The Sunny Coffee Map
There are lots of maps that can help you find a good cafe in Paris. But Sunny Coffee answers a much more important question: which café terraces are actually in the sun right now? Created by developer Paul Baron, Sunny Coffee is an interactive map that shows which Paris café terraces are currently sunny - and which are sitting in the shade. The map combines Paris open data, 3D building models, weather forecasts and real-time shadow calculations to help users find the perfect terrace for a coffee in the sun. Parisians flock to terraces whenever the sun appears, but urban shadows move constantly throughout the day. A café that is sunny at 2pm may be completely shaded by 3pm. Sunny Coffee attempts to solve that problem by calculating sunlight exposure across the city in near real-time. The technical stack behind the project is particularly interesting from a mapping perspective. Terrace locations come from the City of Paris open data portal, while building footprints a...
