Animating Big Data on Maps

CartoDB's Torque allows developers to render large, time-series data on a map in the client. The library effectively provides a simple method to animate large amounts of data on a map.

A good demonstration of Torque in action is this Amsterdam: Fire Engine Callouts map. The map uses the Torque library to animate 62,415 fire brigade call-outs in Amsterdam between January 2006 and September 2010.

Another superb example of a Torque driven map is the amazing Navy of WWI animated visualization. This visualization maps 1 million WWI Royal Navy locations from before the outbreak of World War I until 1925.


The Torque library was also used to create a fascinating animated map showing one seagull's movements over two months. LifeWatch compressed two months of data into 120 seconds to animate the seagull's movements in and around Zeebrugge in Belgium.