Don't Go There this Halloween!

Obviously there are places that you shouldn't go on All Hallows' Eve. The clue is often in the name. You don't need to be a genius to know that Dead Women Crossing in Oklahoma might not be the best place to hang-out on Halloween.

If this were a horror movie you would of course ignore this warning and visit Dead Women Crossing any way. You really don't have to. If you are intent on dying you could try visiting any one of Esri's Thirteen Spooky Halloween Haunts. This story map features some of the most 'fiendishly named locations in the United States and Canada'.

Esri's unlucky thirteen locations are not the only scary place names in the USA. Batchgeo has created an interactive map featuring many more. The Scary Place Names for Halloween map shows the locations of places throughout the country which feature the words 'Ghost', 'Jack-o-lantern', 'Witch', 'Dracula', 'Murderer' or 'Demon' somewhere in their name.

Maps You Need to Survive Halloween

If you want a little help navigating the streets while trick or treating then you need this scary Mapbox Halloween Map. This Mapbox Studio created map uses an appropriately themed color-scheme, with pumpkin colored seas and darkly ominous land features. Town and city map labels have also been updated to make them sound a little more haunted. You might also notice a few spooky changes to the usual map icons.


I can't tell you which houses are haunted but this map can give you a few clues as to which local properties it might be best to avoid on All Hallows' Eve. Oshimaland is a 'stigmatized property' map. In other words it can tell you which of your neighbors' houses has witnessed truly terrifying events.

In Japan many house-hunters will refuse to buy a property if it has been the location for a gruesome crime, murder or suicide. Because of this squeamishness on the part of house-hunters many real-estate agencies don't like to advertise the gruesome history of these properties. That's where Oshimaland comes in.

It has set itself the task of mapping stigmatized properties. Each property listed on the Oshimaland map is rated based on its level of stigmatization. This rating is indicated by the number of fire icons attached to a property. If a property has witnessed more than one gruesome event then you might find it has a three 'fire' icon rating.


Although Oshimaland does include homes in the USA you are more likely to find out whinch of your local houses are haunted on Housecreep.

Housecreep is a North American map of stigmatized properties. If you want to know which houses have witnessed gruesome crimes around your home then you are more likely to find them on Housecreep than Oshimaland. Just enter your address into Housecreep to discover where you should avoid trick or treating at Halloween.


Tonight you should not leave home without the Map of the Dead. This map can show you the best places to avoid and where to get help if you run into the walking dead.

Just enter your address into Map of the Dead and you are presented with a handy map displaying the zombie danger zones around your home. The map also displays nearby places that are likely to have resources to help you survive once the zombies begin to take control.


Sometimes running is the only option. To survive on the streets tonight you might just need to outpace the converging hordes of the undead. To practice your zombie avoidance skills you should use this Google Maps Street View application.

As you run around the streets in Street View Zombie Apocalypse you can view the approaching zombies in the inset Google Map. To stay alive you will need to outsmart them and avoid becoming trapped.

500 Years of Protestantism

500 years ago today a little known monk called Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to a chapel door in Wittenberg. It was an act that would lead to the Reformation and that would change the world forever. Here I Stand is a website exploring the life and work of Martin Luther, the birth of the Reformation and its lasting effect on the world.

Here I Stand includes a number of interactive and static maps which are used to explore the spread of the Reformation and to explain the world in which Martin Luther lived. These maps include a 3d map of Sixteenth Century Wittenberg, where Martin Luther lived and worked. Although a static map it does include labels (turn them on using the 'discover more' button) which show important locations in the town.


Here I Stand also features a number of interactive maps. These include a map of the Holy Roman Empire showing locations with a Martin Luther connection. Another interactive map shows how the reformation quickly spread through towns and cities in the Holy Roman Empire during the first half of the Sixteenth Century. The Reformation Movement map includes buttons which allow you to filter the cities shown by the date that they introduced the reformation.

If you like the maps featured on Here I Stand you can print them out as PDF map posters.


The Newberry Library in Chicago is currently holding a major exhibition on Religious Change and Print, 1450-1700. In support of this exhibition they have put together an online collection of the Newberry Library's manuscripts, maps and images from the Reformation.

One online contribution to the exhibition is an interactive story map Tracking the Lutheran Controversy. The map explores the role of printing in spreading the ideas of an obscure monk in Wittenburg to the whole of Europe.

Tracking the Lutheran Controversy examines some of the key pamphlets and texts published by Martin Luther (and the papal bulls issued in response). As you progress through Tracking the Lutheran Controversy the map shows how Luther's ideas spread throughout Europe. It also looks at the publication of responses to Luther, both in support and against his beliefs.


The Newberry Library online collection also includes a superb interactive presentation of Giovanni Merlo’s engraved map of Venice from 1676. This interactive version of Merlo's Map includes information about the engraving and some of the Venetian locations depicted in the map. The colored circles on the map pick out some of Reformation Venice's most important churches, monasteries and printing centers. You can click on these circles to learn more about each highlighted location and view other illustrations of the location from the Newberry collection.

If you select the 'toggle maps' button (from the navigation buttons running down the center of the interactive) you can directly compare Merlo's Map side-by-side with other vintage maps of Venice. These other maps include Jacopo de Barbari 1500 map of Venice, Benedetto Bordon's map of 1534 and Paolo Forlani's Venetia from 1566.

Mapping Lonely Polar Bears

The Polar Bear Census is an interactive map showing the location of all the polar bears currently living in North American zoos. There are currently 70 different bears living in 33 zoos in North America. Using the interactive map you can learn about each of these polar bears, including information about their place of birth and if they have any brothers or sisters.

The map was created to support The Oregonian's series Project Nora: The Loneliest Bear. In this long-form web documentary The Oregonian follows Nora, a baby polar bear, for one year. Nora is herself being raised in a zoo. In the series The Oregonian explores the role of zoos but also examines the fate of polar bears in the Arctic and the impact that humans are having on their natural environment.

There are other maps in Project Nora. They include maps of some of the locations mentioned in the documentary but also an impressive animated map of how sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk over recent years.

The Map of Life on Earth

The Map of Life is mapping the diversity of animal life on planet Earth. The Map of Life allows you to both explore where different animal species live on Earth and the number of species living in every country on Earth.

You can explore the diversity of species in any country by selecting an area on the Map Of Life Regions map (in the USA and Canada you can explore down to state or province level). If you click on a country on the map you can view a breakdown of the number of bird, mammal and reptile species living in the country. If you select the Map of Life Species tab then you can view the a habitat range map for the selected species, showing the areas of the world where the species lives.

The Map of Life is now also mapping where in the world animal habitats most need protection. The new Biodiversity Patterns section provides heat maps showing species richness around the world for birds and mammals. The map also shows areas where some form of conservation protection exists. The map can therefore be used to identify areas where species richness is at risk and which is also in need of more habitat conservation protection.

Mapping Segregation in America

The University of Iowa’s Placing Segregation project is using historical records to map how U.S. cities in the Nineteenth Century were racially, economically and socially segregated.

The Placing Segregation project uses historical census records to map individuals to their place of residence. These historical places of residence can then be filtered by the user by ethnicity, wealth and social class. So, for example, on the project's 1860 map of Washington D.C. you can select the 'People of Color' option to view where most non-white residents lived in the city in 1860.

You can also select the markers for individuals on the map to view more detailed information about the city's residents. Clicking a marker opens a window with the individual's name, race, gender, occupation, age and the wealth of the family estate. So far the project has mapped historical census records for Washington, Nashville and Omaha.


The Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) was a government-sponsored corporation created as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Its purpose was to refinance home mortgages which were in default to prevent foreclosure.

The HOLC is often cited as starting the practice of mortgage redlining. Redlining is the process of denying services to residents of certain areas based on the racial composition of those areas. Mapping Inequality, Redlining in New Deal America allows you to view the residential security maps created by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation to indicate the level of security for real-estate investments.

The areas marked in blue on the maps are the neighborhoods which were deemed desirable for lending purposes. The yellow areas show neighborhoods deemed 'declining' areas. The red areas are the neighborhoods considered the most risky for mortgage support.

The result of these redlining maps was that residents in the more affluent and largely white neighborhoods were far more likely to receive financing. Residents in the poorer and black communities were deemed more of a risk and so less likely to receive financial support.

The European Beer Map

Luthansa's European Beer Map can help you find great venues for beer in Europe's major cities. Select a city on the map and you can discover Luthansa's recommended bar with a great selection of beers.

There are problems with this map. The most serious is the lack of data. This map is only going to be useful to you if you are traveling to a capital city or to the limited number of other major cities which are featured on the map. Luthansa also only has one or two suggestions for each city. So, if you disagree with Luthnsa's suggestion, you are going to be lost.

The other major problem I had with this map was navigation. The map for each venue includes a 'back to the map' link. On my laptop this link is always hidden behind the venue information details. So the only way to get back to the main map is by refreshing the page.

Falling in Love on Google Maps

There are eight million love stories in the naked city. Yours could be one of them on The Cut's New York Love Map.

The New York Love Map shows "482 stories of kissing and hooking up", which took place at different locations around New York. The location of each of the stories is shown with a color-coded map marker. Black markers show locations where people have shared stories of relationship break-ups. The red markers indicate locations where the beautiful beast with two backs appeared.

You can filter the love stories shown on the map by category or by the decade when the stories occurred. The map will be updated soon to include love stories that readers of The Cut submitted to the map.


If the New York Love Map has got you in the mood for a little heavy petting then you might want to check out Places for Love.

Places for Love is a Google Maps based application where users can recommend their favorite outdoor locations for making love. These romantic locations could be parks, quiet beaches or just somewhere with a beautiful view. Currently the map has over 10,000 locations that have been recommended across the globe.

If you are looking for the perfect place to make love, just enter a location into Places for Love and you should be able to find the perfect love-spot nearby.

An Hour & a Half on Planet Earth

On Monday from 8:25 a.m. to 10:05 a.m. ET astronauts aboard the International Space Station spent one entire orbit taking and sharing photos of planet Earth. While they took their photos of Earth from space they encouraged everyone on Earth to also take photos and share them with the hashtag #1world1orbit.

David MacLean has created an interactive map to showcase the photographs people took of Earth during the event. The #1World1Orbit Event interactive map allows you to browse all these images of Earth directly from the map. The map also includes the path that the International Space Station took during its 90 minute orbit of the Earth.

Mapping the Trans Mountain Pipeline

The Trans Mountain pipeline carries oil from Alberta to the west coast of British Columbia. A proposed second pipeline could increase the amount of oil carried from 300,000 barrels a day to 890,000. For B.C.'s coast this would mean more tanker traffic and the increased risk of oil spills.

The Globe and Mail has released a story map which explores What Kinder Morgan's Pipeline will Mean for B.C.'s Coast. The map examines commercial marine traffic off Canada's Pacific coast. The proposed pipeline would mean a seven-fold increase in the number of Kinder Morgan oil tankers coming into and leaving port.

As you progress through the story map the Globe and Mail explores the conflicting assessments of the risk of an oil spill from increased traffic. The map automatically updates to show the locations with the greatest risk for marine traffic. The map also includes a number of videos showing the progress of a tanker from port to the open seas.

Also See

A Line in the Sand - mapping reactions to the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline in Canada
Mapping Canada's Coastline - WWF map of marine habitats & conservation projects
Building the Dakota Access Pipeline

Mapping America's Huge Prison Population

The state of Florida likes to lock people up. In fact if you live in Florida you have over twice as much chance of being thrown in jail or prison as someone who lives in North Dakota. You can double your chances again by being black. Florida does like to lock-up African Americans.

Vera's Incarceration Rates interactive map visualizes the jail and prison populations for every U.S. county. The map allows you to explore how local incarceration rates have changed over time by providing data about jail and prison incarceration rates for every year since 1970.

The map provides choropleth views of incarceration rates at both state and county level. You can explore the prison and jail incarceration rates for individual states and counties in much more detail by selecting them on the map and and then clicking the 'full profile' option. After selecting a country or state you can view the demographics of the prison and jail population over time. This allows you to explore in more detail the racial and gender mix of incarceration rates for the selected state or county and how this has changed over time since 1970.

The Small Buildings of San Francisco

Mapbox's Asheem Mamoowala has a solution to San Francisco's housing crisis - taller buildings. It turns out that most San Francisco buildings are not as tall as they could be. We know this because Asheem has mapped a comparison of San Francisco actual building heights with their allowed building heights.

The San Francisco Allowed Building Heights map uses Mapbox GL's 3d and polygon extrusion properties to show the difference between actual building heights and the height allowed under building regulations. On the map actual building heights are shown using grey building footprints. The 'unused height allowance' for each building is shown using a yellow-blue color ramp - with the colors indicating the number of floors that could be added to the building under zoned height regulations.

You can read more about how Asheem created the map in his blog post Are San Francisco buildings as tall as they could be?

The Vaccine Map

British doctor Andrew Wakefield has a lot to answer for. His fraudulent research paper, claiming a link between the measles vaccination and autism, has proved to be an international health disaster. Anti-vaccination idiots are now directly responsible for growing outbreaks of easily preventable illnesses such as measles and whooping cough in countries like the US and UK.

The Vaccine-Preventable Outbreaks map tracks reports by news media, governments and the global health community on these outbreaks of preventable illnesses. By highlighting these outbreaks the map hopes to raise awareness of easily preventable global health problems. The map includes data on outbreaks of measles, mumps, whooping cough and polio for every year since 2008.

Mapping Global Pollution

Nine million people a year are killed around the world by pollution. According to the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health pollution is responsible for 16% of all deaths around the word. That is three times more deaths than caused by AIDS, tuberculosis & malaria combined and 15 times more deaths than caused by wars and other forms of violence.

The Global Alliance on Health and Pollution is mapping air, water and soil pollution around the world. The Global Pollution Map uses government approved data-sets to coordinate information on all forms of pollution in countries across the globe.

The Global Pollution Map contains three main pollution layers to visualize Air Pollution, Contaminated Sites and Water Pollution. These three layers can be turned on or off by using the buttons in the map sidebar. The map also includes a Pollution Deaths layer. This layer uses data from the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health to show the number of deaths per million caused by pollution in each country around the world.

Beyond the Rainbow - Colors for Maps

Carto has unveiled a set of custom color schemes for visualizing data on Carto's interactive maps. These color schemes have been optimized for online interactive maps, CARTO basemaps and thematic maps that have been made with Carto's data mapping application - Builder.

Carto's different color schemes can be used with sequential, diverging, or qualitative data. You can view the palettes for Carto's sequential color schemes, diverging color schemes and qualitative color schemes at CartoColors. You can see these schemes in action on example interactive maps on the Carto blog post Data Driven Color Schemes.


Cynthia Brewer's ColorBrewer is an online tool to help cartographers choose good color schemes for their maps. The tool helps you to think about the type of data you are visualizing and the appropriate color scheme to use for visualizing that data.

The tool includes three types of color scheme, sequential, diverging and qualitative. You simply need to choose which scheme best fits your data, choose the number of classes in your data and then choose a multi-hue or single color palette range. As you make your design decisions you can automatically see the scheme being applied to a sample map.

When making your choice of color scheme it is worth reading the advice provided (using the information button) about when to use a sequential, diverging or qualitative color scheme with your data.


If you plan to use ColorBrewer with a Leaflet map you might want to also check out ClassyBrew. ClassyBrew is a tool which uses ColorBrewer theory to help you choose a color scheme for your data and even generates the code to create a Leaflet map.

Like ColorBrewer you can choose whether your data is sequential, diverging and qualitative and then view how your choice of color scheme looks on a demonstration map.

Spectacular Map Games

Over the last week I've been having a lot of fun playing with the Leaflet-IIIF plug-in. The plug-in allows you to map museum documents and manuscripts using the Leaflet,js mapping library.

Maps Mania's Spectacular Compendium of Victorian Map Games uses the plug-in to showcase some of the 18th & 19th century map race games owned by the Bodleian Library. These board games were used to entertain children while also teaching a little geography. The geography which was taught was seen from a particluar imperialistic western perspective (or from a distinctly racist perspective on occasion).

All seven games in this Maps Mania collection are race games. The objective in each game was for the players to get around the map board as quickly as possible. Each of these games either came with a 'teetotum' spinner (which players spun to determine the number of moves on the board) or came with dice. Some of the games also came with separate booklets which provided geographical or historical information on some of the locations featured.

Mapping the Great Outdoors

Natural Atlas is a comprehensive mapped guide to the great outdoors. Using Natural Atlas you can plan and track all your U.S. outdoor adventures, including hiking, backpacking, cycling, boating and camping.

At the heart of Natural Atlas is a beautifully designed topographical map, created from OpenStreetMap data. On top of this topographical basemap Natural Atlas plots thousands of natural points of interest, including waterfalls, hot springs and arches. The map also includes outdoor activity facilities, such as campgrounds, boat launches and picnic areas.

Natural Atlas comes with a full range of tools for route planning, including the ability to import GPX trails. You can also use Natural Atlas to record the track of your outdoor adventures and map your trip photos. Note-taking tools enable you to notate parts of your trail and add comments to sections of your outdoor trips. The social sharing features of Natural Atlas also allow you to follow friends and other members of the Natural Atlas community.

Natural Atlas naturally supports offline use. You can download for free parts of the map (enough for most uses) to use offline. If you need more of the map to use offline then you can easily upgrade to a paid subscription.

Mapping the 2016 Irish Census

The Republic of Ireland's All-Island Research Observatory has collaborated with the Central Statistics Office to create a new mapped visualization of data from the 2016 census. The Census 2016 Viewer provides mapped visualizations of more than 130 different census variables.

Using the Census 2016 Viewer you can explore all aspects of the 2016 census, including population density in Ireland, the distribution of different religions, ethnic backgrounds, family types, occupations and class. The mapped visualization for each socio-economic variable provides a choropleth view of the selected variable. You can also click on the map to view the percentages and counts in the area (for example the percentage of Roman Catholics in the selected county).

The map also includes a  useful chart tool which allows you to create charts for a number of different socio-economic variables based on the current map bounds or for your own defined area on the map.

The Czech Election Map

The second richest person in the country, Andrej Babis, is set to become the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. His populist ANO party gained a victory in Saturday's general election and will now have the chance to form a coalition government.

iRozhlas has mapped the results from the general election. The map allows you to view the winning party in each electoral district. You can also select any of the political parties to see how many votes they received in each district.

Beneath the map iRozhlas examines the geographical support for each party using the mapped visualization of each party's national election results. Andrej Babis' ANO party was popular across the Czech Republic and is geographically distributed very evenly. There is more of a geographical component to the results of the Czech Republic's other main political parties. These are explored in iRozhlas's analysis of each party's election results.

3.8 Billion Years on Mars

This week three.js.org added lots of new links to websites using three.js. Among these new featured sites is National Geographics' Rewind the Red Planet and Cassini's Grand Tour. These two interactive presentations use three.js to take us on a tour of the evolution of Mars over 3.8 billion years and around the solar system following NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

At the heart of Rewind the Red Planet is an interactive globe of Mars. As you scroll through the site the globe updates to show how the planet might have looked during different stages in its history. The interactive also uses 360 degree 'Street View' panoramas of Mars to show how its evolution has looked from the surface of Mars. This includes imagined views of Mars in its distant past and more recent panoramas using imagery from the Curiosity Rover.

Rewind the Planet finishes with an overview of Mars today. In this section all of the landings on Mars are shown on the interactive globe of the planet.


Cassini's Grand Tour explores Cassini’s incredible voyage and some of its greatest achievements. Among the highlights of this tour has to be the imagery of Saturn and its moons captured by the Cassini spacecraft. The interactive also explores some of the new information that we learnt from Cassini, about Saturn's storms and the planet's rings.

Drone Imagery of the Tubbs Fire

For the past week or so Robin Kraft has been mapping the latest satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe to show the devastating damage done by the wildfires in Northern California. His Satellite Map of NorCal Fires includes satellite imagery taken after the fire in the Santa Rosa, Sonoma and Napa areas.

The Sonoma County and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office has now captured two-centimeter drone imagery of Coffey Park and Journey’s End. This incredibly detailed imagery of the Aftermath of the Tubbs Fire provides a shocking overview of the damage caused by the Tubbs Fire. The Mapbox blog has a few details on how this drone imagery was shot, processed and mapped.


The New York Times has been able to use aerial imagery of the area effected by the Tubbs Fire to map which individual buildings have been destroyed. The Times analysis shows that at least 5,100 individual structures have been destroyed.

Fire officials are also checking every building on the ground to document the full structural damage of the fire. Everyday Cal Fire are adding information from their damage inspections to a Structure Status Information map. The red markers on their map show destroyed homes and the yellow markers indicate damaged homes.

The Poor in Spain Live Mainly on the Plain

Eldiario.es has mapped the average income in every Spanish municipality (with more than 1,000 residents) to work out where the rich and poor live in Spain. The map uses data from income tax returns from 2015.

The Map of Average Incomes in Spain shows that the ten richest municipalities in Spain are all in Barcelona and Madrid. The poorest municipality is Zahínos, a small town in the province of Badajoz. This gap in average incomes between urban and rural communities is reflected across the whole country. People who live in towns and cities on average have higher incomes than those living in the countryside.

One thing which the newspaper doesn't discuss is Catalan independence. When I looked at the map that huge blue patch in the north-east of Spain caught my eye. You can see why Spain is desperate to keep hold of Catalonia and all those tax returns.

Teaching Art with Leaflet

I really like the Leaflet-IIIF plug-in for creating a Leaflet based browser for IIIF manifests. I think it has enormous potential for creating explanatory lessons about paintings and manuscripts shared using IIIF.

The Leaflet-IIIF plug-in page on Github has a few example maps. However none of them include any interactivity. I've therefore created a quick example using Van Gogh's Self-Portrait Dedicated to Gauguin. My Vincent Van Gogh self-portrait example pans and zooms the map to explore different features in the painting. If you click on a button the map zooms in on a feature in the painting and loads some explanatory text beneath the painting.



You could of course use other features from Leaflet.js. For example you could add markers to the picture which users could interact with to explore these marked areas of the painting. Alternatively you could add polygon shapes around different features that when clicked open an information window with explanatory text. The possibilities are really only limited by your imagination.

The painting 'Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin' belongs to the Harvard Art Museums. The poor attempts at art criticism are my own and should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Maps for Museums

Major art galleries, museums and universities around the world are adopting the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF). IIIF is a standardized method of describing and delivering images over the web. In interactive mapping terms you might say it is a standard for creating interactive map tiles for images of documents, manuscripts, photographs and paintings.

One outcome from this adoption of IIIF is that there are hundreds of thousands of manuscripts, paintings and other documents which can now be viewed as interactive maps. Yesterday in Mapping Van Gogh we looked at an impressive Leaflet.js based tool for browsing IIIF manifests. The IIIF Curation Viewer allows you to paste in the URL of a IIIF manifest and view a manuscript or painting as a zoomable image in a Leaflet map. You can use the tool to explore any painting, manuscript or other image shared by institutions around the world in the IIIF format.

Instead of using this Leaflet IIIF Viewer, made by the Center for Open Data in the Humanities, you could make your own. Leaflet-IIIF is a simple to use plug-in for creating a Leaflet based browser for IIIF manifests or images shared using the IIIF Image API. If you use this Leaflet plug-in you can then make interactive maps from tens of thousands of manuscripts, paintings and other images held by some of the best known global art galleries, museums and universities. For example Princeton University are using the plug-in to show a Plan of Versailles as an interactive Leaflet map.

If you prefer OpenLayers you can use Klokan Technologies' IIIF Viewer instead. This open-source IIIF Viewer uses the OpenLayers interactive map library to display images using IIIF. Here are a few examples of the IIIF Viewer in action. 

Mapping Vincent Van Gogh

The Center for Open Data in the Humanities has created a very impressive Leaflet.js based tool for browsing historical manuscripts, paintings and other documents. The IIIF Curation Viewer is an open-source image viewer that allows you to view any image that has an IIIF Manifest (a common standard used by many museums, galleries and universities around the world).

In this demo of the IIIF Curation Viewer the application is being used to allow you to explore an ancient Japanese manuscript. Using the document viewer you can move backwards and forwards through the different pages of the manuscript (or select any page from the drop down menu). Selecting the black square button from the map menu allows you to draw around individual text characters in the document. When you select a character in this way an information window opens with the modern Japanese translation of the character.


You can use the IIIF Curation Viewer to view any document, painting or image that has an IIIF Manifest. For example here is Van Gogh's Self Portrait (Dedicated to Gauguin).  If you look at the URL for the Van Gogh painting in the viewer you should be able to see where I added the URL for the painting's IIIF Manifest (I got the manifest from the Harvard Art Museum website). Here is another example where I simply added the URL for Rossetti's A Sea Spell.


If you are more interested in seeing how the IIIF Curation Viewer handles text then here is a letter from Francis Crick to Michael Crick, where Crick discusses the discovery of something he calls DNA. The drawing tool in the map allows you to select any part of the document to create an image of your selection (you can see the image I saved above of Crick's mention of 'Deoxyribonucleic acid' in the letter.

If the play's the thing for you then you might prefer this Leaflet map of the complete works of Shakespeare. Of course the IIIF Curation Viewer can also be used to look at maps. Here's the Gough Map from around 1360.

Do You Live Near a Freeway?

The Los Angeles Times can tell you how close you live to a freeway. Just enter your address and the LA Times will show you your house and the nearest freeway on an interactive map. It will also tell you if you are within the 500 foot zone where air pollution is highest or if you are within the 1,000 foot zone (where scientists advise that you shouldn't live).

The map is part of the newspaper's report into why L.A. keeps building homes within 500 feet of freeways. If you zoom in on a freeway on the interactive map you can see the most polluted 500 and 1,000 feet zones - shown in red and yellow respectively on the map. If you zoom out a little the zones will disappear and instead dots will show you how many people live within 1,000 feet of the freeway.

Later on in the LA Times report another interactive map shows you how many building permits the city has issued within 1,000 feet of a freeway since 2005. This map includes a slider control which allow you to change the year to see how these permits have accumulated over the years.

Real-Time Satellite Movies

The Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch has released a new mapping tool which allows you to create short animated movies of the Earth using the latest satellite imagery from GOES-16 and Himawari-8.

The RAMMB Slider uses the latest available imagery from both satellites to allow you to create small animated movies of the Earth. Slider includes the option to select archived imagery if you want to animate imagery from an earlier date. The application also includes options to select different types of imagery from the two satellites and a range of controls to adjust the speed and type of animated movie.

GOES-16 is in geostationary orbit over the Earth’s Western Hemisphere. It therefore provides great satellite imagery of the Americas. Himawari-8 is in geostationary orbit at 140.7 degrees East. It provides near real-time imagery of Australia, Japan and eastern China.

Mapping the UK's Falling House Prices

If you account for inflation then a majority of UK residential properties are selling less now than they were ten years ago. In fact house prices have fallen in real terms in more than half of UK neighborhoods since 2007.

The BBC has created an interactive map which shows where house prices have gone up and where they have gone down. The House prices: Have they actually gone up? map clearly shows that outside of London and the south-east most of the UK has seen in real terms a fall in house prices. This fall in house prices may also be coming to London. In the year to August the smallest increases in residential property were in the capital.


Of course knowing whether house prices have gone up or not doesn't really help you if you want to buy a house. What house hunters need to know is the cost of property in UK neighborhoods. In which case they need Anna Powell-Smith's House Prices Per Square Metre in England and Wales interactive map. This map shows the average price per square metre of properties in each postcode area. It is therefore a very handy way to find areas where you might be able to afford to buy a property.

The map includes a filter tool which allows you to filter the results shown on the map by the cost per square metre. If you know the range that you can afford or are willing to pay you can therefore use this filter tool to identify the areas within your comfort zone.

North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Range

ABC News has mapped the worldwide risk from North Korea's nuclear weapons. In Where can North Korea’s missiles reach? ABC shows which countries are in range of Kim Jong-un’s inferiority complex.

This scrolling interactive uses a faux 3d globe to show the ranges of North Korea's different missile types. As you progress through the story map the ranges of North Korea's short-range, medium-range, intermediate-range and intercontinental ballistic missile are each shown in turn on the interactive map. New York and Washington DC might be safe but Los Angeles could now be in range of an intercontinental ballistic missile fired from North Korea.

The use of a faux interactive globe is a good choice for this mapped visualization of the world. The Economist and the BBC have both learnt that drawing circles on 2d maps can be misleading. It appears that ABC knows that the Earth isn't flat. They also know how to develop interactive maps for mobile users. I don't normally comment on how maps work on browsers. But Where can North Korea’s missiles reach? is a joy to read on mobile (well actually it's really worrying - but you know what I mean).

Who Owns Your Water?

17% of water systems in the United States are privately owned. On average these private water companies charge customers 59% more for their water than publicly run water systems. This is bad news for customers, especially because unhappy customers can't switch to another water company.

Who Owns Your Water shows the percentage of the population served by private water utilities in each state. The darker the color of the state on the map then the more of the population are forced to buy their water from private companies. If you mouse-over a state on the map you can view details on the number of different water systems in the state and the percentage of the population served by private utilities.

The map also shows the location of the 500 largest water systems. The markers for these water systems are scaled by the number of customers. The markers are also color-coded to show if the water systems are privately or publicly owned. You can mouse-over these markers to view the number of customers and the average annual water bill form the utility.

You might also like:

The PFC Contamination Map - the level of PFC's found in water supplies at county level
Chemical Taints in Tap Water - average levels of contamination found in each county's water supply

Google Outer Space

Google Maps can now help you navigate the solar system. As well as its aerial imagery, Street View and maps of Earth Google Maps can now take you to Mercury, Venus, Mars and Pluto. It can also show you maps of our moon and the moons Ceres, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Mimas, Enceladus, Dione, Rhea, Titan and Iapetus.

All of these new planets and moons on Google Maps have place-labels so you won't get lost. Click on any of these planetary features on Google Maps and you can learn more about the location. For example clicking on a place-label can reveal the name and size of a crater. If you want to share a view of one of the planets or moons you can just copy and share the map URL.

Animated Markers in Mapbox

Arden de Raaij, a developer from Lisbon, has released a nicely designed Mapbox map for geotagged photos. The map shows where photographs were taken and allows you to view them directly from the map. It also has some very impressive animations and transitions which are fired when the user interacts with a map marker.

There are two main animation effects used for each map marker, which are triggered by mousing over a marker and clicking on a marker.  When you mouse over a marker the marker grows bigger on the map (it shrinks back to normal size when you move the mouse off the marker). When you click on the marker the photo thumbnail, embedded in the marker, expands to fill the whole map.

Mapbox Map with Animated Marker Icons would make a great template for anyone who wants to create a map based photo gallery. The expanding and shrinking markers is an impressive effect that could be used with any interactive map which uses map markers. Mapbox Map with Animated Marker Icons is available on CodePen. So, if you like the marker animations, it is possible to easily view the code and/or fork Arden's CodePen.

Santa Rosa Fire Satellite Imagery

Satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe shows some of the devastating damage done by the wildfires in Northern California. Robin Kraft, a developer originally from Santa Clara, has created a before and after map which allows you to compare DigitalGlobe's latest satellite imagery with aerial imagery taken before the fires.

The Satellite Map of NorCal Fires includes satellite imagery taken after the fire for the Santa Rosa, Sonoma and Napa areas. The red areas on the map are vegetation and not fire. The map includes a swipe control so that you can directly compare the before & after satellite imagery. Robin says he will be updating the map all weekend until the fire is contained.

If you need to keep abreast of the current situation on the ground Esri's Waze Alerts and Wildfires interactive map uses live data from USGS and Waze, to show the locations of active wildfires and traffic alerts for Northern California.

London Sucks You In & Spits You Out

This week Election Data published an interactive map to visualize the net migration data for areas of the UK to & from London. The map shows whether more people in each local authority area in England move to London or have moved from London into the area. The map also provides a rather neat visualization of why the Conservative Party could be in trouble in its traditional heartland of the south east.

Moving in to and out of London, 2013-2016 is a choropleth map of data from the Office for National Statistics. The darker colors show local authority areas where there is a net population gain from London. Where more people are moving into the area from London than are moving to the capital. The lightest colored areas show local authorities where more people are moving to London than emigrating from London.

In essence the map seems to show that the south east has had a net increase in people moving from London while some areas of the Midlands and the north have seen a net decrease, as more people have moved from these areas to the capital. It is also provides a rather neat visualization of an Election Data article published this week in the Guardian newspaper, How the Conservatives lost their home counties heartland.

In the Guardian article Election Data's Ian Warren argues that the exodus of people in their 30s and 40s from London to the south east is bad news for the Conservative Party, because young people tend to vote more for the Labour Party. According to the Economist "Conservatives overtake Labour as the party of choice from around the age of 50 in most polls". An influx of young families into the traditional Tory heartland could therefore prove disastrous for the Conservative Party.