Is Flying Becoming More Dangerous?

CNN has used the Mapbox mapping platform to create a number of impressive animated mapped visualizations of recent 'plane close calls' at major U.S. airports. These animations are part of the interactive article Visualizing airplane safety: Are close calls and crashes really that common?, which investigates recent aviation incidents and public concerns about flight safety.

One of the most striking features of CNN’s visual storytelling is the use of Mapbox’s 3D tilt setting, which provides an oblique, dynamic viewpoint of each incident. This allows viewers to see aircraft movements not just across the map, but also through vertical space - highlighting changes in altitude, flight paths, and the proximity between planes. The animations use real flight data to reconstruct moments when aircraft came dangerously close to one another, often just seconds or hundreds of feet apart. These visualizations very effectively translate the technical aviation data into a clear picture of what would otherwise be mere abstract descriptions.

If you are concerned about whether flying is becoming more dangerous, CNN ultimately concludes that the underlying data does not support an increase in plane crashes or close calls. While the visualizations may appear alarming, the article reminds readers that these incidents are still statistically rare, and commercial air travel remains one of the safest modes of transportation. 

Map Any Event in History (or Fiction)

The Battle of Hastings mapped by th Map Simulation Platform

The Map Simulation Platform is a hugely ambitious project that uses AI to simulate text prompts in 3D on an interactive map. It employs natural language processing to interpret a prompt and render it on a geographical canvas. It's similar to a text-to-image AI tool, except here the output is a dynamic, map-based scenario rather than an AI generated image.

Using the tool, you can simulate historical events such as the Battle of Hastings, the Battle of Goose Green, or virtually any other historical event you'd like to see replayed on a map. It's also possible to simulate hypothetical scenarios, such as an earthquake in New York or a global nuclear war.

The Map Simulation Platform clearly has enormous potential as a tool for chronologically simulating important historical events. At present, it does a commendable job of extracting locations from historical narratives, geolocating them accurately, and plotting them on the map. However, from the examples I’ve explored so far, the playback options can feel a little chaotic, making it difficult to follow the sequence of events in a clear, chronological order.

One improvement that would greatly enhance the experience is the ability to view the timeline of a simulated historical event in distinct stages. If users could move forward and backward through the timeline using simple navigation buttons - and see an information window explaining and contextualizing each stage - it would make the platform a truly powerful historical tool. Allowing users to edit and expand on these events would also be essential for users who want to share their simulations. This would enable corrections of any AI “hallucinations” or factual inaccuracies, as well as the addition of missing but important events.

The platform does already offer the ability to download simulation data as a GeoJSON file. This means that users proficient with popular mapping platforms can export simulation data and build their own guided maps for historical events - adding customized context or supplementing any missing information.

Where Americans Live

There are 3,144 counties in the United States, but the population is far from evenly distributed among them. In fact, half of the U.S. population lives in just 144 counties, while the other half is spread across the remaining 3,000 counties.

This imbalance is neatly visualized in an interactive map created by Kyle Walker. County Population Share uses data from the 2024 U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates to generate an animated map that adds counties in order from most to least populated. As the animation unfolds, it's fascinating to watch the densely populated East and West Coasts fill in first, while the less populated counties of the Midwest appear only towards the end of the animation.

There is potential for this map to evolve into a more comprehensive visualization of U.S. population density. One obvious enhancement would be to provide users with access to the underlying data. Currently, hovering over a county reveals its name. It would be a simple yet valuable improvement to display additional information when a county is clicked - for example, its total population and the percentage of the U.S. population that resides there.

It could also be beneficial to enable users to create their own visualizations by interacting with the map. While this would require more development work, it should be possible to allow users to select and deselect counties to see the cumulative percentage of the U.S. population represented. For instance, users could select all the counties in a specific state to reveal the percentage of the national population living in that state.

The Atlas of Drowned Towns

I wasn’t able to find Atlantis on the Atlas of Drowned Towns. That’s probably because it only maps ‘communities that were displaced or disappeared to make way for ... reservoirs ... (and) large dams’ since 1860.

The map does, however, show the location of St. Thomas, Nevada, which was submerged under 60 feet of water in the 1930s during the construction of the Hoover Dam.  It also reveals the locations of hundreds of other towns, villages, homesteads, and Tribal homelands lost to dam construction across the United States and around the world.

The Atlas of Drowned Towns is a digital public history project that asks a deceptively simple question: What was there before the water came? In answering it, the project uncovers the deeply human costs of twentieth-century river development. As massive dams reshaped landscapes for hydroelectric power, irrigation, and flood control, entire communities were erased from maps - and often, from memory.

The project started with a focus on the Pacific Northwest, but it is expanding to include drowned towns across North America and beyond. Its interactive map and growing archive allow users to explore these sites through photographs, historical documents, personal stories, and even aerial imagery that shows what was lost.

If you or someone you know has a connection to a drowned place, the project wants to hear from you. The Share Your Story feature allows users to contribute memories, photos, artifacts, and insights, helping to fill gaps in the historical record and ensure these submerged stories are not forgotten.

Via: weeklyOSM

The Meaning Behind Our Place Names

Have you ever walked down a street and wondered where its name came from? Was it named after a historical figure, a local landmark, or an ancient word lost to time? The Open Etymology Map helps answer these questions by uncovering the stories behind place names - using data from OpenStreetMap and Wikidata.

🏷 The Etymology Tag in OpenStreetMap

The OpenStreetMap (OSM) project includes an 'etymology' tag that allows users to specify the origin or meaning of a place name. There’s also a related tag, 'etymology:wikidata', which links a feature’s name to a specific Wikidata entity. These tags are used by the Open Etymology Map to reveal the origins of local place names.

🗺 What Is the Open Etymology Map?

The Open Etymology Map is an interactive tool that showcases place names tagged with etymology data in OpenStreetMap. Using the map, you can zoom into any area and view features - streets, neighborhoods, towns - that have an etymology tag. You can then click on any of the highlighted features to learn more about where its name comes from.

For example, in London, if you click on Trafalgar Square, you’ll see a link to the Wikipedia entry for the Battle of Trafalgar, offering insight into the origins of one of the city's most iconic names.

The Open Etymology Map provides a fascinating, crowdsourced window into the history of our streets, offering a glimpse into the meanings behind the names we often take for granted. 

Unfortunately, the etymology tag is still rarely used in OpenStreetMap, which means there are currently large gaps in the Open Etymology Map’s coverage. The good news? You can help fill in those gaps. To contribute, simply research the origins of place names in your neighborhood and add an etymology tag to OpenStreetMap using an OSM editor like  iD.

The Anti-MAGA Protest Mapper

The Protest Mapper is a digital mapping tool designed to help journalists and community members contextualize local protests by visualizing them alongside broader regional or national trends. Using the tool, anyone can quickly create an embeddable, interactive map that displays all local protests occurring within a defined time period.

Created by Rahul Bhargava, a journalism professor at Northeastern University, this tool serves as a practical resource for embedding updated, interactive protest maps into news stories, blog posts, and community websites.

What It Is

Protest Mapper is a free, embeddable, browser-based tool that allows users to generate maps of recent protests within customizable geographic ranges (from 5 to 100 miles). The tool relies on two well-respected data sources: the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), which updates weekly, and the Crowd Counting Consortium (CCC), updated monthly. Users can choose between these datasets when generating their maps. Each protest event is marked by a pin that, when clicked, reveals a short summary of the demonstration.

How It Works

The Protest Mapper is designed to be simple and journalist-friendly and modeled after the workflow used in the popular DataWrapper. Users can input a location and select a time range to generate a map of protests, which is then exportable as either an embeddable iframe or a static image (.png). The map itself is lightweight - built with Svelte and hosted on GitHub Pages to keep it sustainable and low-cost. 

A Panorama of Victorian London

The city of London has inspired many beautiful panoramic maps over the centuries, each lovingly crafted by talented artists. Interestingly, these panoramas almost always share a common perspective - north from the south side of the River Thames. This same viewpoint is used in Frederick James Smyth’s 1844 Panorama of London.

Exeter University’s Digital Humanities Lab has created an interactive guided tour of Smyth’s Panorama of London. Using Knight Lab’s StoryMap.js platform, the project offers a rich, navigable journey through 19th-century London as captured in one of the era’s most visually striking urban illustrations.

Originally commissioned by the Illustrated London News and first published in 1845, Smyth’s panorama is a remarkable feat of Victorian printmaking. Stretching over eight feet in length, it presents a detailed bird’s-eye view of the city from a south-of-the-Thames vantage point.

Exeter University’s story-map guides viewers through some of 1844 London’s most prominent landmarks. These include long-lost sites such as Millbank Penitentiary (where convicts were held before deportation to Australia) and the Hungerford Suspension Bridge. It also features familiar icons that remain central to the city today, including St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament, and Buckingham Palace, to name just a few.

More vintage panoramas of London:

1543 - The Wyngaerde Panorama
1616 - Claes Jansz Visscher's Panorama (1848 copy)
1829 - View of London from the Adelphi

Europe in Drought

Spring 2025 has been exceptionally dry in Europe, with nearly every country affected by drought. To help monitor the increasing threat of drought due to global heating, the European Environment Agency (EEA) has launched a new interactive drought map. Updated monthly, the tool provides near real-time insights into drought conditions across the EEA’s 38 member and cooperating countries.

The Drought Conditions Map currently shows that around 38% of the mapped area experienced drought between 11–20 April 2025. It highlights severe impacts across much of northern and eastern Europe during April. An accompanying pie chart reveals that 15% of European cropland was exposed to drought in the same period.

The map features multiple data layers, allowing users to track drought effects across different ecosystem types, including cropland, grassland, heathland, wetland, and urban areas in the 38 countries covered.

The European Drought Observatory (EDO) map includes the UK in its assessment of European drought conditions, where extremely dry weather is also being observed. The latest data reflects conditions from the last ten days of April 2025.

Currently, 31.3% of the monitored area is under ‘Warning’ status. The EDO cautions that if these conditions continue, impacts on vegetation are likely to become apparent in the coming months. Many European rivers are already reporting abnormally low water levels, raising concerns for ecosystems and water supplies.

Mapping Your Future Climate Risks

The Natural Hazards Index Map, developed by climate experts at Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, is a new interactive map that visualizes how and where climate change is increasing risks from natural disasters across the U.S.

What Hazards Does It Show?

The map focuses on 14 different types of natural hazards, with a special focus on those getting worse due to climate change. Some of the main ones include:

• Wildfires
  Example: San Diego and Yakima County in Washington are expected to see a much higher risk of wildfires. Even areas like the Dakotas, which don’t see many fires today, may see more in the future.

• Tornadoes
  Tornado activity is shifting eastward, away from the traditional Tornado Alley and toward the East Coast.

• Flooding and Sea Level Rise
  As some areas receive more rainfall, the flood risk will rise, especially in places like Louisiana.

• Extreme Heat, Hurricanes, and Tropical Storms
  These threats are also expected to worsen as global temperatures climb.

Unlike traditional hazard maps, this tool doesn’t just display current risks, it forecasts future changes, helping agencies and policymakers plan long-term resilience strategies. The platform also includes a resources page with links to preparedness guides, making it a practical tool for community safety planning.

The 2024 Sea-Level Rise Map

The 2024 U.S. Sea Level Report Cards from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) reveal that Gulf Coast states, particularly Louisiana and Texas, continue to experience some of the fastest rates of sea-level rise in the country.

Published annually, the VIMS sea-level report uses observed tide gauge data to track sea-level trends across the United States and project future changes based on this long-term record. This year’s edition debuts a sleek, user-friendly interactive map that compiles data from 35 coastal communities, offering localized insights and projections through 2050.

A key finding in this year’s report is the accelerated sea-level rise now being observed in the southeastern U.S., including Georgia and South Carolina. Along the East Coast, sea levels are rising steadily, driven in part by meltwater redistribution from the Greenland ice sheet. Meanwhile, much of the West Coast has shown unexpected stability, defying earlier predictions.

The VIMS dashboard is grounded in over 55 years of tide-gauge measurements from locations stretching from Alaska to Florida. This long-term dataset allows for precise tracking of both historical trends and accelerating rates of sea-level change at each site.

Each report card includes monthly sea level averages, notes short-term anomalies like storm surges, and incorporates longer-term climate influences such as El Niño. Importantly, the projections factor in observed acceleration and compare future water levels under both linear and accelerating scenarios, providing a range of possibilities within a 95% confidence interval to aid coastal planning and risk management. 

You can explore sea-level rise projections for other countries (as well as additional regions within the United States) using the Climate Change Sea-Level Map. Climate Risk’s Coastal Risk Map also lets you assess your flood risk based on projected sea-level rise, coastal flooding, elevation, and specific timeframes. By sharing your location with the map, you can view potential flood risks for different years and sea-level scenarios.