The Best Maps of the Week

Last week's UN climate change summit in New York seems to have led to a rise in the global output of environment maps. This week three environmental maps really caught my eye.

The Changing Global Emissions Map and the FFDAS Map  are two nicely designed maps which visualize CO₂ emissions around the world. Using either of the maps you can discover the carbon emissions of any country around the world.

This week also saw the release of the Carbon Footprint Map, which visualizes the average annual household carbon footprint of zip code areas in the United States. The map reveals a clear pattern in large cities, which shows that those living in the center of cities have a lower household carbon footprint than those living in city suburbs.


This week I was also impressed by this campus map of Essex University. In particular this map has a great direction service, which provides directions between any two campus buildings.

The Essex University campus map, WAI2Go, not only looks beautiful it also has a number of really useful navigation features. The custom built directions service can provide directions between any two points on campus. You can even request the 'shortest route', a 'step free route' or an 'indoor route (where possible).

Another great feature of the Essex University campus map is its indoor maps. Select the 'campus overview' option and you can view indoor map plans for different buildings and even the different floor levels in each building.

Combine this with the directions service and you can quickly find your route between any two rooms on campus. Click on a room and you can  select 'directions to' or 'directions from' this room. I really like how the direction service manages to navigate users between different floor levels on their journey.


There are 28 megacities in the world, cities with a population in excess of 10 million. This Esri map looks at the growth of ten of these megacites around the world over the last century.

The Age of Megacities maps the growth of ten global megacities by examining the expanding urban footprint of each city over the years. For each of the megacities you can view a series of map overlays, showing the size of the city at different times in the last one hundred years or so.

For example the map of Chicago allows you to view the city's urban extent in 1929, 1954, 1972 and in 2014. It is therefore possible to view how Chicago has grown since 1929. As well as Chicago, You can also use the map to visualize the growth of Tokyo, Shanghai, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Lagos, Los Angeles, Paris, London and Johannesburg,