The Street Sounds & Street Views of Rio

During this summer's Olympics in Rio de Janerio Nissan partnered with Google to capture the excitement of the city with some special Street Views of the city. Nissan kitted out a Nissan Kicks car with Google's Street View cameras and drove around some of the important locations in the summer Olympics.

You can explore these panoramic images of the Olympics in Rio with Nissan Kicks View. Some of the Street View scenes in Nissan Kicks View also include 360 degree audio. This means that not only can you view the sights of Rio with Google 's 360 degree imagery but you can also listen to the panoramic sounds of the city. As you rotate around these audio Street View images you can hear the street sounds changing, as the audio is also dependent on the direction that you are looking.

There are quite a few locations to explore on Nissan Kicks View. However the most impressive scenes are definitely the ones along the Copacabana beach. These are the Street Views with the panoramic sound. Who knows perhaps one day all Google Maps Street View may come with panoramic sound.

Mapping Gold at the Rio Olympics

The race is over and we can now announce the medal winners in the 2016 Olympic's mapping competition. So in reverse order:

The Bronze Medal

It has to be said that Fiasco Design went into this year's Olympics showing great form after their amazing showing at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. Their custom made interactive map for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games uses the same pictorial map style that they used in their original Sochi map.

The Rio 2016 Map is dotted with information about the major sporting venues in the Olympics and interesting facts about some of Rio's major landmarks. The map also contains a couple of interactive map games. The first game is a little treasure hunt in which you have to find dismembered body parts of a man hidden around the map. The other game involves finding a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who is hiding somewhere on this Fiasco Design map of Rio.

The Silver Medal

Google also created a wonderful interactive map for the 2016 Rio Olympics. Google's O Brasil Inteiro Joga - Mapa is a much more traditional interactive map than Fiasco Design's pictorial map. Google's map can therefore actually be used to navigate your way around Rio de Janeiro and to find the Olympic venues.

Google's map includes a number of wonderful pictorial overlays which highlight the Olympic venues and some of Rio's landmarks on the map. It also includes a wealth of information about the Olympic venues and the city (unfortunately for non-Portuguese speakers there isn't an option to view this information in English).

The Rio map is part of Google's integrated Brazilian platform for the Olympic games. As well as this map the platform features an Olympics news-feed and 42 original mini-games.

The Gold Medal

Not content with the silver medal Google has also gone all out for the Olympic gold with this fascinating map about Rio de Janeiro.

Beyond the Map - the Unexpected World of the Favelas is an interactive tour around Rio which concentrates on a number of individuals who have grown-up in the city's favelas. The tour uses a number of 360 degree interactive videos which transport you around the city. At each stop on the journey you can watch a YouTube interview with a local citizen in which you get to learn a little about their lives and dreams.

The use of aerial imagery, 360 degree videos and YouTube interviews provides a great introduction to the city and an interesting insight into life in Rio's favelas.

Let the Games Begin

Fiasco Design has created a custom made interactive map for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. This pictorial map is dotted with information about the major sporting venues and interesting facts about some of Rio's major landmarks.

Rio 2016 also contains a couple of very strange little games. The first game is a gruesome treasure hunt. The dismembered body parts of a man have been hidden around the map. Your job is to help the police by discovering the hidden limbs. The other game involves finding a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who is hiding somewhere on this map of Rio.

Aside from the poor taste and judgement of these two treasure hunt games the map does include some nice touches. I like the animated features on the map, such as the cable cars, flying parrots and the yachts in the sea. I also like the use of sound effects, which are attached to some of the map markers.

The Impact of the Olympics on Rio

Esri has produced a great interactive presentation exploring Rio de Janeiro's preparations for the 2016 Olympic Games. Ready or Not, Let the Games Begins examines the impact on Rio, both positive and negative, of the infrastructure developments being made for the games and how these changes are affecting the city and its citizens.

The interactive is divided into five main sections looking at; the impact of construction projects, the displaced people living in the favelas, the spread of the Zika virus, pollution and security issues in the city.

Because the presentation is created by Esri many of these issues are, of course, illustrated with accompanying interactive maps. The interactive uses a story map format, so that as you scroll through the presentation the maps automatically update to illustrate the accompanying text. I particularly like how Map Swipe is used in some of the maps to automatically reveal and compare different base map layers.

Mapping Gun Violence in Rio

Amnesty International in Brazil has released an interactive map to crowd-source incidents of gun violence in Rio de Janeiro. There have been more than 570 gunfights in the city already this year. However, with the police themselves responsible for one in five killings in the state of Rio last year, accurate official statistics on gun violence are hard to get.

The Fogo Cruzado map allows anyone in Rio to report incidents of gun violence, whether carried out by gangs or by the police. As well as the crowd-sourced data the map includes incidents of armed attacks reported by the press and official police and government data.

The map is a custom styled Google Map with beautifully deigned markers. These markers are categorized to show gun violence incidents with fatalities, with injuries and victimless incidents. The map also uses numbered clustered markers to show where more than one incident has occurred. If you zoom in on these locations the individual incidents are then revealed.