The 2017 Terrorist Attacks Map.

According to Wikipedia's List of Terrorist Incidents in 2017 over 2,000 people have already been killed in terrorist attacks this year. You can see where those terrorist attacks took place on the 2017 Terrorist Attacks map. This map from PeaceTech Lab uses the data from Wikipedia's chronology of terrorist attacks to show where attacks have taken place around the globe.

The locations of terrorist attacks which have taken place this year are shown on the map by colored, scaled markers. The colors of the markers indicate the terrorist group responsible for the attack. The size of the circular markers represent the number of fatalities resulting from the terrorist attacks.

You can also view PeaceTech Lab's 2016 Terrorist Attacks map.

Bear Tracking in Yosemite Park

The Bear Management Team at Yosemite National Park has released a bear tracking map which allows you to follow the progress of three of the park's black bears. The Yosemite Bear Tracker Map displays the position of each bear and three tracks showing their movements over the last 30 days.

If you select a bear's marker on the map you can view details on how far it has traveled today and how far it has traveled over the last 30 days. The actual live positions of the bears is not shown on the map (the data is delayed) for the safety of the bears. As well as allowing you to follow the movements of three of the park's bears the map also shows the position of where bears were hit by vehicles in 2016.


Last year National Geographic attached cameras and tracking collars to two grizzly bears and two black bears inside Yellowstone National Park. They were then able to map the bears' movements inside the park and observe how they find food and interact with their environment.

A Bear’s-Eye View of Yellowstone allows you to watch footage from the four bear-cams and view the bears' tracks as they move around the park. As you scroll down this special interactive presentation from National Geographic the bears' tracks are updated on the map while the bear-cam footage from the currently displayed location plays on top of the map.

Highlights of A Bear's-Eye View of Yellowstone include a black bear taking a short-cut through some people's backyards, a cannibal bear feasting on another bear and a bear's encounter with a pack of wolves.


The Polar Bears International Bear Tracker map allows you to follow the progress of polar bears on and around Hudson Bay. The Bear Tracker map is tracking the movements of fourteen different polar bears.

Each of the polar bears has been fitted with a GPS collar which allows Polar Bears International to track the bears' movements and to show their locations on the Bear Tracker map (with a time delay for the bear's safety). The map also includes a sea-ice layer, which shows the extent of the current sea-ice extent on the bay.

The map includes a time-line which allows you to view the bears' movements since 2013. The time-line also shows the sea-ice extent for each day since 1 Oct 2013.

New York's Mountains of Crime

NYC Crime Trends is a 3D mapped visualization of New York crime data. The application shows three months worth of crime as an elevation layer on top of a map of New York. These new mountains & valleys of New York show where crime is more & less prevalent in the city.

You can view the crime trends in a New York neighborhood simply by clicking on a location on the map. A blue 3D mesh shows the areas where the most crime has taken place, The inset information window provides a line graph of the total number of crimes in the area over a three month period. The 3D mesh actually slowly rises and falls to show the crime trends over those three months. The time of the current map view is indicated on the NYC Crime Trends line graph.

The animated playback of the three months of crime actually plays a little slow. It would be nice if the user could use the line graph to control the date shown on the map for themselves. The map would also benefit from providing an option to turn off the 3D buildings on the map. This would provide a much clearer view of the crime topography overlay.

How Long to Drive?

Isochrone maps are proving very popular this year. In just the first three months of 2017 Maps Mania has featured travel time maps from Isoscope, farfrom.io, walkshed.js and TravelTime. These isochrone maps are now joined by TimeToAnywhere.

TimeToAnywhere is an interactive map which shows you how far you can drive in the UK for different lengths of time. The map is very easy to use. Just click on the map to set your location and you can instantly view an isochrone layer showing the driving times around your selected location. 

The stand out feature of TimeToAnywhere is its speed (drag the marker around the map to see how quickly the isochrone layer updates). However TimeToAnywhere also includes a number of other useful features. These include an option to view the isochrone layer for busy commuting times (when driving times are longer). The map also includes an option to view a route and travel time to a specific location, by dragging a destination marker onto the map.

Mapping ESA's Mission to Mars

The Russian space agency Roscosmos and the European Space Agency plan to search for life on Mars. The ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) mission will land a rover on Mars to search for bio-signatures of Martian life. The two space agencies have now whittled down the possible landing site of the ExoMars 2020 rover to just two locations on Mars. The two remaining candidate landing sites have been chosen because in the planet's early history they both hosted an abundance of water.

You can explore the ExoMars landing sites for yourself on the ExoMars LSS interactive map. The map shows the location on Mars of the original four proposed landing sites. It now also highlights the remaining two candidate sites.

If you select any of the landing sites on the map you can read an explanation of the type of Martian terrain found at the selected location. You can also view a zoomed in aerial view of each landing site and the landing ellipses where the rover would land. The ExoMars LSS interactive map also provides an explanation of the elevation, latitude and geological constraints that effect the final choice of the ExoMars rover landing site.

The final decision on the landing site for the 2020 mission will not be be made until one year before launch.

The Northern Irish Divide

Dot maps are a great way to visualize racial segregation. They can also be really useful for visualizing religious and political divides. The Detail has released a new interactive dot map which shows how twenty years after the end of the Troubles in Northern Ireland Catholics and Protestants still choose to live in separate communities.

The N.I. Region Map uses historical census data to visualize where Catholics and Protestants have lived in Northern Ireland over the last 50 years. The map includes the census results for 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001 and 2011, which means that you can view a dot map layer visualizing where people of both religions lived in each decade since 1970. By progressing through the different decades it is therefore possible to view how much integration has taken place between the two different religious communities over recent years.

You can read more about the project in The Detail's article, Data mapping highlights Northern Ireland’s divisions ahead of Brexit. The Irish Times is also working with The Detail to explore some of the issues that arise from the new map. A good introduction to the Irish Times' coverage of the map is their article Two tribes: A divided Northern Ireland.

Mapping Melbourne's Safe Spaces

A new interactive map from Free To Be shows locations across Melbourne where women feel threatened and unsafe.

Plan International Australia's Free To Be campaign gathered over 1,300 responses from women in Melbourne highlighting locations in the city where they feel safe or unsafe. The campaign used the CrowdSpot citizen reporting platform to collect women's experiences of Melbourne's streets. Using the interactive map women could add locations where they felt either 'happy' or 'sad' and explain why the location made them feel this way.

The citizen reporting stage of the campaign is now over, so you can no longer contribute to the Free To Be map. However you can now use the map to view the locations throughout the city identified by other women in Melbourne. The locations and experiences added to the map will now also be "shared with the City of Melbourne to help them create a city that includes girls and young women".

Play Ms Pacman on Google Maps

Most years the Google Maps team manage to create something special for April Fools' Day. One of the team's best April Fools' jokes was turning Google Maps into a fully working game of Pacman in 2015.

Google Maps Pacman was so successful that this year Google has decided to bring it back - only this year Pacman is wearing a ribbon. That's right! If you open Google Maps on a desktop or on Android you can play Ms Pacman.

To play just click on the 'insert coin' button. If you don't see the button then zoom in on an area with lots of roads. In the game dots are added to the roads and that famous yellow pill and colored ghosts appear. All you have to do is to collect all the dots and avoid those chasing ghosts. Make sure to turn on the sound if you want to wacca, wacca, wacca across the map in style.

How Does Your Commute Compare

The average commuting time for the residents of Liguori, Missouri is 1.2 minutes. This is quite a lot quicker than the national average commuting time of 25.5 minutes.

If you want to know what the average commuting time is in your zipcode area then you can use Auto Accessories Garage's interactive map of Average Commute Times. If you enter your commute time and zipcode into the map you find out how your commuting time compares with that of your neighbors. You can also discover how your commute compares to the average in your city, state and in the whole country.

The Average Commute Times map uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Top 100 Cultural Landscapes in Spain

Narrating Landscapes is a new interactive map designed to highlight some of the most interesting and beautiful locations in Spain. The map shows the locations of 100 of the most astonishing 'cultural landscapes' in Spain - places where there has been extraordinary interactions between man and the natural environment.

Like the cultural landscapes being showcased here the map itself is beautiful. I especially like the round information windows and the animated map markers. If you click through on one of the cultural landscapes you can view photos and videos of the selected location. You are also shown other nearby cultural landscapes on a separate interactive map.

The cultural landscapes themselves have been organized into five different colored categories on the map. The categories of cultural landscape are: agricultural, urban, defense, historical and industrial.