Maps of the Week

Elevation data played an important role in two of my favorite maps this week. Mundialis is a beautiful new interactive topographical map of the world and XG - Earth Bathymetry is a WebGL globe showing planet Earth without all its water.

The Earth Bathymetry globe uses data from NASA's Blue Marble to provide a view of the undersea land surface and water depth. The shading of the sea floor indicates changes in slope or depth.

Mundialis uses SRTM DEM 450m elevation data, and bathymetry sea & lake data (from Natural Earth & NGDC respectively) to provide a relief map of the world. The map also includes the option to view an OpenStreetMap road map layer on top of the topographical map or on its own as the base map.


This week CartoDB released a really interesting mapped visualization of 311 noise complaints in New York. The map allows you to explore the number of complaints made to New York's non-emergency service hotline by location, time of day, type of noise complaint and by season of the year.

The Noise in New York map starts with a very useful introduction which guides you through some of the filtering options that you can make on the map. The introduction not only shows you how to explore the data it also provides some interesting insights abut noise complaints in New York. For example it reveals that Manhattan is the loudest place in the city.


The Berliner Morgenpost's also created a really nice mapped visualization this week, Zugezogenen Atlas, allows you to explore where non-native Berliners were originally born. The map shows locations around the world where at least 100 Berliners were born, based on the population register of June 2015.

Hamburg, Dresen and Leipzieg are the top three German cities where non-native Berliners were born. When you rank cities around the world by the number of people now living in Berlin who were born there, then the top foreign city is Szczecin (Poland), followed by Wroclaw (Poland) and Moscow. Paris is ranked 82nd, London is 96th and New York is 123rd.