Maps of the Week

Lifewatch Inbo has used CartoDB's Torque to visualize bird migration patterns. In a series of animated CartoDB Torque powered maps Lifewatch Inbo has visualized the flight migration of birds over the course of one night.

Using CartoDB to Visualize How Far Birds Migrate in a Single Night uses data from the ROBIN bird radar detection system to simulate the trajectory of individual birds from Belgium and the Netherlands on the night of April 7-8, 2013. In each of the maps you can view an animated simulation of the birds' migration based on the birds' airspeed and the wind conditions on the two nights in question.


Bearings of Baltimore is a beautiful bird's eye view map of Baltimore, showing how the city looked right after the attack by the British in 1815.

The map is actually an amazing 2.5 billion pixel image of the city in around 1815, which you can pan and zoom to view in incredibly detail. The thumbnail images running along the bottom of the map provide quick links to historically important locations on the map.

Click on one of the thumbnail pictures and the map automatically zooms in on the selected location. You can then click on the map to find out about the selected building or location's historical importance. The map also includes a '2014 View' which overlays modern Baltimore landmarks on the map so you can get a better idea of how this map of Baltimore in 1815 relates to the city of Baltimore today.


Atlasify is a new map based search engine which lets you map just about anything. Enter a search term into Atlasify and you can view a map visualizing how closely locations around the world are related to the term.

For example, search 'Mormonism' and the map shows that the USA is the most related country to 'Mormonism'. Zoom in on America and we see that the most closely related state to Mormonism is Utah, which is the state colored the darkest green on the map.