San Francisco LIDAR data in 3D

Over the last couple of weeks quite a few interactive maps have been released which have made use of the new extrude property in Mapbox GL. All of these maps have used the extrude property to create 3d buildings on a map. All of the maps therefore have (or could have) used the extrusion property with the building height data which is already available in the default map styles in Mapbox Studio.

The Mapbox GL extrude property however can also be used to create 3d features out of your own data layers. For example this San Francisco Lidar Map applies the extrude property to San Francisco tree and building Lidar data. This Lidar data has been added to the map in Mapbox Studio from a GeoJSON file (presumably downloaded from the City of San Francisco). The result of using this Lidar data is that as well as visualizing buildings in 3d the map also extrudes other features, such as ships and individual trees.

If you want to use the extrude property with your own data in Mapbox GL then you need to start by adding your own data layer in Mapbox Studio. If you look at the JavaScript code for the San Francisco Lidar Map you can see that the extrude property is being applied to the 'DN' property of the GeoJSON Lidar data. In other words the map is changing the style of the Lidar data layer based on the data properties (in this case the 'DN' property).

In simple terms - if you want to extrude a property on your map you need to have a property in your data layer which can be extruded.

You can learn more about how to use the Mapbox GL style specification to define the way in which the data relates to the map style in the Mapbox GL Data-Driven Style Reference section of the Mapbox documentation. In particular you should look at the paragraphs headed the 'Required style sheet objects for data-driven styles' and the 'Fill layer extrusion, identity function'.

The Geography of Employment

Jobs in Boston is a dot map of jobs in Boston categorized by employment sector. It shows where people work in Boston and what type of jobs that they do. It also provides a really interesting insight into how different job sectors in the city tend to be concentrated in different Boston neighborhoods.

The Jobs in Boston map uses Longitudinal Employer–Household Dynamics (LEHD) data from the Census Bureau to map jobs to workplace locations. The concentration of different colored dots on the map reveals that a number of locations in Boston serve as hot-spots for specific sectors of employment.

For example MIT is obviously an important center of jobs in the education sector. A lot of health care jobs are centered around the Longwood Medical and Academic Area. The Massachusetts State House and a few other nearby buildings host a significant number of public admin jobs.

If you like this map you might also be interested in these other dot maps, visualizing census and demographic data from countries around the world.

City Zoning Maps in 3D

Sarah Michael Levine has used Mapbox GL's new extrude property to create a Jersey City Building Census complete with 3d buildings. The map visualizes the city's buildings in 3d with zoning, ward and parcel information available for each building.

The Jersey City Building Census map colors each building in the city based on how it is zoned. You can click on a building footprint on the map to view ts zone and parcel information. These details include the building's age, number of stories and owner information (where available).

You can read a detailed explanation of how and why the map was created on Sarah's blog, Sarah Makes Maps.

The new extrude property in Mapbox GL is proving very popular for city zoning maps. You can also see it in action on the Vancouver Zoning Map and the Toronto Zoning Map. The ability to add 3d building polygons to a map is also effective for building age maps. You can see a neat example of this on the Catalonia Building Age Map.

The Elevated Maps of the Week

The development of WebGL and vector map tiles has led to some interesting experiments in visualizing elevation and depth data on interactive maps. For example this week we saw a couple of creative mapped visualizations of bathymetry and Lidar data.

Contours.org has used historical depth data of Scotland's lochs to create a series of 3d WebGL maps of four of Scotland's biggest lakes, including Loch Ness.

The depths of most of Scotland's lochs were not measured until the mid-Nineteenth Century. The first real systematic survey of the lochs was started in 1897 by the oceanographer Sir John Murray. From 1897 to 1909 Murray carried out 60,000 soundings and produced the first ever detailed charts, with depth data, of Scotland's major lochs.

Contours.org has digitized the bathymetry data from Murray's survey for four of Scotland's lochs and created 3d bathymetry maps. These maps allow you to explore the bathymetry contours of Loch Ness, Loch Lomond, Loch Levan and Loch Morar in 3d. Contours.org also allows you to view the bathymetry contours of each loch in 2d overlaid on an aerial map.


The Cartographic and Geological Institute of Catalunya has developed a prototype terrain explorer for their 2 meter Digital Elevation Model of Catalonia. The Institute's Relief and Shadow map, created from Lidar data, uses vector map tiles to allow you to interact in real-time with a relief map of the area.

Using Relief and Shadow you can explore the DEM model of Catalonia in an interactive Leaflet & Mapzen powered map. The map includes an impressive tool which allows you to color the terrain by elevation and by the direction of the sun. This tool allows you to change the appearance of the map in real-time by painting within an interactive compass rose.

Using the color-picker tool with the interactive compass rose you can paint the terrain on the map to highlight different elevation data and different directions of light. The center of the compass rose represents lower elevations on the map and the elevations become higher as you move out towards the circumference.

Relief and Shadow is partly based on Mapzen's Sphere Map Demo. You can learn more about how Mapzen developed their 'sphere maps' tool on this Mapzen Sphere Maps blog post.

The recent addition of the extrude property in Mapbox GL means that Lidar data can also now be visualized in 3d on a Mapbox map. Over the last few weeks we have seen extrusion used in Mapbox GL to map 3d buildings. Next week on Maps Mania we will look at how this extrude property can also be used with Lidar data to create 3d visualizations of elevation data.

Spooky Locations for Halloween

If you want to know the places to avoid this Halloween then you need to search Trulia's Unnatural Hazards map. Enter your address into the Unnatural Hazards map and you can find the location of nearby zombie, vampire and ghost hot-spots.

Your chances of stumbling into a herd of the walking dead are based on how close you live to a cemetery. The map uses data from the census and OpenStreetMap to locate local cemeteries. The color of the map shows your zombie 'degree of risk', which is calculated based on the distance to the nearest cemetery.

The Unnatural Hazards map uses data from Yelp to work out your risk from vampire bites. The vampire bite risk is based on the location of nearby blood banks and hospitals, where vampires are likely to be searching for their latest feed. Your likelihood of bumping into a ghost in your neighborhood is based on a number of secret sources.

Elevation & Shadow Mapping

The Cartographic and Geological Institute of Catalunya has developed a prototype terrain explorer for their 2 meter Digital Elevation Model of Catalonia. The Institute's Relief and Shadow map, created from Lidar data, allows you to view and interact in real-time with a relief map of the area.

Using Relief and Shadow you can explore the DEM model of Catalonia in an interactive Leaflet & Mapzen powered map. The map includes an impressive tool which allows you to color the terrain by elevation and by the direction of the sun. This tool allows you to change the appearance of the map in real-time by painting within an interactive compass rose.

Using the color-picker tool with the interactive compass rose you can paint the terrain on the map to highlight different elevation data and different directions of light. The center of the compass rose represents lower elevations on the map and the elevations become higher as you move to the circumference.

Relief and Shadow is partly based on Mapzen's Sphere Map Demo. You can learn more about how Mapzen developed their 'sphere maps' tool on this Mapzen Sphere Maps blog post.

Mapping Trump's Wall

If Donald Trump becomes president he plans to stop Americans escaping to the free world by building a massive wall along the border of Mexico. More than 650 miles of the 1,954 mile long U.S.-Mexico border is already fenced. This means that the 'Welcome to Trumpland' Wall will need to be at least 1,300 miles long. That's a lot of Chinese steel.

You can get a good sense of the scale of construction needed to build Trump's wall in a new video from the Intercept. The Intercept downloaded and stitched together 200,000 satellite images to create a huge strip map of the U.S.-Mexican border. You can view this strip map in Visualizing the U.S.-Mexico Border, a short video which pans along the whole border.

An interactive map of Trump's proposed wall also exists. Doug McCune has used Mapbox GL to create a 3d map of Trump's wall. The wall is colored in a patriotic red, white and blue. However the scale of the wall is probably a little out (it appears to be at least 10 miles high on Doug's map).

Hunting the Loch Ness Monster in 3D

Loch Ness is Scotland's second deepest loch and, due to its large surface size, is also the most voluminous lake in the British Isles. Thanks to Contour.org's new map of Loch Ness you can now explore the depth of Loch Ness in 3d.

The depths of most of Scotland's lochs were not measured until the mid-Nineteenth Century. The first real systematic survey of the lochs was started in 1897 by the oceanographer Sir John Murray. From 1897 to 1909 Murray carried out 60,000 soundings and produced the first ever detailed charts, with depth data, of Scotland's major lochs.

Contours.org has digitized the bathymetry data from Murray's survey for four of Scotland's lochs and created 3d bathymetry maps. These maps allow you to explore the bathymetry contours of Loch Ness, Loch Lomond, Loch Levan and Loch Morar in 3d.   Contours.org also allows you to view the bathymetry contours of each loch in 2d overlaid on a aerial map.

Mapping the Grid

The Esri Story Maps team has released a comprehensive guide to the American power grid. An Atlas of Electricity explores where the USA gets its electricity from and how it distributes this power across the country.

At the heart of An Atlas of Electricity is an interactive map plotting the location and size of the grid's power plants and transmission cables. This map allows you to explore the location and capacity of the country's electricity producing power plants and how they connect to the national grid.

As well as mapping the physical infrastructure of the electricity grid this story map examines the primary energy sources used to generate electricity in the USA. It maps the size and capacity of coal-fired power plants, natural gas power plants and petroleum power plants. Alongside these fossil-fuel sources of power An Atlas of Electricity plots the size and capacity of the U.S.'s nuclear power plants, hydroelectric power plants and solar & wind power plants.

The 3D Building Age Map

Building age maps have been very popular over the last couple of years (you can view a long list of city building age maps here). I predict that the next trend in building age maps will be to show building ages in 3d.

The first example of a 3d building age map that I've seen is this map of Vallvidrera in Catalonia. Edificacions dels Barris de Muntanya colors the extruded 3d buildings of Vallvidrera on the map based on the age of construction of each building. A building age map seems to me to be a very appropriate place for using Mapbox GL's new extrude property to visualize buildings in 3d. The result is that individual buildings are much more identifiable on the map from their extruded 3d shape than they would appear by simply showing individual building footprints.

Other good examples of Mapbox GL's new 3d capabilities can be seen on the Vancouver Zoning Map map and the Toronto Zoning Map. The Population Density Inspector also allows you to explore the number of people living in each census block in America in 3d, thanks to the Mapbox GL extrude property.

Find the Best Neighborhoods to Stay

Travel planning website TripHappy has developed a cluster analysis tool to help identify the best neighborhoods to stay in when visiting cities around the world. The tool analyses the neighborhood ratings from a number of hotel and homestay listing websites. It identifies the hotels in a city with the best neighborhood ratings and then finds clusters of hotels with the best neighborhood ratings based on locational proximity.

Using the results of this cluster analysis TripHappy is able to provide Google Maps for cities around the world which show you the best neighborhoods in which to stay. The maps also show you the locations of hotels within these neighborhoods and nearby points of interest that you can visit on your trip.

You can test how closely you agree with TripHappy's results by seeing which neighborhoods it identifies as the best - in locations that you are familiar with. For example in London it identities areas in Westminster and West London as the best neighborhoods (which if you are a tourist probably are good neighborhoods to be based in). In New York many of the best neighborhoods identified by TripHappy are in Mid Town (again neighborhoods which make a good central base for tourists).

You can read more about the TripHappy clustering analysis tool on the TripHappy Blog. This form of clustering analysis could be applied to other types of interactive maps. For example a real-estate map could identify the best neighborhoods in which to live (based on crime, school ratings, restaurant ratings etc,) If you want to get started building your own clustering analysis the TripHappy blog post provides a little information on the clustering algorithm they used to identify the best neighborhoods for tourists to stay.

Murder & Mayhem in London

In London you are never more than three feet from a ghost. The streets of London are haunted by the memories of ghastly murders, bloody executions, plague pits and other fiendish enterprises.

Just in time for Halloween creative agency Imperio has launched an interactive map plotting and recounting the history of some of London's most spine-chilling events. Enter a London borough or postcode into Grim London  and you can explore some of the nearby locations which have witnessed gruesome scenes over the years. Click on any of the haunted marked locations on the map and the fiendish story of that location will slide into view.

Are you brave enough to explore the foggy night-time streets of Grim London?

3D Population Towers

There have been quite a few examples recently of interactive maps created using Mapbox GL's extrusion property to make 3d buildings (including buildings with light and shade, the Vancouver Zoning Map map and the Toronto Zoning Map). All of these maps use the height data in the buildings layer of the map style to visualize buildings in 3d.

The new extrusion property can also be used with your own data layers in Mapbox GL. For example Mapbox has released a map of US population density which visualizes the population density of each census block as a 3d tower. The Population Density Inspector allows you to explore the number of people living in each census block in America. The height of each census block on the map represents the population density (based on census block population counts).

You can read about how Mapbox created the map (with a little help from Turf.js and Tippecanoe) on the Mapbox blog.

Death by Location

Diabetes is more common in the German speaking regions of Switzerland. Liver disease is more common in the French speaking regions.

The Tages Anzeiger newspaper has used data from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute to map the mortality rates in Sweden from diabetes and liver disease. In Schüpfheim is the Diabetic Capital of Switzerland the newspaper examines the prevalence of diabetes and liver disease in different Swiss regions and examines some of the cultural, nutritional and economic reasons why the death rate from the two diseases should have such marked geographical variations.

The interactive maps show the deviation of death rates for the different diseases in each Swiss municipality - in relation to the rate of deaths in the whole of Switzerland. If a municipality is above the Swiss average for the mortality rate from the disease, it is colored red on the map. If it is under the Swiss average it is colored blue. The red areas therefore show municipalities where the death rate for the visualized disease is above the Swiss average.

Mapping Civilian Deaths in Syria

Middle East Monitor has released an interactive map to visualize the number of civilian deaths in each region of Syria. The map is accompanied by charts showing how many civilian deaths have been caused by the various forces operating in the country and how many attacks these forces are responsible for on medical facilities and personnel.

The Middle East Monitor Interactive Map of Syria uses data from the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, the United Nations, the SAMS Foundation and airwars.org. As well as showing the number of civilian deaths in each region in Syria the map allows you to view the locations of chemical attacks, where medical workers have been killed, the number of internally displaced people and the locations & numbers of coalition airstrike attacks.

Vintage Maps of the Hudson River

The New York Public Library's collection of geo-rectified vintage maps is a great resource for exploring old maps from around the world. If you want to search for old maps by location then you can use the map interface on the NYPL Map Warper page.

Bert Spaan, of NYPL Labs, has also created an interesting interactive strip map which allows you to find and explore vintage maps from the NYPL's Digital Collection along the Hudson River. Along the Hudson River from Glenn Falls to New York City uses the Leaflet.js mapping library to provide a map search tool for finding vintage maps, of places along the river, by location.

To explore and find maps from the NYPL you simply need to pan the map down the Hudson River. When you hover over a location on the map the available vintage maps at that location are loaded into the map sidebars. Each of the available maps include links to view the map on the NYPL's Map Warper and Digital Collections websites.

Anti Flooding Maps

Northamptonshire County Council in the UK has used the Leaflet mapping library to create a series of interactive illustrations explaining how individuals and agencies can help reduce the impacts of flooding.

The council's Flood Prevention toolkit includes three interactive illustrations which help homeowners, businesses and communities learn about measures they can take to protect their property and land from the dangers of flooding. Each illustration includes a number of map markers which provide practical advice about steps that can be taken around the home, in the community and at work to lessen the impact of local flooding.


National Geographic has also recently begun to use the Leaflet mapping library to create interactive illustrations. These mapped illustrations include an examination of life in the Pacific Ocean and a depiction of a possible future Mars colony.

Maps of the Week

Last week Mapbox revealed their new extrusion properties for data layers in Mapbox GL JS. These new extrusion properties allow you to create 3d buildings (extruding buildings by their number of floors) or other 3d data visualizations on a map using your own data layers.

Robert White has already used Mapbox's new 3d buildings option to create this impressive Vancouver Zoning Map. Robert's map not only has 3d buildings but also uses data styling to color those buildings and other map features to show Vancouver's distinct city zones.

Using the map you can explore how & where Vancouver uses zoning within the city. You can also see how this zoning has an effect on the building heights in Vancouver's neighborhoods.


Andy Woodruff has invented a kind of hydrodynamics physics engine for interactive maps. It allows him to create an animated map which visualizes water drainage flow for any location on Earth.

In the Rain on the Terrain Andy tries to answer the question of where water would flow if you poured it over the terrain at any location on the planet. His solution is essentially to use elevation data to find the lowest adjacent location for any given location. Drop some water at this location and it will find the path of least resistance and move to the adjacent location with the lowest elevation.

Repeat this process and you can plot a long path of the least resistance, moving downhill. If you then animate a polyline along this path you can create a map of flowing rivers. Andy's map allows you to visualize the animated flow map of drainage for any location on Earth (based on his simple algorithm). The map also includes some quick links to zoom the map to a number of locations with interesting terrain.


Recently National Geographic has started using Leaflet.js to provide interactive versions of the beautiful supplemental posters issued with each months National Geographic magazine. The September poster, exploring life in the Pacific Ocean off British Columbia, is available to view in the British Columbia Supplement.

The October print edition of the National Geographic includes a double sided poster about Colonizing Mars. The art side of the poster depicts a possible human colony on the red planet. It explains some of the technical difficulties which would be faced in establishing a Mars colony and shows what such a colony might look like.

The map side of the poster is a new map of Mars based on imagery and data from NASA's most recent missions to the planet. If you are interested in maps of Mars you might also enjoy National Geographic's article on the history of mapping the planet, What Mars Maps Got Right (and Wrong) Through Time.

The Photo Quiz Map

Map Channels has decided to give the Panoramio API one last glorious fanfare as it slips ignobly into the great software graveyard of Google's many deprecated and abandoned projects. Google has announced that its photo application Panoramio will be shut down on November 4th. This means that you only have a few days to play Map Channel's new Photo Quiz Map.

Photo Quiz Maps uses the Panoramio API to place 10 random photos on a Google Map. The object of the game is to identify where each photo was taken. After you choose a location in Photo Quiz Maps a photo is displayed in the map sidebar. Ten markers are also displayed on a Google Map. All you have to do is choose the marker where the photograph was taken.

You get ten points if you guess correctly first time. If you guess correctly on your second try you are awarded nine points - and so on. If you guess all ten photos correctly with your first picks you can score a total of 100 points.

How many points can you get?

If you like Photo Quiz Map then you might also enjoy Map Channel's Treasure Maps game. Treasure Maps helps you easily set-up and create your own treasure hunt games with Google Maps and Google Street View. If you don't want to create your own Treasure Hunt games you can try to solve one of the three featured games instead.

Crowdsourced Time Travel

Mapillary, the crowdsourced rival to Street View, has a new 'time travel' feature. 'Time travel' allows you to compare two different street level photos of the same view that were taken at different times.

The Mapillary map now includes a clock icon which will take you into the 'time travel' mode for a selected location. The time travel mode includes thumbnail images of all the available submitted photos of the selected location. You can then select from these thumbnails to compare two different photos of the same scene.

Once you are in time travel mode a slider control allows you to switch between the two different images. Obviously time travel is only available at locations where more than one photo of a location has been submitted to Mapillary. Here is an example of the time travel mode in Sweden and this one is for Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark.

Video Journey Mapping

A new website allows you to to take a virtual boat journey down the Seine, a street car ride through San Francisco or a bus journey around London. Videomapia is an interactive map of videoed road, boat and train trips around the world. The map allows you to watch videos of short trips around cities and follow along with the journey on a synchronized Leaflet map.

The markers on the global Videomapia map show the locations of the uploaded videos. If you zoom in on the map you can see the individual routes taken in each video. You can then click anywhere on the journey track to start the video from that location. As the video of the trip plays out a moving marker on the map keeps track of the current location shown in the film.

Anyone can add their own videoed journeys to Videomapia. the site is entirely in Russian, so you might need to run the instructions through Google Translate.


If you like Videomapia then you might also enjoy Cyclodeo. Cyclodeo shows synchronized videoed cycling routes in cities around the world.

Cyclodeo uses Google Maps and videos of bike routes to allow users to preview routes before attempting to cycle them for themselves. The videos are synced to a Google Map of the route so that the user can click anywhere on the route and view the video at that location.

Even if you aren't a cyclist Cyclodeo allows you to virtually explore a number of global cities on video and on the accompanying maps.

Signs of Luxembourg

The University of Luxembourg wants to map the linguistic landscape of Luxembourg. They want to see how written languages are represented in public spaces and how different kinds of signs, languages and lettering help to create the linguistic landscape of a place or community.

They have therefore devised a citizen science project to help map the use of different languages in signs throughout the country. They have released an iOS and Android app which allows anyone to submit photographs of signs that they find anywhere in Luxembourg. These photographs are then plotted on the Lingscape map.

You can help contribute to this study into the diversity and dynamics of public writing by downloading the app from the Lingscape website. The project is currently centered on the languages used in signs in Luxembourg, however the app will work in any country in the world.

How to Add 3D Buildings to a Map

Mapbox has now added an example of 3d buildings to the Mapbox GL JS documentation. The Display Buildings in 3D example map provides you with all the code you need to use extrusions to display 3d buildings in a Mapbox GL map.

One thing missing from the example map is the light properties that control the lighting of the 3D buildings: light color, intensity, position, and anchor. These light properties are easy to add to the 'Display Buildings in 3D' example map by simply adding -

map.setLight({color: "#6ef", intensity: 0.5, position: [1.15, 135, 45]});

to the map.on function.

If you want to learn more about these light properties then you might also want to have a look at the Mapbox Blog post Shading and lighting 3D features in Mapbox GL JS.

I've also created an example map of 3d buildings in Mapbox GL. In my map I've added the option to navigate the map with game-like controls. This enables you to fly around the map and 3d buildings using your forward and left & right keyboard keys. I've also used the light properties of the 3d buildings to simulate the dropping of bombs on the map. If you press your keyboard down button the building light property flashes to simulate a bomb going off on the map.

Mapping Human Colonies on Mars

Recently National Geographic has started using Leaflet.js to provide interactive versions of the beautiful supplemental posters issued with each months National Geographic magazine. The September poster, exploring life in the Pacific Ocean off British Columbia, is available to view in the British Columbia Supplement.

The October print edition of the National Geographic includes a double sided poster about Colonizing Mars. The art side of the poster depicts a possible human colony on the red planet. It explains some of the technical difficulties which would be faced in establishing a Mars colony and shows what such a colony might look like.

The map side of the poster is a new map of Mars based on imagery and data from NASA's most recent missions to the planet. If you are interested in maps of Mars you might also enjoy National Geographic's article on the history of mapping the planet, What Mars Maps Got Right (and Wrong) Through Time.

If you want to create your own interactive map from an illustration, photo or other still image then you might find Zoomable Images with Leaflet helpful. This tutorial explains how you can use GDAL2Tiles and MapTiler to render map tiles from an image. If you have a Zoomify account Showing Zoomify Images with Leaflet explains how you can create an interactive Leaflet map from your Zoomify images.

Redlining Maps

The Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) was a government-sponsored corporation created as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Its purpose was to refinance home mortgages, which were in default, in order to help prevent foreclosures.

The HOLC is often cited as starting the practice of mortgage redlining. Redlining is the process of denying services to residents of certain areas based on the racial composition of those areas. The term comes from the maps, created by the HOLC, which marked in red the areas where the banks would not invest. The result of these maps was that residents in the more affluent and largely white neighborhoods were far more likely to receive financing under the New Deal. Residents in the poorer and black communities were deemed more of a financial risk and so were less likely to receive financial support.

You can explore examples of redlining maps from across the United States on the Mapping Inequality website. Using the Mapping Equality map you can zoom in on locations to view HOLC maps created for a number of American cities. When you view one of the historical maps the map sidebar provides details on the local population and the percentage of the city which was redlined on the HOLC map of the city.

3D Buildings in the Sun

Mapbox has created another great demo showcasing the new 3d buildings feature available in Mapbox GL. This new map demonstrates how you can use shading & lighting with 3d buildings to create depth and reflect different lighting conditions.

The extrusion lighting demo map in Shading and lighting 3D features in Mapbox GL JS includes three controls. These controls allow you to change the colors of the 3d buildings, the lighting intensity and the light direction.

Using the light direction and the light intensity options you can see how you could create a map which reflects the lighting conditions during the course of a day. You can use light direction to ensure that the light on the map mirrors the light direction from the sun during different times of the day. You can then change the light intensity to reflect the rising and falling of light during sunrise and sunset.

Another great demonstration of Mapbox's 3d buildings can be seen in Robert White's Vancouver Zoning Map.

Mapping Fracking Demands on Water

Over 350 billion gallons of water are used in hydraulic fracturing in the United States. Unfortunately over half of the wells hydraulically fractured in the last five years are in areas of high or extremely high water stress, including water basins in Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma and California.

Ceres has released an interactive map to show the locations of hydraulic fracturing well locations and the related water risk trends where these wells are located. The Competition for Water in US Shale Energy Development map provides an overview of overall water stress throughout the United States. The locations of fracked wells are also shown on the map. It is therefore easy to use the map to see where hydraulic fracturing is taking place in areas of high water stress.

The map also shows the outlines of major water basins in the United States. If you click on the water basin outlines on the map you can view the total number of fracked wells using the basin for water and the percentage of wells operating in areas of high and extreme water stress. For example 99% of fracking wells using the California water basin are operating in an area of high and extreme water stress.

Mapping NATO's Global Operations

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was set up after World War II as an alliance of European and North American countries. Its aim was to safeguard the member countries by agreeing to a policy of mutual defense.

NATO has released a new interactive map to help explain how the organization functions and how and where it operates around the world. NATO on the Map allows you to view which countries belong to the alliance, which countries it works in partnership with and its influence on global peacekeeping.

The map allows you to view the locations of NATO's civilian headquarters, military commands and headquarters around the world. It also shows examples of where NATO has sought to "project stability in its neighbourhood and beyond." A 'Security Challenges' layer shows some of the present global threats to peace and security that NATO and its partners currently faces across the globe.

The map includes two main map views a Google Maps aerial view and a Cesium powered 3D view.

Vancouver's 3D Building Zones

Last week Mapbox revealed their new extrusion properties for data layers in Mapbox GL JS. These new extrusion properties allow you to create 3d buildings (extruding buildings by their number of floors) or other 3d data visualizations on a map using your own data layers.

Robert White has already used Mapbox's new 3d buildings option to create the impressive Vancouver Zoning Map. Robert's map not only has 3d buildings but also uses data styling to color those buildings and other map features to show Vancouver's distinct city zones.

Using the map you can explore how & where Vancouver uses zoning within the city. You can also see how this zoning has an effect on the building heights in Vancouver's neighborhoods.

If you want to see how you can create your own building height map then you might want to have a look at my How to Create a Building Height Map tutorial. Mapbox has yet to create a good tutorial for creating 3d buildings with Mapbox GL JS. However you can have a look at the demo map provided in their blog post, 3D Features in Mapbox GL JS, to see how the new extrusion properties work.

Freestyle Downhill Water Mapping

Andy Woodruff has invented a kind of hydrodynamics physics engine for interactive maps. It allows him to create an animated map which visualizes water drainage flow for any location on Earth.

In the Rain on the Terrain Andy tries to answer the question of where water would flow if you poured it over the terrain at any location on the planet. His solution is essentially to use elevation data to find the lowest adjacent location for any given location. Drop some water at this location and it will find the path of least resistance and move to the adjacent location with this lowest elevation.

Repeat this process and you can plot a long path of the least resistance, moving downhill. If you then animate a polyline along this path you can create a map of flowing rivers. Andy's map allows you to visualize the animated flow map of drainage for any location on Earth (based on his simple algorithm). The map also includes some quick links to zoom the map to a number of locations with interesting terrain.

The Great Global Treasure Hunt

You can now create your own Treasure Map games on Google Maps. Map Channels has released a new simple to use platform which you can use to create your own treasure hunt map games.

Treasure Maps helps you easily set-up a treasure hunt game with Google Maps and Google Street View. You just need to add a few locations (and a few clues to find the locations) and you can then share your treasure hunt game with anyone that you want.

Before creating your own treasure hunt you might want to play some of the games already made with Treasure Maps. For example, the Tour of London treasure map requires you to find and locate 15 famous landmarks in the English capital. Your task is to follow the clues to find each location on the map. A large circle on the map shows you the current search area. As you get closer to the correct location on the map the circle gets smaller, narrowing down the area you need to search and helping you in your quest to find the correct location.

If you create your own treasure hunt game with Treasure Maps you can share the link to the game with your friends or you can embed the game in your own website or blog.

The Tron Map of the World

Mapzen has released a new futuristic map style called Tron 2.0. The map features a host of animated features and glowing polylines so Mapzen warn that it could push your computer to its limits (although it seems to work fine on my ancient laptop).

The visual style of Tron 2.0 relies on neon colors and primary shapes. This is perhaps most apparent in the animated ocean polygons and the glowing, pulsating coastlines. The extruded building footprints are particularly futuristic in style, especially if you zoom in and out (as in the animated GIF above).

There are a lot of other features in Mapzen's Tron 2.0 (check out the animated runway lights at airports). So, if nothing else, you should have a lot of fun exploring the world in Tron 2.0.

Explore Native America

Native America Travel wants to help you visit and explore Native American tribal historic sites and landmarks. It has therefore released an interactive map of Native American travel destinations and experiences.

The Native American Travel Map includes categorized attractions and experiences that you can visit throughout the United States. It also includes the option to view the locations of different Native American tribes. If you click through on the tribe markers on the map you can learn a little more about the tribe and view details of nearby Native Indian attractions that you can visit.

Each of the attractions and visits displayed on the map include details on the destination, available accommodation and other nearby Native American destinations.

The First Map of America

You can now explore the first ever map to use the word 'America' - with Google Maps. Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 map 'Universalis Cosmographia' has the 'America' place-name on what is now called South America. The name was used by Waldseemüller in honor of the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.

A Land Beyond the Stars is a new website created by the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress and the Galileo Museum in Florence. As well as the interactive version of Waldseemüller's 1507 map the site includes a wealth of information and videos explaining 16th century understanding of cartography & astronomy.

The interactive map itself contains a number of options to learn more about the Universalis Cosmographia map. These options include detailed explanations of the map's main five sections, translations of the Latin text and explanations of some of the map illustrations.

Mapping the Crazy Clowns

Pubescent boys with tiny hands are roaming the land dressed as crazy clowns. But don't worry! Atlas Obscura and Buzzfeed have both jumped on the craze by releasing interactive maps plotting the location of creepy clown sightings in the USA and the UK.

The Atlas Obscura map plots reported incidents of 'clown sightings, threats and scares' in the United States. The BuzzFeed map shows the locations of clown sightings in the UK. Neither map seems to reveal anything particularly interesting about the geography of the crazy clown craze - except that it seems to have become fairly widespread in both the USA and the UK.

The Atlas Obscura map allows you to click on the individual map markers to view a brief description of each reported sighting. The markers on the BuzzFeed map have no details about the individual clown sightings. However the BuzzFeed map does use some creepy clown markers with the Google Maps API marker animations function. It also uses the map styles option to give the map tiles a slightly crazy clown red tinge.

5 Million Finns on a Map

A new interactive dot map shows the distribution of the population of Finland. Finns on a Map uses the Leaflet.js map platform to show where the 5.5 million inhabitants of Finland live in the country.

Each dot on the map represents one inhabitant of Finland. The dots are randomized within the building footprints of each postcode area. In other words the map shows the population of each postcode area, but randomizes the distribution of the population within that area.

Dot maps are a useful way to visualize the geographical population of a country. Every person in England & Wales and Every Person in Scotland are two more examples of dot maps being used to map the distribution of a general population.

Dot maps can also be used to visualize other aspects of census and population data. The dot maps listed below have been created to visualize other demographic distributions, using data normally obtained from national censuses.

Toronto Visible Minorities
Mapping South Africa with Dot Distribution
The Racial Dot Map of the USA
The Racial Dot Map of Brazil
Indigenous Dot Map of Australia.
The Chinese Population of Australia
Rome - The Foreign Resident Population
The Dot Density Map of Women in the U.S.
The UK Ethnicity Dot Map
Mapping the Young Adults of New Zealand

50 Years of Volcanic Eruptions & Earthquakes

The Global Volcanism Program at the Smithsonian National Museum has released a new interactive map showing over 50 years of volcanic and earthquake activity around the world. The Eruptions, Earthquakes and Emissions map also shows volcanic gas emissions (sulfur dioxide, SO2) since 1978.

As the map animation plays through the years blue dots show strong earthquakes (with a magnitude of 5 and above). Red triangles indicate the locations of volcanic eruptions. You can hover over individual markers on the map to view the date and scale of the eruption or earthquake. You can also click through to view more details on the USGS and Smithsonian Global Volcanism websites.

The map includes filters which allow you to just view earthquakes, volcanoes or sulfur dioxide emissions. If you want to see all activity since 1960 on the map at the same time then just click on the 'All Events' button at the bottom of the map,

Mapping the Boston Globe

Mapping the Globe is a really interesting project to map all the locations mentioned in the Boston Globe since November 2011. The map allows you to visualize the areas which are most mentioned in the Globe as a whole and within the newspaper's individual sections.

Two filter controls on the map allow you to explore the data in more detail. The 'Map' filter allows you to view the geographical distribution of places mentioned in the different sections of the Boston Globe. The 'View' filter allows you to switch between a choropleth view (showing the distribution of places mentioned per capita) and a view of all the places mentioned shown as individual markers on the map.

If you hover over an individual marker on the map you can read a short introduction of the relevant Boston Globe article. In fact my major quibble with this map is that the information windows should open on mouse-click rather than mouse-hover. Opening the information windows on mouse-hover does make the map very hard to navigate. It is really difficult to select an individual marker on the map because, as you move your mouse around, information windows start popping up all over the map.

150 Years of Hurricanes Mapped

NOAA's Historical Hurricane Tracks maps the tracks of over 6,000 historical hurricanes around the world since 1842.

It is possible to search for hurricane tracks on the map by location, name, year and by ocean basin. If you select an individual hurricane you can view its historical track on the map. The hurricane's track is color coded to show the tropical storm strength over time. You can also click through to read the hurricane's storm details and storm report.

If you select the 'All Basins' option from the Ocean Basins drop-down menu you can get a good overview about the areas around the world that are worst affected by hurricanes and tropical cyclones. This option overlays the partial tracks of over 6,000 historical hurricanes on the map. It reveals that the Pacific Ocean, west of the International Date Line, sees more tropical cyclones than any other basin. It also shows that there is almost no hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean south of the Equator.

3D Earthquake Mapping

Engineers and architects can learn a lot about how to make buildings and other structures more earthquake proof by studying the devastation caused by earthquakes. However in the immediate aftermath of a disastrous earthquake rescue efforts and then clean-up & restoration projects obviously are of far more importance. This gives engineers a very short time-span in which to study how buildings have fared during a major earthquake.

Scientists at Brigham Young University are therefore working on how drones can be quickly deployed to capture aerial imagery of earthquake hit locations. Using structure from motion (SfM) computer vision, this drone footage can be used to create 3d maps. The completed 3d maps can then bu used by civil engineers to study the impact of an earthquake on ancient and modern infrastructure.

After a 6.2 magnitude quake hit central Italy earlier this year Brigham Young University deployed their drones to capture video footage of the damage caused to towns and villages in the area. They are now creating 3d models from this footage, You can view the completed 3d map of earthquake devastated Pescara del Tronto.

You can also read more about this important mapping project and find links to the preliminary report of the project's findings on the Brigham Young University website.

Sky View

Hivemapper are developing a beautiful interface for exploring drone captured videos from a 3d map. Using a 3d map allows users to explore drone videos by specific location. Instead of having to scrub through a whole drone video searching for the footage of the location you wish to view with 'Flight View' you can just click on the map to find the relevant part of the video.

Hivemapper Flight View presents you with a 3d point cloud map of a location. You can navigate around the 3d map to find a location that you wish to explore in Flight View. When you click on your chosen location the 3d map seamlessly changes to present the same view as captured on video by drone.

Hivemapper's 3d point cloud maps are created using data actually captured from the frames of the drone videos of that location. You can view Flight View in action on the Hivemapper demo map of Cathedral Hill in San Francisco. Check-out how the map magically switches from point cloud map to video when you click on the map.

You can learn more about Hivemapper and their development of Flight View on the Hivemapper Blog.

Maps of the Week

My favorite map this week doesn't involve any cartography but it does use the navigation tools that we have come to know from interactive maps. OneZoom is an interactive map which allows you to explore the complete tree of life on Earth. It uses an interactive map interface to visualize the evolutionary relationships between every species living on our planet.

Each leaf on the OneZoom tree of life represents an individual species. The branches represent the lineage of these individual species. The points where the different branches diverge on the tree of life show where different groups have split from one another. At each divergence point you can see the geologic time of when it is believed this divergence took place.

Red leaves on the OneZoom tree of life are those that are currently under the threat of extinction. When you zoom down to the individual leaf of a species you can click on that leaf to learn more about the selected animal from its Wikipedia entry.


A Day in the Life of the Trimet is an impressive animated map which allows you to a view an animated playback of any day on Portland's bus and light rail network.

Using the map you can select to create an animated playback of any day and any combination of bus routes on the Trimet. You can even see how many people were on each bus during the map playback of your created transit animation.

By creating an animation of the movements of buses over the course of one day you can really see how the frequency and speed of the buses rises and falls over a day. The number of buses on the Trimet begins to pick up around 6 am. Conversely the number of buses on the network drops sharply after 10 pm. You can also clearly see the number of buses peaking during the afternoon rush.


USAID has created an interactive map to show where and how historical U.S. foreign aid has been given to countries around the world. The Foreign Aid Trends map visualizes where U.S. foreign aid has been spent from 1946 to 2014.

The map allows you to view the total amount of foreign aid given to individual countries by year, funding agency and by assistance category. These data filters really allow you to explore where and how U.S. geopolitical and military influence has waxed and waned around the world since the Second World War.

For example, if you select to view just the military assistance category and animate through the whole date range, you can see how the focus of U.S. military aid has shifted over the decades. Immediately after World War II most U.S. foreign military aid was given to European countries. In the sixties and early seventies a lot of this military aid budget was being spent in Southeast Asia. Since the 1980's you can see how a lot of U.S, military aid has been focused on the Middle East.

Big, Big Art

Since the beginning of the earliest civilizations humans have sought to mold and shape the landscape for the purposes of defense, marking territory, hunting & farming and for other practical purposes. However alongside these practical reasons for altering the natural, physical environment humans have also sought to change the landscape for, what might be argued as impractical, cultural, religious and artistic reasons.

Allen Carroll of Esri has created a really interesting Story Map which examines the history of land art, or the 'the human urge to create ... expressed on a very large scale'. Very Large Art uses Esri aerial imagery to take a close look at examples of geoglyphs and other landscape art, from 3,000 year old chalk figures in England to the work of contemporary artists.

As well as exploring the works of important artists, such as James Turrell and Robert Smithson,  A Very Large Art also examines the work of famous landscape gardeners, the interesting architecture of large airports and the agricultural landscapes formed as a result of farming the land.