The Interactive Genocide Map

A Cartography of Genocide is a powerful new initiative by Forensic Architecture that maps the extensive human cost of the Israeli military’s operations in Gaza. This interactive platform and accompanying 827-page report seek to document and analyze attacks on Gaza’s civilian population and infrastructure from October 2023 to June 2024.

This interactive map presents an in-depth spatial and temporal analysis of military actions in Gaza, identifying not only individual incidents but broader patterns of violence. The project provides a stark, data-driven examination of the military campaign’s impact on civilian life, examining Israel's directives for civilians to move to ostensibly "safe" zones which were later attacked. This approach allows the analysis to uncover a larger narrative about the systematic destruction of Gaza’s essential infrastructure.

The interactive cartographic platform at the heart of the project allows users to visualize data points across Gaza, categorizing events such as displacement, destruction of medical facilities, and targeting of agriculture. These visualizations illustrate connections between different actions - like how certain areas were subject to repeated displacement orders before subsequent attacks, a pattern that underscores the lack of genuine "safe" zones.

The report outlines six specific categories of military conduct: spatial control, displacement, destruction of agriculture and water resources, destruction of medical and civilian infrastructure, and targeting of aid. Each category provides both statistical data and pattern analysis, giving a granular view of the deliberate impacts on life-sustaining infrastructure and resources. By tracking these types of destruction simultaneously, the report highlights how military strategies are employed not in isolation but as part of a coordinated approach to destabilize civilian life in Gaza.

Also See

• Mapping the Massacres - a map of the atrocities committed by Hamas on the 7th October.
• Gaza Damage Proxy Map - assessing the damage to buildings in Gaza
• How the Israel-Hamas War has Reshaped Rafah in Gaza - mapping damaged buildings in Rafah
• How Will Gaza be Rebuilt - mapping the levels of debris in Gaza

Geolocating Visual Media in Conflict Zones

Geoconfirmed is a volunteer-based platform focused on geolocating visual content in conflict zones. The organization provides verified geolocation data to support situational awareness, investigative efforts, and combat misinformation. Initially launched in 2022, to document the Ukraine conflict, Geoconfirmed now also documents visual content in other conflict zones. Their tools include detailed conflict maps and in-depth analyses, with a global reach encompassing Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, and Israel.

Geoconfirmed geolocates visual content by analyzing landmarks, terrain, and environmental features visible in images or videos from conflict zones. Volunteers use satellite imagery, maps, and open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques to cross-reference these elements and determine precise locations. By crowdsourcing insights, Geoconfirmed validates locations based on visual clues like building shapes, roads, natural landscapes, and other identifiable markers in the visual data shared online.

Geoconfirmed's interactive maps for various conflict zones contain geolocated visual media, allowing users to explore specific sites. By selecting a map marker, users can view details on how a location shown in a video or photograph was geolocated. Each map also includes a timeline control, enabling users to filter geolocated media by date.

If you are interested in helping Geoconfirmed identify the location of visual content then you might like to bookmark Bellingcat's Geolocation Tools. This is a curated list of resources offering which can help you to pinpoint locations in images or videos. The toolkit includes AI tools, mapping resources, satellite imagery analysis, and environmental data models. These tools are especially useful for investigative journalists and researchers working with open-source intelligence to analyze visual media from conflict zones and other high-interest areas.

The History of New York

Mapping Historical New York: A Digital Atlas is an amazing resource that offers an unprecedented look at how Manhattan and Brooklyn were transformed at the end of nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. The interactive map visualizes New York census data from 1850, 1880, and 1910, to reveal how migration, residential, and occupational patterns evolved over the course of 60 years. Using the atlas takes users directly to the doorsteps of historical New Yorkers, locating each individual counted in the census at their home address - sometimes even before the city’s street grid was fully in place.

Using preserved historical maps, city directories, and census records, the Digital Atlas recreates the lived geographies of New Yorkers by race, gender, birthplace, and occupation. This interactive platform invites users to explore both big-picture trends and local stories, down to individual buildings and blocks. With plans to expand to all five boroughs and up to the 1940 census, the Atlas allows you to uncover countless narratives embedded within the city’s rich past. Whether you’re exploring case studies or creating your own visual stories, this is a unique tool for diving deep into the urban history of New York.

If you live in Manhattan or Broadway the map also provides you with a unique insight into the history of your own home. If your home existed in 1850 ( or 1880 or 1910) you can find your building on the map and discover who was actually living there over 150 years ago, including information on their race, gender, place of birth and their occupations. 

For a deeper look at the design and technical enhancements behind Mapping Historical New York, the Stamen team offers a comprehensive overview in their article, Telling the Story of Changing Populations With Mapping Historical New York: A Digital Atlas. This post details Stamen's collaboration with Columbia University’s Center for Spatial Research, outlining how they used advanced cartographic techniques and interactive features to make the historical census data accessible and visually engaging for the map's users.

Who are Your Neighbors Donating to?

As you might expect the geographical patterns of political donations in the USA closely resemble the geographical patterns seen in actual elections. A new map from the Washington Post reveals that urban Americans tend to donate in larger numbers to the Democrats while the Republicans get most of their political donations from rural voters. 

The interactive map in See how your neighborhood is giving to Trump and Harris visualizes the number of donors to Biden/Harris and Trump in each zipcode area and the amount donated to each.The geographical divide between Democratic and Republican donors mirrors broader political and demographic trends in American politics. Urban areas, with their more diverse and younger populations, have long been strongholds for Democrats, and this pattern is clear in the distribution of political donations. 

The Washington Post's map shows that in nearly every major city, from New York to Los Angeles, donations overwhelmingly favored Vice President Kamala Harris and the Biden-Harris ticket. Conversely, rural areas show strong financial support for former President Donald Trump.

The Post's own analysis of the map explores in more detail the demographic patterns in political donations in the three battleground states of Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia.

What is Your Climate Risk?

The German Foreign Office has released a new interactive map which visualizes climate and conflict risks around the world. The Climate Conflict Vulnerability Index Map identifies areas around the world where climate change and conflicts are likely to happen, and where people are especially vulnerable to these risks.

How It Works

The CCVI is built on three key factors:

1. Climate: Looks at the risks caused by changes in weather, such as more intense storms, droughts, or floods.
2. Conflict: Considers places where there is a higher chance of violence or conflict.
3. Vulnerability: Focuses on how vulnerable people are based on things like poverty, poor infrastructure, or limited resources.

The tool combines all this data to figure out which regions are most at risk. It’s updated every three months and uses a system that breaks the world into small squares (about 55 km by 55 km) to analyze risks. If you hover over any of these squares on the map you can view each of the Climate, Conflict and Vulnerability Index scores for that region. You can also select either Climate, Conflict or Vulnerability form the map menu to view where in the world these risks are highest.

Why It Was Made

The CCVI was developed with support from the German government to help researchers, governments, and organizations understand where climate change and conflicts are most likely to create the biggest problems, so they can plan and take action to help those areas.

In short, the map shows where climate change and conflict might hit hardest, helping organisations and governments figure out how best to respond to these challenges.

Via: Data Vis Dispatch

Racial Covenants in Santa Clara Properties

Despite being ruled unenforceable by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948, racially restrictive covenants - legal clauses that barred individuals of certain racial backgrounds from purchasing or occupying homes - still persist in property records across Santa Clara County. Now a new interactive map predicts where in Santa Clara County these racially restrictive covenants are most likely to still exist in property records.

A recent study (PDF) conducted by researchers from Stanford University and Princeton University, in partnership with the County of Santa Clara, has revealed that by 1950, an estimated one in four properties in the county was subject to these discriminatory covenants. Although these covenants are no longer legally enforceable, they remain embedded in millions of property deeds. 

Potential homebuyers in Santa Clara County are still often confronted with these historical documents during the purchasing process, where they must sign papers acknowledging the existence of outdated racial restrictions, even though they are constitutionally void. This can be a jarring experience for buyers, a stark reminder of the deep-rooted history of racial discrimination in housing.

With over 24 million property deed documents in Santa Clara County alone, the scale of the problem is immense. Identifying and removing these covenants manually is a huge task, which is why the researchers developed an innovative artificial intelligence tool to detect and flag racially restrictive covenants. The AI system, which has already saved thousands of hours of manual labor, offers a new pathway to identify and ultimately remove these discriminatory clauses from property records.

An interactive map has been released as a result of the study to illustrate where clusters of racially restrictive covenants still persist in housing records. The study was able "to identify which developers and individuals were instrumental in (the) proliferation" of racial covenants. The map shows the locations of these developments using scaled circles, with the size of the circles showing the number of racially restrictive covenants in each development.

The study’s findings have highlighted not only the prevalence of these covenants but also their geographic clustering across the county. Many neighborhoods were deliberately designed to exclude non-white residents, particularly during the housing boom of the early 20th century. Today, this legacy continues to affect how historical records are handled, and the process of identifying and redacting these covenants is both urgent and complex.

Also See

Mapping Housing Segregation in the United States

Which Airports are also Filetypes?

There is something joyfully silly about Filetypes / Airports that I love. You’ll probably visit this map for only a few minutes and then never return - but you’ll definitely remember it fondly for a long time.

The premise of Filetypes / Airports is very simple: it’s an interactive map that shows the locations of airports around the world whose airport codes also happen to be file extension types. For example, the airport code for Sherman Army Airfield is FLV, which is also the extension for Flash Video filetypes. So, Sherman Army Airfield appears on the map.

The wonderful sense of fun on Filetypes / Airports is enhanced by the nostalgic Windows 95 aesthetic used throughout the site. The retro computer style is a perfect match for the map’s iconography. The gray backgrounds and limited color palette of Windows 95 are also mimicked in the map's styled tiles, adding to the charm.

Map enthusiasts might enjoy zooming in on Iraq, where you can find Mosul International Airport. Fittingly, this airport’s code is OSM - a nod to OpenStreetMap. Considering that Switcheristic Telecommunications (the map's creators) acknowledged OpenStreetMap on the map itself, you’d think they would have had the decency not to remove the OpenStreetMap copyright attribution from the map.

You Are HERE

Sony Pictures has launched a unique interactive experience to promote its upcoming film, Here. By entering your address into You Are Here, you can explore your neighborhood’s history over the last 500 years.

Here, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, is based on Richard McGuire’s acclaimed graphic novel. The film spans multiple generations, focusing on a single place across time. To deepen audiences' connection to the film’s themes of time, memory, and place, Sony's You Are Here campaign invites users to explore their personal "here" through a customized, immersive neighborhood history powered by Google Maps.

By entering the address of your current or childhood home into You Are Here, you can discover more about your area’s past. The site, using Google Maps, presents your home with photorealistic 3D renderings and street views. Accompanying these map views are links that let users explore their neighborhood's history from 500, 300, 100, and 50 years ago.

While the concept of an interactive map that reveals the history of any U.S. location is fantastic, You Are Here ultimately feels like little more than marketing fluff. The application provides just enough historical content to pique your interest but ultimately offers very limited information. At the very least, it could have included links to more in-depth resources elsewhere on the web. Hopefully the actual film offers a more rewarding experience than the map.

A Nightmare on View Street

Are you ready for a unique ghostbusting adventure? Today, Tripgeo is releasing a new online game that invites you to explore the spine-chilling mysteries lurking behind some of the world’s most iconic landmarks!

A Nightmare on View Street is a geo-guessing game that challenges you to identify famous locations around the world that have become haunted by creatures from beyond the mortal realm.

As Halloween night approaches, some of the most renowned sites around the world have become haunted. Strange monsters, spine-chilling apparitions, and ghastly ghoulies are starting to emerge from the shadows. Your job is to discover where these spooky apparitions are hiding by studying a series of "Street View" videos. Look for the visual clues in each video and then pinpoint its location on a map. You might think of it as a haunted GeoGuessr-type game - with ghosts.

So are you sharp enough to uncover these hidden haunts? You will earn points in each of the five rounds of A Nightmare on View Street, based on how close your guess is to the correct location. At the end of all five rounds, you will receive an overall score based on your ghostbusting performance. Will you earn enough points to become an elite geo-guessing ghostbuster?

More ghastly videos will be added to the map every day, from now until Halloween!

Scrambled Maps for Mobile

Scrambled Maps Just Got a Mobile Makeover, Thanks to TripGeo!

Great news for puzzle lovers! TripGeo has been hard at work to make Scrambled Maps even better - now fully optimized for mobile devices. If you love solving map challenges, you can now take Scrambled Maps with you wherever you go, right on your phone!

For those new to the game, Scrambled Maps is a fun daily challenge where you’re presented with a jumbled city map from somewhere in the world. Your mission? Unscramble the tiles to restore the map to its original layout. Sounds simple, right? But every day brings a new city and a fresh challenge to keep you on your toes.

Thanks to TripGeo’s latest updates, Scrambled Maps is now smoother and more flexible across all devices. Whether you’re playing on your phone, tablet, or desktop, the game will automatically adjust to fit your screen size. No more squinting or awkward zooming! Plus, you can now customize the grid size - deciding how many vertical and horizontal map tiles you want to unscramble for an added layer of challenge.

But that’s not all! A few extra tweaks have been thrown in to make the game even more enjoyable. You’ll now see handy green ticks to show which tiles you’ve placed correctly, and once you solve the puzzle, you’ll get a breakdown of how many moves it took to complete that day’s map.

So, if you’re up for a daily brain teaser and want to sharpen your map skills, Scrambled Maps is ready for you - anytime, anywhere. 

Happy unscrambling!