No Planes Over Pakistan

FlightRadar24 has become the go-to source for mappers searching for flight data, particularly when something happens to disrupt air traffic around the world. Last month the New York Times used data from FlightRadar24 to visualize the grounding of Boeing 737's around the world after the crash of Flight 302. Now Reuters has used data from the same source to visualize How India-Pakistan tensions have disrupted air travel.

During the early hours of February 26 Indian warplanes flew into the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan and dropped a number of bombs in the vicinity of the town of Balakot. India claimed that they had made a preemptive strike against a terrorist training camp. A claim which Pakistan disputes, saying that the bombs were dropped in an uninhabited area. The day after the Indian airstrike Pakistan cancelled all commercial flights and closed its airspace.

Reuters has used data from FlightRadar24 to create a number of maps showing how air travel in the region has been disrupted by Pakistan's closure of its airspace. These mapped visualizations include a series of small maps showing how a number of planes had to divert around Pakistan on the day that the airspace closure was announced. It also includes a larger map which provides a snapshot of flights on February 27, with a big absence of flights over Pakistan. A third map shows the flight paths of planes from April 3-9, most of them skirting around the southern tip of Pakistan.

Pakistan Election Maps

The results of yesterday's election in Pakistan are beginning to come in. Early results suggest that the ex-cricket star Imran Khan is currently in the lead but may fall short of an overall majority.

Al Jazeera's Pakistan Elections map is showing the results live as they are released. The cartogram map view represents each of the 272 election seats as a hexagon. Each hexagon is colored to show the winner in the seat when the result has been announced. The Al Jazeera map includes the option to view the election results for 2013 and 2008.

BBC Urdu also has a live election map for the Pakistan election. The BBC's election map is the only one I've seen which shows a proper geographical view. On the BBC's map each constituency is colored by the winning candidate. You can also click on a seat to view the number of votes cast for the winning candidate. The map also includes an option to view the 2013 election results in each constituency.

The Daily Pakistan's General Election 2018 map shows each constituency as a dot. Each dot is colored to show the winner in that constituency. If you hover over an individual constituency's dot you can view the number of votes cast for the winning candidate. The Daily Pakistan interactive also shows a running  total of the number of seats won by each party.

Help Partition India

Seventy years ago a British lawyer called Sir Cyril Radcliffe was asked to draw the border that would divide British India into two countries. Now it's your turn.

Radcliffe's new boundaries were formally announced in August 1947. The announcement left around 14 million people in the 'wrong' country. In the violence that followed around 1 million people lost their lives. After witnessing the chaos that followed his partition of India Radcliffe at least had enough shame to refuse his 40,000 rupee salary.

Al Jazeera don't have a 40,000 rupee salary to pay but they would like your help in dividing British India into two countries. In How were the India-Pakistan partition borders drawn? Al Jazeera has provided you with a map which includes information on where the Muslim, Hindu and Sikh populations live. You just need to draw the borders on the map to create two new countries.

After you have drawn your borders you will be shown the original Radcliffe Line.

Mapping the 1947 Partition of India

In 1947 the British Indian Empire was partitioned into the Dominion of Pakistan (which later split into Pakistan and Bangladesh) and the Union of India (later the Republic of India). One result of the partition was that 14 million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were forced or decided to leave their ancestral homes and move their families to other countries. It was probably the largest mass migration event in human history.

The 1947 Partition Archive is documenting and sharing eye witness accounts of individuals affected by the Partition of British India in 1947. These individual stories of post-partition migration can be viewed on an interactive map. The map allows you to access oral histories of pre-Partition life, post-Partition migration and the ensuing life changes brought about by this migration.

If you select an individual marker on the 1947 Partition Archive Map you can click through to read the individual accounts of living through the partition. The markers on the maps, indicating the individual mapped histories, can be filtered by where the individuals migrated from or where they migrated to.

Mapping 3G Coverage in Pakistan

The Pakistan 3G Coverage Map shows you which cities in Pakistan have 3G coverage. The map provides a useful guide to which mobile phone operators offer 3G coverage in different Pakistani cities.

The map allows you to select different individual mobile phone operators to see where they have 3G coverage. You can also select an individual province in the map sidebar to zoom-in on an area on the map and discover which operators have 3G coverage in the region.


The Pakistan 3G Coverage Map only provides a guide as to which operators are available in which cities. To find out the signal strength available within cities you should check out OpenSignal.

Using OpenSignal you can zoom in on an area and view a heat-map of signal strength for each of the main operators in the area. Once you have zoomed in on the location select 3G & 4G in the map sidebar. The map sidebar also allows you to select individual operators to view a heat-map of their signal strength at the searched for location.

The Drone Attack Map

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has released an interactive map of United States drone attacks on Pakistan. The Bureau maintains a database of US drone attacks on Pakistan, which began in 2004 and continue to this day.

The Where the Drones Strike map shows the locations of all US drone strikes in Pakistan, the nature of each target hit and the number of casualties of each drone attack. You can use the timeline at the bottom of the map to view the strikes made in each month since 2004.

You can also use the forward and back arrows in the map sidebar to view different filtered views of the drone strikes. These include a mapped visualization of all the drone strike and a view of all the strikes that caused civilian casualties.

The reported locations of drone strikes are sometimes only given as a specific town or district therefore some of the mapped locations are imprecise.

The Untold Story

I read an interview recently with the science fiction writer Iain Banks in which he said something that has been making me think ever since. He said,

"Living in a gated community and employing hired muscle to keep you comfy does not mean you live in a little utopia. It means you live in a dystopia and happen to be one of the privileged."

This seems to me to be the perfect analogy for countries in the so called first world. We employ hired muscle in the form of immigration controls to keep us comfy in our little dystopias. To perpetuate the myth that we actually live in utopias the last thing that we want to hear is the personal stories of those 'others' that we are so desperate to keep out.

Whatever our personal views on immigration are the stories of migrants deserve to be told. I haven't seen the migrant's story better told than in the Global Mail's new mapped interactive report on Hussain's Journey.

Filmmaker Matt Abbott gave Muhammad Hussain, a Hazara Pakistani about to set out on a journey to seek asylum in Australia, a video camera and asked him to film his experiences. The Global Mail's mapped report starts off with Matt Abbot's own recordings of Muhammad Hussain's family and life in Karachi.

When Muhammad set off on his dangerous journey to Australia he took over the filming himself. The mapped report of this journey allows you to view his experiences in safe houses, in smugglers’ homes and the final stretch across the ocean in a rickety boat.

Drone Attacks in Pakistan Mapped

The Guardian newspaper has created a Google Map of U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan.

The paper says that the U.S. has launched over 330 drone strikes in Pakistan with up to 3,247 casualties, including up to 852 civilians. The map is based on a comprehensive database of drone strikes compiled by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Drone Attacks in Pakistan Mapped

Bin Laden's Compound - Updated

Abbottabad, Pakistan

The location of Osama Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad has been identified by local sources. The compound, that is described as having 4m-6m (12ft-18ft) walls and being eight times larger than other homes in the area, is to the south-east of a Pakistan Military Academy. The satellite imagery shown on this Google Map clearly matches photographs of the compound released by the Pentagon (pdf link from ABC).

Abbottbad resident and Twitter user Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual) Tweeted what he says was the location of the crashed helicopter in the American attack on the compound. The helicopter is being reported as having crashed because of 'technical failure'.

The New York Times describes the compound as being "a large mansion on the outskirts of the town center, set on an imposing hilltop and ringed by 12-foot-high concrete walls topped with barbed wire."

Big hat-tips to Ogle Earth and the Google Earth Blog.

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Responding to the Floods in Pakistan

Resource Finder

Google's Crisis Response team have released a web page in Urdu and English where you can find information, resources and donation opportunities to help the victims of the Pakistan floods.

Part of the response includes a Resource Finder a tool to help disseminate updated information about health facilities and services in Pakistan. The Resource Finder (again in Urdu or English) is a Google Map that shows the locations of hospitals and clinics. Users can select the type of clinic they wish to view from a drop down menu.

The map includes editable records to help relief workers maintain up-to-date information on the services, doctors, equipment and beds available at neighboring health facilities.

A similar Response Finder is also available for Haiti.

Via: Official Google Blog

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Google Map of US Drone Attacks

U.S. Drone Attacks in Pakistan

This My Map shows the approximate locations of all U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan since 2004 on Google Maps. Strikes prior to 2008 are shown with yellow map markers, those in 2008 during the Bush administration are shown with red markers, and strikes during the Obama administration are green.

Most strikes are on Pashtun villages in North and South Waziristan in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border. Clicking on a map marker opens an information window with details of casualties and a link to a source for news of each drone attack.

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