Sunday, November 25, 2012

The Google Maps of the Week

This week I was impressed by a number of mapped based data visualisations.

The UK's Office for National Statistics released a new map that compares data from the 2011 UK census with the 2001 census. The Census Map allows users to view population and age data from the 2011 census and compare the results with the data from the 2001 census. The Canadian Census Map, on the other hand, is a great way to explore data from the 2011 Canadian census.This mapped visualisation uses Google Maps to allow the user to browse data from the census related to 'families', 'people' and 'languages'.


The New York Times this week published A Survey of the Flooding in NYC After the Hurricane.

The survey uses Google Maps to show the estimated height reached by floodwaters from surveys and weather data collected by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Users of the map can select individual neighborhoods on the map to view data on floodwater heights at individual building plot level.

A number of neighborhoods on the map include black boxes. If the user selects any of the boxed neighborhoods they can read an overview of the damage caused in that neighborhood by the storm and view photographs of the damage caused.


The car ride company Uber has created some nice Google Map visualisations of their journey data looking at the number of trips taken between different neighbourhoods in a number of cities.

In Mapping the San Franciscome (full map here) you can see the popularity of journeys between San Francisco's different neighbourhoods. 35 of San Francisco’s neighborhoods are examined in the visualisation. At the centre of each neighborhood is a circle, the size of which represents the proportion of rides that flow into that neighborhood.

Every neighbourhood that sends a ride out has a line of the same colour as the source neighbourhood connecting it to its destination. The weight of each line represents the proportion of rides that go from the source neighbourhood to its target.

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