life. During his relatively long life he had also been a dance teacher, a tailor a translator of Virgil, a publisher, and the founder of the first theatre in Dublin. He made a lot of money from his translations of Virgil but, if John Dryden is to be believed, Ogilby was probably a better cartographer than he was a translator. Dryden claimed that Ogilby's work was only good enough to be used for toilet paper or wrapping pies ('martyrs of pies, and relics of the bum'). I assume Dryden was unimpressed with Ogilby's translations of Latin. I can't believe Dryden would wipe his arse with Ogilby and Morgan's superb map of London.

Europe's Busiest Shipping Routes Revealed

Ships around the world are fitted with AIS transponders which automatically report the position, course, and speed, of individual vessels. The Automatic Identification System can be used by websites like MarineTraffic to show the live real-time position of ships across the globe. The accumulated data from AIS transponders can also be used to reveal interesting patterns in ship traffic, such as the location and density of popular shipping lanes.

European Marine Traffic has used the accumulated data of ship traffic in 2017 to visualize the density of European marine traffic. The map reveals the areas of Europe's seas which see the most ship traffic and the shipping lanes which are most used by ships when transporting cargo in Europe. For example the English Channel stands out on the map as an area with extremely dense marine traffic. The English Channel is in fact the world's busiest seaway, with over 500 ships passing through the channel every day.

Other areas that stand out on the map for their heavy marine traffic are the Strait of Gibraltar and the Skagerrak strait. The Strait of Gibraltar is heavily used by marine traffic entering and exiting the Mediterranean Sea while the Skagerrek is the gateway from the North Sea to the Baltic Sea. The Skagerrek strait is uses by around 7,500 vessels every year.


The AIS data for marine traffic also includes information on vessel type. It is therefore possible to create shipping density maps for different types of vessel. Alasdair Rae has done this for the marine traffic around the UK. In Watching the Ships go By Alasdair has created maps which show the most popular shipping routes used by cargo ships, passenger ships, shipping boats and other types of vessels around the UK.

If you want to view the density of Shipping traffic in the rest of the world it is possible to do this using MarineTraffic. The live ship tracking map MarineTraffic includes an option to view a density map of the world's shipping traffic. If you select the 'Density Maps' overlay on MarineTraffic you can view an overlay which shows the accumulated recorded data of all vessels on MarineTraffic over recent years.

Where are the Best Neighborhoods?

If you want to know the best neighborhoods in your town then you need Best Neighborhood. Enter your zipcode into Best Neighborhood and you can view the areas of your town colored to show the best areas for walkability, the cost of housing and employment rates. You can also view lots of local demographic and socio-economic information about your town's neighborhoods.

Best Neighborhood uses Mapbox maps to visualize a range of different data about U.S. towns and their neighborhoods. The local data you can view includes information on per capita income, rental prices and bike friendliness. Using the different data sets you can find the neighborhoods which best suit your preferred characteristics. For example if walking and cycling are important to you then you can use the walkability and bike friendliness maps to find the best neighborhoods for walking and cycling. Of course you might not be able to afford to live in those areas so you might want to compare those maps with the property value map.


OneDome is a UK real-estate website which has developed a number of online tools which can help you find the best neighborhoods in the UK. One of these tools is Explore & Score, an interactive map which rates neighborhoods in a number of different areas.

Enter a UK postcode into Explore & Score and you can find out how the area rates for transport, education, groceries, greenery, safety, quietness and lifestyle. Explore & Score gives each of these individual areas a rating out of 10 and also gives the postcode area an overall score out of 10. If you select an individual category from the map sidebar you can view related points of interest on the map. For example if you select 'Grocery' you can view the location of all nearby stores, the walking distance to each store and their opening hours. Select 'Transport' and you can view the location and walking times to the nearest stations.

Poland is Nowhere

Where is Poland? is a fantastic exploration of Poland under partition as seen by the Danish writer Georges Brandes in the late Nineteenth Century. The site uses the observations of Brandes to explore one of Poland's most turbulent periods of history.

When Georges Brandes arrived in Poland in 1885 the country was divided between the three imperial empires of Austria, Prussia and Russia. Where is Poland uses a number of vintage maps to show how the name of Poland is missing from the maps of Europe during this period. Poland in this era is very much an occupied country. This can be seen clearly in the 19th century map of Warsaw. When Brandes visited Warsaw the signs of Russian occupation could be seen everywhere, from Orthodox churches to Russian street names.



One result of the occupation of Poland and its accompanying suppression of Polish culture was the emigration of many Poles. Where is Poland includes a map showing the influence of emigre Polish writers, artists and musicians throughout Europe at the end of the Nineteenth Century. Other Poles didn't leave Poland by choice but were deported from the country. Another interactive map shows some of the Siberian locations where Polish people were sent by Russia.

I've obviously concentrated on the many interactive maps in Where is Poland? These maps play only a small part in what is a beautifully designed in-depth examination of Poland during occupation by the three imperial powers of Austria, Prussia and Russia.

Mapping Global Life Expectancy

Mapipedia's Average Life Expectancy by Country since 1800 is an interesting data visualization of life expectancy around the world from 1800 to 2018. The visualization shows how life expectancy has changed around the globe since the beginning of the Nineteenth Century and also attempts to explain the reasons behind some of the most significant changes in life expectancy during this period of history.

Using the map timeline you can explore the average life expectancy in countries around the world by date. If you press play on this timeline you can watch an animation of the map, showing how life expectancy has changed in each country over time. As the timeline plays the visualization also identifies significant global historical events which may have had an impact on life expectancy in different countries across the world.

If you select a country on the map you can view a list of historical events that have probably effected the average life expectancy of the population in the chosen country. For example if you click on Russia the 'Description' column will include information about World War I, Spanish Flu, the Soviet Famine, World War II and Russian Alcohol Consumption (1990-2001).

Selecting a country on the map will also change the graph view to show the average life expectancy only of your chosen country from 1800-2018. This graph is interactive. You can therefore hover over dates showing significant falls in life expectancy to find out why these occurred. For example, using the example of Russia again, the graph shows a steep decline in life expectancy starting in 1940. If you hover over this data the 'Description' column provides information about the affect of World War II on life expectancy.