Mapping the Extreme Heat Belt

Last Monday the First Street Foundation released data from its analysis of how current and future extreme heat events will impact American neighborhoods. Enter your zip-code into the First Street Foundation website and you can view the risk that your home faces over the next thirty years from extreme heat (and also the risk to your home from wildfire and flooding). The First Street Foundation hyperlocal extreme heat data has also been used by the Washinton Post and Axios to map the growing dangers of extreme heat across the United States.

Axios has used the extreme heat data to map an Extreme Heat Belt that they say will soon emerge in the USA. The Axios map shows the counties in America where the heat index could reach 125°F at least one day a year by 2053. According to Axios an 'extreme heat belt' will exist in 30 years time, stretching from Texas to Illinois, where people can expect at least once a year to experience deadly temperatures.

Currently only 8 million Americans are exposed to extreme heat days each year. Thanks to global heating by 2053 that number is expected to rise to 107 million. If you hover over a county on the Axios map you can find out if that county currently experiences extreme heat days and whether it will in 30 years time.

The Washington Post has also used the First Foundation data to map out the number of dangerous heat days that you can expect where you live by 2053. If you think that this summer was too hot then I've got some bad news for you. Thanks to global heating it is going to get much hotter. According to the Washington Post map by 2053 "two-thirds of Americans will experience perilous heat waves, with some regions in the South expected to endure more than 70 consecutive days over 100 degrees."

In More dangerous heat waves are on the way: See the impact by Zip code you can find out how many days of dangerous heat you can expect each year where you live in thirty years time. Just enter your zip-code into the Post's map to discover how many days of dangerous heat you currently experience on average every year and how many days you can expect in 2053. The Washington Post defines 'dangerous heat' as temperatures over 100 degrees.

The Terrifying Sound of Sea Monsters

Olaus Magnus's Carta Marina is the first derailed map of the Nordic countries to include place-name labels. The map also includes a number of fantastical sea creatures. Olaus Magnus described most of the sea monsters depicted on his map at length in his book 'A Description of the Northern Peoples'. Unfortunately Magnus never made any audio recordings of these monsters. We can therefore only imagine what terrifying sounds were made by these monstrous creatures.

This is exactly what I have done with my Sounds of Sea Monsters interactive map. Click on any of the sea monsters depicted on this interactive version of the Carta Marina and you can listen to an (imagined) recording of the monster's terrifying screams, growls and roars. You can also read the 'real' description of the monster that Olaus Magnus provided in his encyclopedic volume 'A Description of the Northern Peoples'. My map also includes some other interesting information provided by Magnus on the customs and lives of these Northern Peoples. 

Sounds of Sea Monsters was created using the Leaflet mapping platform. The map also wouldn't be possible without two wonderful Leaflet plug-in libraries - leaflet-IIIF and leaflet-hash. 

Museums and art galleries around the world are increasingly using the iiif format to display vintage maps as zoomable images. The leaflet-iiif plugin allows you to use these iiif manifests with the Leaflet mapping platform. This means that you can create a Leaflet map from any image which has a iiif manifest.

In order to add interactive elements to a iiif image displayed in a Leaflet map it is necessary to apply a coordinate system to the map. Leaflet-hash adds a latitude and longitude to the URL of a Leaflet map. It can therefore be used to grab the coordinates of any location on the map. I used the leaflet-hash plug-in order to create the clickable polygon shapes on my Sounds of Sea Monsters map. 

How to Make Your Own Pretty Map Posters

I made the map poster above using a new map poster creation tool called prettymaps. prettymapp is a web app which you can use to create pretty map images for any location on Earth.

Prettymapp is an online interactive version of @marceloprates' pretty maps project. The original 'pretty maps' project is a Python library to draw customized maps from OpenStreetMap data. The new prettymapp app uses this library to create an actual online tool for making your very own pretty map images.

Prettymapp is very simple to use. Simply enter an address and press the 'submit' button and prettymapp will automatically create a map poster centered on your location (you can type in a latitude,longitue instead of an address to give a precise location). The tool includes a number of options for changing the design of your final map. These allow you to choose your own colors for individual map features, such as the color of water, grassland and roads. There are also options for customizing the size and placement of the title of your map. 

 

Hans Hacks' Figureground Posters is another fun tool for creating map posters from OpenStreetMap data. To create your poster simply click on the Figureground Posters interactive map to select the location that you wish to work with. You can then select a size for the area that you want to map. 

Figureground Posters creates circular maps so just choose the radius size that you wish to map (up to 2000 meters). When you are happy with your chosen location and radius size click 'Make Poster'. Figureground Posters will then create a simple map of your selected area using the building footprint data from OpenStreetMap.

Street Patterns is another great tool for making map posters. The tool also uses data from OpenStreetMap to create small circular images consisting of just the street data of your chosen location. Street Patterns doesn't only help you create your own map posters it also explains the whole process it uses in creating these Street Pattern maps. Therefore while using Street Patterns to create your own map poster you can also learn a little about how to use Overpass Turbo and Turf.js to download and use OSM map data.

The Migatory Map of the White-Tailed Eagle

Benjamin Becquet has used data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility to create a mesmerizing animated map visualizing the annual migration patterns of ten different bird species. His Bird Tracking Map uses time-stamped GPS data to reveal the annual migratory journeys of ten different species traveling between Africa and Europe. 

Press the play button on Benjamin's map and you can watch how these different bird species journey back and forth between northern Europe and southern Europe/Africa over the course of a single year. As the map animates through the year the Spring and Autumn migratory patterns of each species of bird becomes apparent on the map.  

The map can be filtered to show only the migratory journey of any single species of bird or any combination from the ten different species. The map also includes a speed button which controls the speed that the time-stamped GPS data is animated on the map. 

If you are interested in the migratory journeys of birds then you might also enjoy eBird's maps of individual bird species migrations. The eBird Status and Trends webpage allows you to view animated maps which show the migratory journeys undertaken every year by thousands of individual species of bird.

Ukraine Under Attack

The Map of the Russian Shelling of Ukraine is a new interactive map which shows where and when Russia has bombed the people of Ukraine. 

The map uses different colored markers to indicate the different types of shelling attacks (rocket, air or artillery). If you click on any of the markers you can view the date of the Russian attack and click-through to read any media reports about the selected shelling. The map includes a timeline feature which allows you to select to view attacks by date-range. You can adjust the end-date on this timeline to view the cumulative amount of shelling from the beginning of the Russian invasion until the selected date.

The Map of the Russian Shelling of Ukraine also features selected satellite images from Planet.com. If you zoom in on any of these satellite images you can see for yourself some of the damage caused by Russian missiles fired on Ukraine. At the moment the map is only available in Ukrainian. An option to view the map in English should be available from early next week. 

You can also explore evidence of Russia's war crimes in Ukraine on Bellingcat's Civilian Harm in Ukraine, an interactive map which locates and records evidence of Russia's attacks on civilians during its invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Civilian Objects Attacks and Casualties Interactive Map is another attempt to track and map Russian attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine.The map consists predominantly of geo-tagged photographs of civilian buildings which have been damaged by Russian bombs. This map also includes a running total of the number of civilians who have been killed and injured by the Russians in Ukraine.

Explore Your Local Census Data

The 1990 - 2020 US Census Dot Density Dashboard is an impressive visualization of U.S. census data. Using HEAVY Immerse's interactive census dashboard you can not only explore a dot density map of the United States you can also actually drill down into the demographics of any defined area in the United States.

There are already a number of racial dot density maps which allow you to explore the racial and ethnic diversity of the American population. These maps include CNN's interactive map Race and Ethnicity Across the Nation, Esri's Race and Ethnicity in the US by Dot Density and Ben Schmidt's All of US. 

Where the new US Census Dot Density Dashboard improves on these earlier maps is in its searchability. Using the polygon, polyline or lasso drawing tools provided you can define your own area on the map to view a breakdown of the local racial and ethnic demographics. Draw an area on the map and you can view a racial dot density map for your selected area and a breakdown of the numbers of the White, Black, Hispanic and Asian populations living in that area. An interactive chart also provides you with the percentages of the different ethnic groups at the time of each of the last four censuses. 

Comparing Route Planning Providers

3 different routes returned by 3 different routing services between the same two addresses

SG Transportation Routing is a new route planning service which can provide you with driving directions in Singapore. This map can be used to get driving, cycling or walking directions between any two locations in the country. Unlike nearly every other route planning map, SG Transportation also allows you to choose between three different routing APIs. Therefore if you don't like the route and directions first provided by SG Transportation Routing you can simply switch to view a route from a different routing / directions provider.

SG Transportation Routing works like nearly every other driving directions application. If you enter a starting point and a destination the application will work out a route and provide you with turn-by-turn directions. The application even allows you to switch between three different transportation modes (driving, cycling & walking). 

Unlike most other route planning applications, however, SG Transportation Routing allows you to choose between three different routing services. These are the Gragphopper Directions API, OneMap and the HERE Routing API. If you look at the screenshot at the top of this post you can see that these three different routing services can provide very different routes between the same two addresses. 

Charmaine Chui, the developer of SG Transportation Routing, has written up a short introduction to his new interactive map on Towards Data Science, Data Visualisation of Travel Routes by Multiple Service Providers on Web App— Built with LeafletJS + NodeJS.

Hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu

The 3D Inca Trail Tour is a guided tour of the four day trek from Piskacucho to Machu Picchu. This interactive tour of the incredible journey to the historic Incan citadel in the Andes makes impressive use of MapboxGL's 3d terrain data to provide a virtual taste of some of the world's most beautiful views.

As you scroll through the tour you will follow the actual ancient path taken by the Royal Incan leaders to get to Machu Picchu. The tour features a number of waypoints along the trail which include historic Incan ruins and the natural wonders of the Andes mountains. The tour also shows you the locations of the three camps along the route where visitors are able to grab a night's rest before continuing their trek.

You can discover more about how the 3D Inca Trail Tour was made at Learn How 3D Inca Tour Was Made with MapBox, GPS, and xyz... . This includes explanations of how turf.js was used to help create the small inset map and native JavaScript to control the scrolling elements of the tour.

If you want to create your own 3D tours with MapboxGL then you might also like Building Cinematic Route Animatios with MapboxGL. During this year's Tour de France and Le Tour Femmes the Mapbox Twitter account posted animated route maps every day of the current stage. 

The Mapbox blog's post on these cinematic route animations explains how they animated each stage's route, how they controlled the camera position for the fly-over animations and how the interactive map animation of each stage was finally exported to video.  

The Oligarch Yacht Map

In March I attempted to track the assets of Russian oligarchs with a little help for real-time aviation & marine tracking maps. Oligarch.info is now maintaining an interactive map which shows the latest known location of a number of super yachts owned by Russian oligarchs.

The Oligarch.info Yacht Map shows where oligarch yachts have been seized around the world. On the map all impounded yachts are shown in red. The last locations of yachts which have disabled GPS tracking are shown using yellow markers. The yachts shown in black have yet to be seized. The yachts shown on the map can be filtered by the name of an oligarch, by worth and by status. 

The Twitter account Russian Oligarch Jets is very useful if you want to track the location of oligarch owned planes. This automatic Twitter account regularly posts updates on the locations of jets owned by Russian oligarchs. It also Tweets out handy screenshots of all the registration numbers of the planes that the account is currently tracking.

The History of the Swiss Railway

In August 1847 a railway line was opened connecting the Swiss cities of Baden and Zurich. 175 years later Switzerland's rail network is over 5,000 kilometers long. Swiss broadcaster SRF is celebrating 175 years of the country's railway network by taking you on a Journey Through the History of Swiss Railways.  

SRF's history of the Swiss railway includes a map which shows the opening of new railway lines by year of construction. This map is accompanied by a graph which shows the length (in km) of railway lines opened in each year. From the animation of this map above you can see that the golden era of the Swiss railway was in its first one hundred years. Since the 1920s further extensions to the railway in Switzerland have been fairly sporadic. 

You can view animated maps of other rail networks being constructed around the world on the amazing Citylines. Citylines is a collaborative platform which is busy mapping the public transit systems of the world. Using Citylines you can explore interactive maps visualizing the local transit systems of hundreds of cities around the globe. You can also use Citylines to explore how each city's public transport network has grown over time. 

My favorite feature of Citylines is the ability to view a city's transit network developing through time. Each city's transit system map includes a date control, which allows you to view the extent of the local transit network for any year in history. Press the play button on the map and you can view an animated map showing how the city's transit system has developed through history. 

All the data used on Citylines is open sourced under the Open Database License (ODbL). This means that if you want to create your own city public transit map then you can download the data for your map from Citylines (in json or CSV formats).

You can view a mapped visualization of the first 40 years of the London Underground network on my own History of the London Underground. My animated map shows the development of the tube network from 1863-1900. 

The London Underground began when the Metropolitan Line opened in 1863. This original line had seven stations and stretched between Paddington and Farringdon. By 1890 the network had grown to include a District Line and the beginnings of the Northern Line. 

You can watch the London Underground grow during its first 40 years on my History of the London Underground map. If you press the 'Start' button on the map the London Underground lines will start to appear on the map in the order in which they were constructed. The animated tube lines were created using the Leaflet.Polyline.SnakeAnim plugin for Leaflet.js. 

If you want to reuse the code from my map then you are welcome to do so. You can clone my project on Glitch.