Mapping the Siege of Kherson

The interactive map The Human Safari sheds stark light on one of the most harrowing realities of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Kherson, a city divided by the Dnipro River, is home to roughly 71,000 civilians who live under the constant threat of shelling and drone attacks. Those remaining on the north bank face relentless bombardment from Russian forces positioned across the river to the south - a campaign that residents grimly describe as a “human safari.”

Far from being a metaphor, this phrase reflects the brutal nature of daily life in the city. Since 2023, Russian attacks have targeted civilian areas with calculated ferocity, seeking not only to inflict casualties but also to terrorize the population and erode its will to endure. The toll is especially severe on Kherson’s most vulnerable residents, including the elderly and those unable to flee, whose stories and fates the map makes tragically visible.

The Human Safari is a harrowing and essential interactive map that documents the civilian casualties in Kherson resulting from targeted Russian drone and shelling attacks. Built using the open-source MapLibre GL JS library, this animated map powerfully visualizes the timeline of non-combatant casualties, offering crucial context and data on these ongoing war crimes.

The ever-increasing cumulation of casualties on the map as the timeline plays out powerfully achieves its purpose of visualizing the systemic, targeted violence against Kherson's civilian population. By using a timeline and allowing filtering by munition and casualty type, it clearly illustrates the pattern of the so-called 'Human Safari'.

The Musical Animated Train Map

Tokyo’s train stations are famous for their departure melodies - short musical jingles that play when a train leaves a station. Each station on the city’s extensive rail network has its own distinctive tune, creating a unique soundscape that signals the start of a journey. These melodies are designed to soothe passengers, catch attention, and add a touch of local character to the daily commute. For locals and tourists alike, they’ve become an iconic part of the Tokyo experience.

To bring this auditory experience to the web, I've created the interactive Yamanote Line Map. The map shows the full circular route of the Yamanote line and animates a train moving along it. As the train arrives at each station, you can hear the authentic departure melody for that stop. It’s a playful way to explore the line, learn the order of stations, and enjoy the distinctive sounds that make Tokyo’s railway system so charming.

This interactive map was inspired by the website Yamanotes, which showcases the Yamanote Line and its station melodies in a simple, elegant format. My version just adds a map with an animated train, allowing you to imagine that you are actually traveling the Yamanote line yourself (if you have a very vivid imagination).

Also See 

Mini Tokyo 3D - for the full real-time animated Tokyo transit experience

Mapping Humanity’s Journey to Space

T-Minus 6000 is a fascinating story-map by Aaron Koelker that chronicles more than six decades of humanity’s journey into orbit. Blending historical milestones with rich data visualizations, it traces the rise and fall of spacefaring powers, from the launch of Sputnik in 1957 to the surge of private companies in the 21st century.

Embedded within this Esri story-map is an interactive dashboard that pinpoints the locations of all 6,060 rocket launches worldwide since 1957. Using the map, with just a few clicks, you can explore the data not only by location, but also by decade, by launch operator, or even by individual spaceport. The dashboard brings the history of spaceflight to life, letting you switch between a flat map, a rotating globe, or clear, data-driven charts to reveal shifting patterns and trends over more than six decades of space exploration.

Among its most insightful features is the date filter, which lets you watch the story of rocket launches unfold decade by decade. As you slide through time, patterns emerge that reveal the shifting balance of spacefaring nations. In the early decades, launches were concentrated in the Soviet Union’s eastern spaceports, like Baikonur and Plesetsk, underscoring its dominance during the height of the Space Race. By the 1990s, as the Soviet Union collapsed and its space program lost momentum, the center of global launch activity drifted westward toward the United States, powered by the era of the Space Shuttle. In the 21st century, the trend swung east again as China’s rapidly expanding launch programs at Jiuquan, Xichang, and Wenchang reshaped the map, marking the rise of a new powerhouse in the space race.

Who's Polluting Your Air?

Climate Trace's new Pollution Plumes map uses animated markers to dramatically visualize the amount of air pollution people are exposed to worldwide. At the same time, the map reveals the locations of the largest emitters of PM2.5 pollutants into the atmosphere.

By entering your location into the Pollution Plumes map, you can view the locations of all the super emitters near you. The tool also lets you watch animated simulations of air pollution drifting across your area - both on a typical day with prevailing conditions and on a worst-case day when the largest number of people are exposed.

The data behind the Pollution Plumes map comes from Climate TRACE’s global inventory of more than 660 million pollution sources. This database combines facility-level emissions data from power plants, ports, refineries, mines, and factories. You can investigate this data in more detail on Climate Trace's Explore map.

This Explore map provides a global view of greenhouse gas emissions across every major sector of the economy. The map currently highlights emissions from 2021 to 2025, with totals updating dynamically as you filter by geography, sector, or gas type.

The tool is designed for deep exploration and comparison. Users can search for individual facilities, companies, or regions, then break down emissions by sector, gas, or timeframe. It also reveals the world’s top emitters, ranks them, and shows how their output changes month to month. For broader context, the map includes city-level data for more than 9,000 urban areas worldwide.

See Europe by Train, Hour by Hour

Chronotrains, pioneers of European train data visualization, are back with another superb tool. Their latest interactive map again reveals how far you can travel in Europe by train within set time periods - using an impressive animated isochrone layer.

The original Old Chronotrains map features an amazing interactive isochrone layer that automatically moves around Europe to show you how far you can travel by train in 5 hours

The new Chronotrains - Europe Train Map allows you to select any city in Europe and view an animated isochrone layer show you how far you can travel by train over the course of 12 hours. As the timeline plays, the isochrone polygons steadily spread out from your chosen station, illustrating all the destinations you can reach within an ever-increasing travel window.

Of course, the main Chronotrains map is packed with even more useful features. In addition to showing how far you can travel within a chosen time period from any European station, it also lets you explore all the night train departures across Europe, view every direct destination available from a given station, and even access links to book train tickets.

Snapping & Mapping the Passage of Time

Rephotography is the fascinating art of capturing the same scene at different points in time. It involves taking a new photograph of the same location, object, or scene that was photographed in the past, with the goal of comparing the two images over time. The new photo is usually taken from the same vantage point, angle, and framing as the original, so changes in the landscape, architecture, environment, or people can be directly observed.

re.photos is a brilliant website that uses the Google Maps API to create a global, collaborative map of rephotographs. The site's core purpose is to collect and showcase these visual time capsules from around the world. It achieves this purpose by providing a simple and intuitive platform for users to contribute their own rephotos and for others to explore them.

Beyond exploring by location, re.photos allows you to navigate its collection using a variety of filters, including date, timespan between photos, and different categories. Once you select a rephoto from the map, you can compare the two photos of the same location using a simple slider control.

Also See

• Historypin - global mapped archive of vintage photos
• Sunset over Sunset - Ed Ruscha’s photos of Sunset Boulevard across five decades
• 1940s NYC and 80s.NYC - explore vintage photos of NYC
• Historical Photo Mapping - a Maps Mania round-up of vintage photo maps

Making Maps Easy with Ultra

Ultra describes itself as “a web application made to simplify making maps with MapLibre GL JS using data from various file/query types.” In essence, it is a tool for turning geospatial data from OSM, CSVs, or GeoJSON into interactive maps using simple YAML “recipes” to define data sources, styling, and popups.

Using Ultra, it is possible to visualize geospatial data from multiple sources, including the Overpass API (OpenStreetMap), CSV/Google Sheets, and GeoJSON. Unlike traditional Overpass queries, which only fetch raw OSM data, Overpass-Ultra provides a flexible interface for styling, filtering, and interacting with map features.

YAML

In Ultra, YAML (Yet Another Markup Language) is used as a map recipe to tell the application what to map, how to style it, and how users can interact with it. This approach makes it easy to turn geospatial datasets into interactive, shareable maps without writing custom code.

Ultra uses YAML to define:

• Data sources - URLs for Overpass queries, CSV files, or other datasets.
• Map options - initial zoom, center coordinates, and controls like geolocation.
• Styling layers - how points, lines, and polygons are rendered (circles, icons, arrows).
• Popups - HTML templates for what appears when a feature is clicked, including images, text, and links.

Examples

If this all sounds a little confusing, it can help to start with some practical examples. Explore these maps, inspect their YAML “recipes,” and see if you can adapt them:

• London Artworks - adjust the center coordinates to map pictures of artworks in your town
• Vintage Photos of Richmond, VA - the YAML loads data from a Google Sheet - inspect the linked CSV to see how the data is structured and loaded
• UK Castles - loads castle data from a GeoJSON file

(click 'Run' in Ultra to view these maps!)

How Google Maps Works

Google Maps Explained is an awesome walkthrough that breaks down how Google Maps figures out the best route when you ask for directions. The star of the show is Geo, a cute little green guide who walks you through the behind-the-scenes magic that makes Google Maps so smart.

At the heart of Google Directions is some seriously clever tech - powerful pathfinding algorithms. These are techniques used to figure out the best route between two points, taking into account distance, obstacles, or other factors to make navigation as efficient as possible. 

Google Maps Explained uses an interactive map (with plenty of fun animated map illustrations) to show how different algorithms work, like Breadth-First Search (BFS), Depth-First Search (DFS), Bidirectional BFS, Greedy search, A*, Bidirectional A*, and A* with a lookup table.

Learning about algorithms might sound intimidating, but this tutorial makes it surprisingly fun. Thanks to Geo’s playful explanations and easy-to-follow visuals, you’ll come away with a clear picture of how Google Maps plans routes - and why certain algorithms are better than others for finding the fastest way from point A to point B.

Via: Webcurios

The Interactive Map for Book Lovers

If you've ever read a book and wished you had a map to follow the characters' journeys, you'll love Plotted.io. This unique website is a collection of interactive maps that bring the worlds of fiction and non-fiction books to life. Whether it's a fantasy realm with a hand-drawn map or a real-world journey described in a travelogue, Plotted.io allows users to annotate and share these literary landscapes.

The purpose of Plotted.io is to provide a platform for book lovers to visualize and share the worlds within their favorite stories. The website successfully achieves this by providing a simple and intuitive interface for both browsing existing maps and creating new ones. The ability to upload images, add custom markers and descriptions allows for a rich, collaborative experience.

Currently the Plotted.io cupboard is a little bare - but hopefully that will change as the site becomes more established. Currently highlights include maps of Locations in Dracula, Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea and Lunathion.

Also See

Game of Thrones Map
Lord of the Rings Project

Losing BIG, Very SAD!

The Economist has mapped President Trump’s approval rating in each state, and the results look bleak for the president and the Republican Party ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Drawing on data from YouGov polling, The Economist finds that Trump holds a positive net approval rating in only 11 states.

In its cartogram of Donald Trump's Approval Rating, the magazine shows that the president enjoys double-digit positive approval in just three states — Idaho, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Conversely, in 39 states and in Washington, D.C., Trump has a negative approval rating, and in 11 of those his disapproval exceeds approval by more than 30 percentage points.

 

This Strength in Numbers interactive map of Trump's Net Approval Rating in Each State shows a slightly better picture for the president.

One reason it looks different from The Economist’s approval map is that it doesn’t rely on new state-by-state polls. Instead, it models estimates for each state by:

• starting with Trump’s 2024 presidential vote margin in that state,
• comparing his 2024 national vote margin with his current national net approval,
• then shifting every state’s 2024 result by that same national swing.

A separate Strength in Numbers chart shows 53.8% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s performance while 42% approve, giving him a net approval of -11.8 points (about 12 points under water). The map uses that -11.8-point national figure to adjust the 2024 election results and estimate his current net approval rating in each state. The map would look a little different using The Economist's -17% approval rating.