City Tree Scores

American Forests want to give every neighborhood in the USA a Tree Equity rating. The number of urban trees and the amount of tree cover in cities in the United States is often very closely tied to the distribution of income and race. Trees are usually very sparse in low income areas. On the other hand neighborhoods with lots of trees and tree cover are very often the most expensive areas in which to live.

A lack of trees and tree cover in cities is one of the biggest causes of urban heat islands. Urban heat islands are areas of towns and cities which can become unbearably hot, especially on days with extreme heat. These areas can often become 10-20 degrees warmer than other areas in the very same city. Urban heat islands tend to occur in areas with the densest built environments and with very little tree canopy cover.

American Forests has developed a methodology for rating city neighborhoods based on the level of tree canopy cover and the local population density. The American Forest Tree Equity Score rates individual neighborhoods out of 100 to show cities how well they are delivering equitable tree canopy cover to their residents.

Currently American Forests has piloted their Tree Equity Score in the San Francisco Bay Area, Rhode Island and Maricopa County. The Tree Equity Score interactive map allows you to explore the ratings given to each neighborhood in these piloted areas. On this map individual neighborhoods are colored based on their Tree Equity Score. If you click on an individual neighborhood on the map then you can view data on the amount of current tree canopy cover and the demographics of the local population.

American Forests are not the only organization currently mapping the amount of tree canopy cover in American cities. Google is also working on ways to automatically assess the amount of tree cover in urban areas. Their Tree Canopy Lab is an interactive map which visualizes tree canopy cover in the city of Los Angeles. The map is designed to show the current tree canopy coverage in the city and to help identify where new tree planting efforts are most needed. 

The Tree Canopy Lab map allows you to see the level of tree canopy coverage in different neighborhoods in L.A. alongside demographic data, such as population density. Using the map it is possible to quickly identify where the most people are likely to be living in urban heat islands and where new tree canopy cover is most needed in the city.

Mapping Missing Bike Paths

 

Over the last few years many towns and cities in the UK have worked hard on improving their cycling infrastructure. However, despite these improvements, the UK has a long way to go before it is a fully cycling friendly country. 

Cycling UK has a plan to help councils across Britain improve their cycling provision and make life safer for all cyclists. Cycling UK wants to know the location of paths and tracks which could easily be adapted or changed into cycle paths. They have therefore released an interactive map which anyone can use to suggest improvements which could be made to help councils improve their cycling infrastructure.

Missing Paths is an interactive map which anyone in the UK can use to suggest improvements to their local bike network. The map can be uses to suggest any missing links in the local cycling network which could easily be adapted for bike use. These 'missing links' could be a footpath that currently doesn't allow cyclists, a disused railway line that could easily be adapted for bike use, or even a boggy track which could be resurfaced to become a bike path.

Users who add a missing link to the map are encouraged to also complete a short form, which will be sent to their local council in the form of an e-mail. This e-mail will include a link to their suggested improvement on the Missing Links map.

Alternate States of America

Random States of America is an interactive map which allows you to randomly-generate new state boundaries to create new maps of the United States. Recent presidential election results can then be viewed on your alternate map of America to show you who would have won the election if the United States was configured in a different way.

If you are a Trump supporter still struggling to understand the concept of democracy, you can use Random States of America to change the political map of America. If you keep clicking on the 'create new states' button you can keep on redrawing the map of the United States until you finally find a fictional map which the orange one might have won. Just be warned that you might have to click that button a lot. Trump lost bigly - so there aren't many ways that you can rejig the electoral map to create a fictional win for the Republicans (at least I have yet to find one).

Random States of America works by choosing 48 random counties and then attaching neighboring counties to create 48 new states (Hawaii and Alaska are always the same). The electoral results for these new states are calculated by applying the county level results for the new states and apportioning congressional representation to each new state based on census data.

The Color of Passports

 

For many English people one of the major benefits of leaving the European Union is that they will be able to have a blue rather than a red passport. After Brexit they will no longer be able to enjoy free movement in Europe but at least they won't have to carry the same color passport as a Frenchman.

Red is the New Black is an interactive map which shows the colors of passports around the world. Red is the most popular color for passports. 135 countries around the world issue red colored passports. The next most popular color is blue. 103 countries have blue passports. For many Muslim countries green is the color of choice for passports. 79 countries have green passports.

Red is the New Black doesn't just reveal the color of each country's passport. It also shows you how powerful each country's passport really is. On the map each country's passport is sized according to the number of countries the passport gives you access to without a visa. If you have a blue United Arab Emirates passport you can visit 179 countries around the world without a visa. At the other end of the scale an Afghan passport will only allow you to visit 35 countries.

The Tube Map of London Lives

If I lived just 13 stops further west on the London Underground District Line I could extend my life expectancy by 10%. Unfortunately it would cost me over £1 million pounds to move those 13 stops west. I guess I'll just have to accept that one of the costs of being poor is an unacceptably foreshortened life.

Tube Creature is a fascinating interactive map which allows you to explore lots of different data relating to stations on the London Underground network.Some of this data is directly related to the running of London's public transportation, such as passenger volumes at each station and the journey destinations from each station. Tube Creature, however, also allows you to explore some really interesting demographic and economic data related to the areas around each station. 

For example 'Lives on the Line' shows the life expectancy at birth for people who live in the neighborhoods nearest each London Underground station. A 'House Prices' option allows you to view the average house price in the area around each station and the 'Tube Tongues' option allows you to view the most common spoken language (after English) in each area around a station.

If you want a long and healthy life in London then you should make sure you are born near the Piccadilly Line in Knightsbridge or Green Park. The life expectancy at birth is 89 near these two stations. A full 14 years more than the life expectancy at birth of those living near Prince Regent station on the DLR.

World Heritage Journeys in Europe

There are over 400 UNESCO World Heritage sites in Europe. Many of them are very well known but there are many others which I am sure that you have yet to discover. Which is why you might want to explore the World Heritage Journeys of Europe.

World Heritage Journeys of Europe is an interactive mapped tour of UNESCO World Heritage sites throughout the European continent. The map includes four different themed journeys around Europe's many World Heritage sites. These four tours are entitled 'Ancient Europe', 'Romantic Europe', 'Royal Europe' and 'Underground Europe'.

Each of the four tours includes a combination of satellite imagery, photography and custom-styled interactive maps of some of Europe's most historically rich locations. The map highlights some of the most attractive sights and attractions which are recommended by the locals at each World Heritage Site. These points of interest are each described in detail and the map also provides essential visiting information, such as the location's opening hours and admission fees (where applicable).

You can view the location of all 1,121 UNESCO World Heritage Sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List Interactive Map. The color of the markers on this map show which sites are cultural (yellow), which are  natural sites (green) and which sites are in danger (red).

Mapping the Altitude of Planes

Elevation - Flight Paths is an interactive map which maps aircraft flight paths around the world. Each flight path on the map is colored to show the altitude that the plane was flying at each point on its journey. The lighter the color of the flight path the lower the altitude at that location.

The map reveals some interesting patterns. For example planes obviously have lower altitudes when flying in and out of airports. It is therefore easy to pick out major airports around the world from the clear landing and take-off flights paths shown on the map.

The map uses flight data from the OpenSky Network. You can view planes flying in real-time for yourself using the real-time flight tracking maps Flightradar24 and Plane Finder.

You can also view the landing and take-off flight paths of airports around the world using Plane Finder's Global Coverage Map. Plane Finder uses data from a network of ADS-B receivers around the world to map the flights of plane in real-time. The Global Coverage Map uses a week of this data (from July 2019) to reveal the flight paths taken by planes. For this map one week's worth of data has been merged together and compiled to make a single interactive map. If you zoom-in on any airport you can clearly see the common flight paths taken for both landings and take-offs at that airport.

Australia's Massacres Maps

In 2017 the University of Newcastle in Australia released an interactive map of Colonial Frontier Massacres in Central and Eastern Australia 1788-1930. The map is part of the university's efforts to record and document the massacres of native Australians in Australia between the years 1788-1930. For example the map records that on the 1st May 1838 at Slaughterhouse Creek fifteen heavily armed stockmen attacked and killed 300 Kamilaroi aboriginals. The massacre occurred just four months after 50 Kamilaroi people were killed by police at nearby Waterloo Creek.

The Guardian has also released a map of frontier massacres in Australia. The Guardian's The Killing Times covers the same period of Australia's early colonial history. The map plots the locations of mass killings using the University of Newcastle's data alongside data that the Guardian collected itself, using the university's methodology.

The Guardian's map includes a timeline which allows you to filter the massacres shown on the map by date range. You can also filter the map by the number of victims and by perpetrator groups. If you click on a marker on the map you can read details about the selected mass killing beneath the map.

Indigenous Australian artist Judy Watson has created her own interactive map of Australia's mass killings. During her multi-media art exhibitions Watson projects the names of hundreds of massacre sites onto a map of Australia. Next to this video projection is displayed a touch-screen map which shows the locations of massacre sites with links to historical documents associated with these massacres.

You can view this map online at The Name of Places. The Name of Places map plots the sites where indigenous Australians have been killed. These locations are shown on top of a vintage map of Australia. The vintage map was created from data collected by HMS Investigator, the first ship to circumnavigate Australia. The use of this early colonial map directly connects the massacres displayed to Australia's colonial settlers. 

If you click on a marker on the map you can read more about the displayed massacre site, including details about the location and date of the massacre. Where available more information, including the number of victims, is provided alongside bibliographical references and links to other websites.

Industrial Transportation in the Amazon

Over the last twenty years over 100 industrial river ports have been built on the Amazon. These ports help facilitate the export of commodities, especially soy, and help contribute to the destruction of the rainforest. More than 40 other major ports are planned in the Amazon. These ports when built will encourage even more agribusiness in the Amazon and contribute to further deforestation in Brazil.

Environmental website Mongabay has mapped out how the Amazon is fast becoming an industrial waterway for Brazil's agribusiness. In Multiplying Amazon river ports open new Brazil-to-China commodities routes the website has included a story map which visualizes all the industrial port facilities and soy storage facilities which have been built on the Amazon river system. The map also shows the amount of tree cover loss experienced in the northern rainforest over the last twenty years.

The 2006 Amazon Soy Moratorium has been successful in stopping a lot of new deforestation in the Amazon for soy production. However the map shows that this has only led agribusiness to shift soy production to the Cerrado savanna instead. The savanna is now losing its native vegetation faster than any other part of Brazil, including the Amazon.

Of course it isn't only the Amazon river and its tributaries which are used to transport goods in the rainforest. Agribusiness in Brazil has also been behind huge new road building efforts in the region. For example, the BR-163 is a 4,476 km long road which runs through the Amazon rainforest. Like a lot of infrastructure in the Amazon its very existence has led to accelerated deforestation in the areas it passes through. Along the BR-163 is an investigation into the effects of the BR-163 road on the Amazonian rainforest. 

Along the BR-163 uses satellite imagery to follow the route of the road from the Amazon River to Tenente Portela, in the south of Brazil. On this virtual journey we are shown how the road encourages urbanization, agriculture and mining. All at the expense of the native rainforest.

The BR-163 starts in Santarém on the Amazon River. In 2003, the American food giant Cargill completed the construction of a terminal at the port of Santarém. This terminal was then enlarged in 2015. Millions of tonnes of corn and soybeans arrive at the port using the BR-163 each year. In 2004 the BR-163 was paved, which led to more traffic and the development of many more secondary roads.

Hand in hand with the development of these secondary roads has been the emergence of large farms along the BR-163 and accelerated deforestation. Even in protected areas along the roads trees have been chopped down and huge farms have built. As you progress along the BR-163 you can see this deforestation for yourself in the clear 'fish bone' patterns that tree clearance has left either side of the highway.

Along the BR-163 concludes with an examination of the pace of deforestation in the Amazon. Up to around 2012 the scale of deforestation had been slowing in the 21st Century. Since 2012 the scale of deforestation has once again begun to rise.

Canada's 15 Minute Cities

Because of the current global epidemic I have not traveled more than three miles from my home in over seven months. I do not own a car and at the moment I am reluctant to use public transport. Consequently my world has become a lot smaller. 

Luckily, however, I live in a '15 minute city'. Which means that all my essential needs can be accessed in 15 minutes from my home by foot or by bike. The concept of the 15 Minute City was developed by Professor Carlos Moreno of the Sorbonne. Moreno's new approach to city planning wants to make urban living more livable and sustainable by ensuring that all the essential needs of individuals can be accessed without having to get in a car or use public transport.

The importance of this concept has become much more apparent to many people during the current global epidemic. Many more of us now work from home and many more of us are restricted in how far we can or are willing to travel. 

If you live in Canada then you refer to The Globe and Mail's 15 Minute City article to discover whether you live in a 15 minute city or not. The newspaper has used Statistics Canada data to see how close people in Canada's major cities live to essential amenities, such as grocery stores, pharmacies, schools and libraries.

According to The Globe and Mail's analysis Canada's most amenity dense city is Vancouver. 72% of the residents of Vancouver live in neighborhoods which are 'amenity-dense'. At the other end of the scale less than 4% of people living in St. John's have easy access to essential amenities.

You can also explore your access to local amenities for yourself by using Statistics Canada's Proximity Measures Data Viewer. This map allows you to explore how close you live to a number of different amenities. 

The amenities which you can explore on the map include public transit, grocery stores, health care, education, libraries and parks. If you select one of these amenities you can view a choropleth map showing the proximity of each census block to this amenity. Select a census block on the map and you can also view a table which outlines the block's proximity to each type of amenity and gives the block an overall score for its 'amenity density'.

If you live in the United States then you can answer the question Do you live in a “15-minute” city? by using HERE's interactive map. Enter your address or zip-code into the map and it will show you all the Groceries, Medical Facilities, Cultural Sites, Educational Facilities, Transit Stops and Leisure Facilities within a 15 minute walk of your home. The map will also tell you if your address qualifies as a 15 Minute City or not

Summers are Getting Longer

One result of global heating is that summers are getting longer. At least anecdotally it appears that they are. Spanish machine learning company Predictia decided to put the theory to the test and use historical weather data to determine if Spain's summers were really starting earlier and finishing later.

You can view the results of Predictia's analysis on the length of Spain's summers on their Spain's Summer Length interactive map. Using climate data from AEMET and the University of Cantabria the map allows you to explore the number of days of summer in every municipality in Spain. If you select the 'Summer Length' layer under the 'Differences' section you can view the "average difference for the summer duration between the first period (1960-1982) and the last one (1983-2015)". This view allows you to view the number of days of summer in each municipality in Spain.

The map reveals a mixed picture. In much of Spain summers do appear to be getting longer. However there also appear to be smaller areas of the country where summers have actually become shorter in the period mapped. If you select a municipality on the map you can view a bar chart showing the number of summer days for every year from 1950 to 2015. This chart provides a clear picture of the length of summers in the selected municipality over the last 75 years.

Explore the World in 3D

Procedural GL JS is a JavaScript library for creating 3D WebGL maps. Using the library it is easy to make 3D maps for the web, which load very quickly and which are optimized for mobile devices.

If you want to explore the capabilities of Procedural GL JS then you should have a look at the demo map. The demo map is a fun way to explore the world in 3D and explore how different locations look when mapped in Procedural GL JS.

Procedural GL JS can be used with raster map tiles from any source. The 3D mapping library also supports map overlays, which means it easy to add markers, lines or polygon shapes (specified in GeoJSON) to your maps. You can get a good idea of the types of features supported by the overlay function using the Overlay Editor.

To learn more about the options available in Procedural GL JS you can also refer to the library's documentation.  

Procedural GL JS is built upon three.js. It is one of a number of WebGL mapping libraries built upon three.js. These libraries include:

• harp.gl - HERE's open source 3D web mapping library
• three-geo - a JavaScript library to create small 3D terrain models
  
• Gio.js - a JavaScript library for building 3D globes
  

The Turkey Who Voted for Thanksgiving

Donald Trump might not have won the election but he has turned the country red. If you look at just about any map of Covid-19 in the United States you will see it covered in red, showing a country being over-run by a deadly virus. That is some legacy for the outgoing president.

For example the Covid Exit Strategy is an interactive map which visualizes how well each state is doing in reducing the number of Coronavirus symptoms and cases. As you can see from the map above only the state of Hawaii is not currently witnessing the 'uncontrolled spread' of Covid-19. 

The map uses a simple color scale to show how each state is currently progressing towards reducing the spread of  the virus. The Covid Exit Strategy website also shows how each state is doing in terms of a number of key measures. These include the rates of testing & tracing, the 14 day trend in the number of positive cases and the occupation rate of ICU beds in each state.

Another way that you can assess thel risk from Covid-19 is to consult the Harvard Global Health Institute's COVID Risk Level map which shows the severity of the Covid-19 outbreak at county level across the United States. The map reveals which counties have a green, yellow, orange or red risk level, based on the local number of new daily cases.

On the map counties that have fewer than one daily new case of Covid-19 per 100,000 people are colored green. Counties with one to nine daily new cases are colored yellow. Counties with between 10 and 24 new cases are colored orange and counties with 25 new cases per day are shown in red. The map also allows you to view the Covid-19 risk levels at state level. This view shows that only five states are currently below the red level.

Alongside the map the Harvard Global Health Institute has released recommendations and guidance about how counties should respond to the Covid-19 outbreak risk levels. If a county is shown as red on the map then stay-at-home orders are absolutely necessary. Counties shown as orange are advised to have stay-at-home orders and test and trace programs. If a county currently has a yellow risk level then a rigorous test and trace program is advised. Counties which are shown as green should continue to monitor with testing and contact tracing.

If you are planning on attending or organizing an event in the USA then you might want to refer to the COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool. This interactive mapping tool can tell you the risk that someone with Covid-19 will be at an event, given the event's size and location.

Obviously the more people who attend an event then the larger the odds that there will be someone who has Covid-19. The Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool allows you to select the number of people expected to attend an event (from 10 to 5,000). Once you select the estimated number of people attending the event counties on the map will be colored to show the risk level across the whole of the United States.

The Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool doesn't only work for U.S. counties. You can also use the tool to discover the risk levels of someone attending an event being positive of Covid-19 in a number of different European countries.

In the UK we often use the simile "like a turkey voting for Christmas" to refer to someone who seems intent on contributing to their own downfall. The closest American translation for this idiom would probably be 'like a turkey voting for Thanksgiving". 

This week don't be the Turkey who voted for Thanksgiving.

The Meaning of City Names

Town Names is a new interactive map which explains the meaning of city and town names in the USA.

If you mouse-over a town or city name on the Town Names map you can learn how the town originally got its name.The 225 most populated towns and cities in the United States are shown on the map. The map also reveals the year when each of the cities was founded. You can use the year buttons (running down the left-hand side of the map) to filter the towns and cities shown on the map by year of foundation.

During my research for this map I learned that there are far fewer towns in the United States named for European towns and cities than I had previously thought. Many American towns and cities appear to be named for nearby or local natural features or for an individual (often someone important in early U.S. history). 

Lots of U.S.cities have changed names since their foundation. One very common reason for a name change appears to have been because of the U.S. Post Office. It appears when towns wanted to open a Post Office they were often told the post-office couldn't be named after the town - because a post-office with that name already existed. Many towns therefore changed their name to something more original so that the post-office could have the town name.

Mapping the Graveyard of the Atlantic

In May 1718 the pirate Blackbeard ran aground at Topsail Inlet (now known as Beaufort Inlet) on the coast of North Carolina. For nearly 300 years the ship, the Queen Anne'e Revenge, remained undisturbed on the sea bed, until its remains were discovered in 1996.

The location of Blackbeard's ship is just one of many shipwrecks which can be found on the Outer Banks Shipwrecks interactive map. Over 3,000 ships have been estimated to have been wrecked off the coast of the Outer Banks, a 120 mile long collection of barrier islands and spits, situated off the coast of North Carolina and southeastern Virginia.On the interactive map wrecks of identified ships are shown using the ship's name and the year when it was wrecked. Unidentified wrecks are shown on the map with a small blue dot.

Another well known ship shown on the map is the British tanker 'Mirlo'. On August 16 1918, during World War I, the Mirlo was hit by a German torpedo about 5 miles offshore of Rodanthe, North Carolina. Thanks to the heroic efforts of the crew of the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station forty-two people were saved from the burning tanker. 

  

You can view the locations of shipwrecks on the other side of the Atlantic on the Wreck Viewer interactive map.The Wreck Viewer shows the locations of 4,000 shipwrecks around the shores of Ireland, dating back as far as the 16th century. The map was created by Ireland's National Monuments Service (NMS) to help provide access to and visualize the NMS’s Wreck Inventory.

Each red dot on this map represents a wreck for which there is a known location. 78% of the wrecks in the Wreck Inventory have no known precise location. If you select a wreck on the map you can read the wreck description. This includes details on the ship name, type of vessel and the date the vessel sank. The details also contain (where available) the wreck summary description which provides details on the vessel's history, voyage, cargo, passengers and the story of its loss. At present only 20% of ships in the database have a summary description.

Growing on Urban Heat Islands

Urban heat islands are areas of towns and cities which can become unbearably hot, especially on days with extreme heat. These areas can often become 10-20 degrees warmer than other areas in the very same city. These urban heat islands tend to occur in areas with the densest built environments and with the most roads. 

Urban heat islands are largely a result of un-shaded roads and buildings absorbing heat and then radiating it out to their surroundings. The dark surfaces of roads and built materials, such as bricks and concrete, absorb more heat than grass and vegetation. The coolest places are usually is parks and on streets with lots of tree cover. Which is why the densest built areas tend to be significantly warmer than areas which have lots of tree cover or parks.

One of the best ways to prevent urban heat islands is to provide more tree canopy cover - to create natural shade. Planting more trees in urban environments not only helps to reduce street-level temperatures, they can contribute to a better quality of life and can make neighborhoods more attractive places to live.

Google's new Tree Canopy Lab is an interactive map which visualizes tree canopy cover in the city of Los Angeles. The map is designed to show the current tree canopy coverage in the city and to help identify where new tree planting efforts are most needed. The map allows you to see the level of tree canopy coverage in different neighborhoods in the city alongside demographic data, such as population density. Using the map it is therefore possible to quickly identify where the most people are likely to be living in urban heat islands and where new tree canopy cover is most needed. 

The New York Times has mapped out how racist housing segregation in the United States, dating back to the Home Owners' Loan Corporation's Redlining maps, is a major contributory factor to the location of urban heat islands in towns and cities across the country. 

In How Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left Neighborhoods Sweltering the New York Times has created a story map which shows how across the United States neighborhoods which were redlined are usually the hottest parts of towns. Conversely neighborhoods which weren't redlined tend to be the coolest areas. The reason for this is that redlined neighborhoods have largely remained areas of deprivation and tend to have fewer trees and a  more densely built urban environment. Non-redlined neighborhoods have remained mostly more affluent and are therefore more likely to have lots of parks and lots of tree cover.

In August 2018 NOAA ran a citizen science project in Washington D.C. and in Baltimore to discover which part of those cities were effected by urban heat islands. You can see the results of this study on NOAA's Detailed maps of urban heat island effects in Washington, DC, and Baltimore.

The detailed maps produced by NOAA show that the hottest areas in both cities are the areas with the densest built environment and the most roads. The coolest places in both cities are in parks or in other areas with lots of tree cover. 

Guess who lives in areas with parks and trees and guess who lives in densely built areas with lots of bricks and concrete. That's right the hottest areas in cities tend to be the areas where the poorest residents live, while the richest residents can afford to live in the coolest areas with lots of parks and trees. You can observe this pattern in cities across the USA using NPR's interactive heat island maps.

In As Rising Heat Bakes U.S. Cities, The Poor Often Feel It Most NPR has published an interactive tool which allows you to view heat island maps of US cities side-by-side with a map of income levels. Using this comparative tool you can directly see if there is any correlation between high surface temperatures in a city and the level of income. When you select a city the tool even tells you directly if there is a strong, moderate or weak link between surface temperatures in the city and where different income groups live.

Map Your Geotagged Photos

Mapipedia is a new interactive map which can help you map and share your geotagged photos. The platform allows you to upload a series of photos, show the location of each image on a map and show when each photo was taken. The application then creates a slideshow of your photographs, showing you when and where each picture was taken.

You can see Mapipedia in action on this demo map. On this demo map you can see how you the slideshow works and how you can navigate through the displayed photographs by date, location or by photo thumbnail. The demo map also includes links to other photo slideshows mapped using Mapipedia.

If you want to create your own mapped photo slideshow with Mapipedia then you might want to refer to the documentation. The documentation explains how to upload your photos from your computer or import photos from Apple iCloud, Google Photos, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox and Flickr.

Mapipedia includes a number of different pricing packages. The free option allows you to upload 100 photos. With the free option your created map will only exist for 30 days. If you subscribe to one of the paid options then you can upload more photographs and your created maps won't be deleted after 30 days.

Creating a 3D Point Cloud of the World

Pixel8 is using crowd-sourced photography to create a 3D map of the world. Using 3D point cloud data captured from mobile phones, combined with imagery from satellites, planes and drones Pixel 8 is able to quickly map any geographical area.

Pixel8 has released a demo 3D map of Boulder which shows what is possible with its mapping approach. To create the map a small group of volunteers used a custom mobile app to capture photography of downtown Boulder. The demo map was created from photographs taken during just one afternoon. The 3D models, which were created from mobile phone captured photos, are then combined with other imagery captured by satellites, planes and drones, to create a detailed map. The Boulder map also uses locally sourced LIDAR data.

By combining crowd-sourced and volunteer photography with existing imagery from other sources Pixel8 is developing a mapping platform that can quickly build 3D models and maps to scale. The Pixel8 explore page includes a number of other mapping projects which you can explore, including point cloud models created in Austin, Texas and Washington D.C..

Coronavirus - Spinning Out of Control

It isn't often that you get to see a new method of visualizing data. Which is probably why I like Benjamin Schmidt's Spinning Out of Control so much. 

Benjamin's new interactive map uses data from the New York Times to show the rate of Coronavirus in U.S. counties over time. The map is not by any stretch of the imagination the first map to show the growth of Coronavirus in the United States during the course of this year. However it is the first map I have seen which rotates geographical areas to visualize rates of infection over time. 

Individual counties on the Spinnig Out of Control interactive map are rotated over time to show the rate of change in the number of Coronavirus cases over the previous two weeks. The size of the counties shows whether the number of cases has increased or decreased. The effect of this rotation helps to identify areas in the country where there has been a sudden change in the rate of infection. The size of the counties identifies whether these changes have been increases or decreases in the number of cases.

Rotating the counties and adjusting their size is an interesting way to visualize the rate of Coronavirus infections over time. The animated effect also helps to emphasize the fact that the virus is a living entity which is spreading across the country. The movement on the map really creates an organic effect. Hopefully it will encourage more people to practice social distancing and to wear masks.

Nightlights & Access to Electricity

The World Bank has released the Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 2020. The atlas includes a plethora of data visualizations exploring and explaining the global status of 17 different SDG's, including levels of global poverty, educational levels, gender equality and access to clean water. 

As part of the Affordable and Clean Energy sustainable development goal the World Bank is using nightlight satellite imagery to visualize access to electricity. Using an interactive globe you can choose two locations around the world to view a direct comparison of the level of nightlight activity at both locations. 

For example the screenshot above shows (on the left) nightlights in a 150 km radius around Washington, D.C. and (on the right) nightlight activity in a a 150 km radius around Katakwi, Uganda.Both locations have roughly the same population but, as you can see, there is far less access to electricity in Katakwi than in Washington D.C.. 

The use of nightlight imagery is a neat way to visualize access to electricity in different locations across the world. However this is just one of many data visualizations in the Atlas. There are many other data visualizations in every one of the 17 sustainable development goals in the World Bank's Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 2020.

The Karl the Fog Tracker

San Francisco is well known for its frequent fog. In fact San Franciscans are so familiar with this weather phenomenon that they are on first name terms with their local atmospheric weather anomaly.

The reason that San Francisco sees so much fog, especially in the summer, is that big expanse of water called the Pacific. The cold ocean waters of the Pacific cools the warm air above. When this warm air cools the moisture condenses - creating fog. In the mornings the sun begins to heat the land. This hot air rises and the cooled foggy air over the Pacific is sucked inland. As the day progresses the sun heats the air and San Francisco's fog is (usually) burned off during the course of the morning and afternoon.

You can view the latest fog conditions using the Bay Area Fog Tracker. The San Francisco Chronicle's Bay Area Fog Tracker is an interactive map which visualizes the current fog and cloud conditions in San Francisco. The interactive map allows you to view a 12 hour loop of cloud and fog conditions in the Bay Area. It also includes details on the current amount of cloud cover, the height of the cloud ceiling and the current visibility (in miles).

You can see the daily pattern of San Francisco's fog very clearly on Fogust, an interactive map visualizing San Francisco's fog by time of day (and by month). The map uses historical data from NOAA's GOES-15 to provide a visual guide to the historical levels of fog experienced during different months and over the course of a typical day.

The map has three buttons for each month of the year. According to the map July and August are the foggiest months. If you switch between the 10 am, 12 pm and 4 pm buttons in July then you can observe the process described above, as the the fog forms over the Pacific, rolls inland and then gets burned off in the afternoon.

The Island of Fiction

The Island of Fiction is an interactive map of a fictional island. On this Island of Fiction there are five states, 'Crime', 'Horror', 'Science-Fiction', 'Romance' and 'Fantasy'. In each of these five states are a number of cities, each of which is named for a best-selling author, who has written within that genre.

The idea for the Island of Fiction came from an Alan Levine article on using fantasy maps, generated by Azgaar’s Fantasy Map Generator, as the base map layer in a Leaflet.js interactive map. Essentially Alan's article explains how you can use the Fantasy Map Generator to create a fictional blank map which you can then use as the basis of an interactive concept map.

Using the Leaflet mapping library you can add markers and place-name labels to your fantasy map to create a map of any concept that you desire. Using the options in the Fantasy Map Generator I created a map with five states. In Leaflet I used the tool-tip tool to add place-name labels to these five states, naming each one for a fictional genre. I then used smaller place-name labels to name cities within each of these states, for famous authors who have published works of fiction within each genre.

My Island of Fiction was created in a couple of hours for the #30DayMapChallenge. With a little more work I think this could be a very interesting map. For example, I could add more authors to the map - so that as you zoom-in on a genre the names of more writers appear on the map. I could also make each author's name interactive - so that if you clicked on an author's name you could view a photo, biography and a list of their major works.

This concept can of course be used in many different contexts. I am sure there are thousands of different concept maps which could be created using Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator in conjunction with an interactive mapping library.

Viewing Paintings as Interactive Maps

Over the last few months Jason Farago of the New York Times has released a number of detailed critiques of individual works of art. These detailed examinations have displayed a number of works of art using the techniques originally developed for displaying interactive online maps. 

Interactive raster maps, such as the early Google Maps, use large images which are cut up into much smaller individual map tiles. When you zoom in on one or more of these map tiles a more detailed map image is loaded, which is in turn divided into many smaller individual map tiles. When you pan left or right, the appropriate map tiles (based on the location you are viewing) are loaded into your map view.

This is the same process which is now being used by the NYT to create interactive paintings. These paintings are being divided into image tiles which can be loaded into view as you pan left and right around the painting. And, as you zoom in on a detail of the painting, higher resolution tiles of the painting can also be loaded into view.

You can see how this works in the NYT's A Picture of Change for a World in Constant Motion. In this exploration of Katsushika Hokusai's "Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji" Jason Farago uses the navigation techniques developed for interactive map to create interactive paintings which you can pan around and zoom-in on to view images in more detail. 

Farago's critique of Hokusai's famous woodblock prints also uses the techniques of the story map - to create a guided tour of the individual images in Hokusai's collection of views. As you scroll through Farago's critique the interactive paintings automatically pan and zoom to show the details which Farago wants to draw your attention to.

A Picture of Change for a World in Constant Motion is just one of a series of these interactive art critiques which the New York Times has released this year. You might also like Seeing Our Own Reflection in the Birth of the Self-Portrait, a detailed examination of an Albrecht Dürer self portrait, painted in 1500 and Taking Lessons From a Bloody Masterpiece, a great scrollytelling crtique of Thomas Eakins' painting 'The Gross Clinic'.

If you are familiar with the Leaflet.js mapping library then you can also create your own interactive painting critiques - using image tiles from paintings instead of the usual map tiles. Museums and art galleries around the world use the iiif format to present artworks as zoomable images. This means that for many works of art, if they have a iiif manifest, you don't even have to create the image map tiles for yourself.

The fantastic leaflet-iiif plugin allows you to seamlessly use iiif manifests with the Leaflet mapping platform.This means that you can quickly turn any painting with a iiif manifest into an interactive Leaflet map. You can view a demo of this in action on my own The Drawing Lesson critique. In this scrollytelling examination of Jan Steen's painting (depicting an artist teaching two young pupils how to draw) I have used the Leaflet mapping library to take a close detailed look at Steen's 17th century Dutch masterpiece.

If, like me, you find it easiest working from other people's code then you can clone my The Drawing Lesson interactive on its Glitch page. To start hacking my interactive painting look for the iiif manifest URL in the JavaScript code and try replacing it with the manifest for another painting or image.

How Many Countries Do You Know?

Map Quiz is a map based quiz which requires you to name as many countries as you can when they are shown to you on an interactive map.

In this map based game you need to name the correct country displayed from a multiple-choice list of four countries. The game is made a little more difficult than it first appears by using Mapbox's bearing option to rotate the map. This means that each country is shown without north being at the top. Most of us are used to seeing countries mapped with north at the top of the map - so rotating a country's orientation on the map can make it a little harder to recognize and identify the country. 

After you have submitted your answer to a question the correct name of the country is revealed. You are also shown information on the country's official language(s), its coat of arms & its flag, and can even listen to a recording of its national anthem.

Map Quiz is another fun map quiz which was created using the popular planemad-mapquiz template developed for the Mapbox platform. This template was also used for the similar Can You Guess the Country map quiz game.

The Covid Event Risk Map

If you are planning on attending or organizing an event in the USA then you might want to refer to the COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool. This interactive mapping tool can tell you the risk that someone with Covid-19 will be at an event, given the event's size and location.

Let's say for the sake of argument that you've been invited to a large family dinner on the 26th November in Norton County, Kansas. If there are ten family members at that dinner then there is a 94% chance that at least one person at the dinner will be Covid-19 positive. 

Obviously the more people who attend an event then the larger the odds that there will be someone who has Covid-19. The Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool allows you to select the number of people expected to attend an event (from 10 to 5,000). Once you select the estimated number of people attending the event counties on the map will be colored to show the risk level in each county.

The Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool doesn't only work for U.S. counties. You can also use the tool to discover the risk levels of someone attending an event being positive of Covid-19 in a number of different European countries. 

The only way to guarantee a 0% percent chance of catching Covid-19 is by not attending any events.

Terradactile

Terradactile is an interactive map which can be used for generating and downloading hillshade and Digital Elevation Model data for any area of the Earth.

To visualize and/or download the hillshade or DEM for an area simply draw a bounding box around it on the Terradactile interactive map. Terradactile will then show you either the DEM or hillshade data for the selected area. Either of which you can then download.

The hillshade and DEM data comes from Mapzen's AWS Terrain Tiles. The AWS Terrain Tiles consist of thousands of digital elevation model data sources from around the globe. When you have visualized the hillshade or DEM data you can download and save your hillshade or DEM as a Cloud Optimized Geotiff (COG).

This is Home

A map of the United States is a map of 124 million homes. Each one of those homes has countless stories to be told. Maps of Home is just one of those stories - brilliantly told and illustrated by Dylan Moriarty. 

As you scroll through Maps of Home an interactive map zooms in on Janesville, Wisconsin. As you zoom in on the town you enter into a wonderful illustration. A drawing which recounts scenes from Dylan's childhood. This is not just an ordinary map of Janesville but a map colored by the childhood memories of someone for whom it was home.As you continue scrolling the map pans around this illustration of Dylan's childhood, recounting significant episodes in his early life in Janesville. 

At the end of this personal journey the map zooms back out to encompass the whole world. Emphasizing the 7.7 billion homes around the world. Each with their very own personal stories.

Maps of Home was made with the help of Mapbox GL. If you want to create your own scrollytelling story with Mapbox then you should have a look at the interactive Mapbox Scrollytelling Template.

American Time Travel

In 1890 if you wanted to travel from New York City to Ferry County in Washington the journey would take you over three weeks by train. I discovered this little piece of information using Michael Weaver's wonderful Travel Time Between Counties:1880 and 1900 interactive map.

If you click on the Travel Time Between Counties map then you can view an isochrone map showing how long it would take to travel from that location to every over location in the United States by rail in 1890 or 1900. The colors on this isochrone layer show how many days it would take to travel county to county within the country by train. The map includes the option to change the travel times shown between either 1890 or 1900. 

In 1900 the travel time between New York and Ferry County had been reduced by over two weeks, to just 5.3 days. 

The data for the Travel Time Between Counties map comes from Fernando Pérez-Cervantes's analysis of travel times between every pair of U.S. counties for every year between 1840 and 1900. This analysis is based on the available railroad lines in 1890 and 1900 and uses an algorithm to find the optimal travel times between any two counties.

Before & After the Berlin Wall

31 years ago, on November 9th 1989, the Berlin Wall was finally pulled down, bringing to an end the division between East and West Germany. The wall has now almost completely disappeared from Berlin's cityscape. The Berliner Morgenpost has therefore decided to create a little reminder of the Berlin Wall with an interactive map featuring a number of before and after photographs.

Berlin With & Without the Wall is an interactive map which combines two different aerial image maps of Berlin. One of these maps is made from aerial imagery from 1989 and the other map uses aerial imagery from 2019. The course of the wall is highlighted in blue on top of this aerial imagery. If you zoom in on a section of the wall you can swipe between the two maps to view Berlin with and without the wall. 

A number of numbered map markers are dotted around the circumference of the wall. These markers indicate the locations of the Berliner Morgenpost's before and after photographs of the Berlin Wall. These comparisons use vintage photographs of the Berlin with contemporary photographs of the same scene today. Using the swipe control you can switch between the before and after views.

30 years ago, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, East and West Germany was reunified and became one country again. Back in 1991 there were large differences in the average incomes and life expectancy of people living in the former East and West Germany. After 30 years of reunification many of these economic and demographic differences have disappeared. However some of the inequalities between the two areas have proved more persistent.

The national German Mapping Agency and the Institute for Population Research has released 30 Years of German Unity & Diversity, which maps the demographic and economic developments in Germany since reunification. Using a series of interactive maps 30 Years of German Unity and Diversity visualizes a number of different demographic and economic metrics. 

These maps reveal that the differences in life expectancy between East and West 30 years ago have now largely disappeared. Immediately after reunification there was a relatively large flow of young Germans moving from East to West Germany. 30 years later the movements of young people between West and East has also more or less equalized.

Mapping Aboriginal Languages

The 50 Words Project is a new interactive online map which allows you to listen to and learn words in more than 60 Australian Aboriginal languages. The map, created by the University of Melbourne's Research Unit for Indigenous Language, includes sound recordings of First Nations languages from across the Australian continent.

On the 50 Words Project interactive map the 60 First Nations languages for which the project has sound recordings are labelled in brown. Click on a brown labelled language and you can listen to actual sound recordings of 50 different words spoken in the selected language.

As you can see from the many uncolored labels on the map there are still numerous First Nations languages which the project does not have recordings for. The map includes contact details to get in touch with the project if you can speak any of the currently unrecorded languages.

If you are interested in Aboriginal languages then you might also like the Weemala map. This interactive map uses data from historical surveys undertaken by the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia to map First Nations place-names. This 100 year-old survey data includes information on Aboriginal place-names their locations and their meaning.

The Weemala map allows you to browse the surveys and letters of the Anthropological Society of Australasia Survey. Each time you open a survey page or letter in Weemala any indigenous place-names in the text are also geo-located on a Leaflet map. If you click on any of the locations marked on the map you can find out the aboriginal place-name's meaning in English.

The Purple States of America

The creators of the Purple States of America interactive map believe that traditional election maps paint a distorted picture of a polarized America. These traditional maps show the country divided into red and blue states. However there are no states in the USA where everybody votes Democrat or Republican. All states have both Democratic and Republican voters.

The Purple States of America map is an attempt to create a less polarized map of the USA. It uses proportional shades of purple to show that the United States is less polarized than the perception given by more traditional election maps. On this map states with more Democratic voters have bluer shades of purple, and states where more people voted Republican have redder shades of purple.

In its very limited purpose of showing a less polarized country then the Purple States of America map is very successful. Unfortunately however the main purpose of elections maps (in a winner takes all electoral system) is to show the winners in each electoral area.If you really want to fix the perception of polarization in the United States you don't need purple maps - you need Proportional Representation. 

The real problem with many U.S. election maps has been that traditionally they tend to overstate the popularity of the party which wins the huge rural counties with low population densities (Republican), and under-represent the popularity of the party which wins the smaller urban areas with bigger populations (Democrats). However this problem has been addressed during this election through the widespread use of cartograms and proportional symbols. Some examples of these different types of election maps can be seen in The New York Times's Presidential Election Results 2020, the Washington Post's Election 2020 Live Results and in Bloomberg's 2020 Presidential Election Results.

The Atlas of the Underworld

The Atlas of the Underworld is an interactive map with a difference. While most maps are designed to help you navigate above ground the Atlas of the Underworld enables you to discover what lies beneath your feet, in the Earth's mantle. 

The mantle makes up about 67% of our planet's mass. The Atlas of the Underworld maps the Earth’s upper and lower mantle, showing the location of all subducted slabs, organized by age, depth, and name.

The interactive Atlas of the Underworld includes a slide control which allows you to set the depth of the tomography slice of the mantle shown.The markers on the map show the location of the all slabs shown in the current map view. If you click on these markers you can view more information on the selected anomaly, view vertical and horizontal cross sections of the anomaly and view more information about the slab's location and depth. 

If you are interested in learning more about the world beneath your feet then you might also enjoy these Interactive Geological Maps.

Mapping the Democrat Swing

Before the U.S. Presidential election most pollsters were predicting a sizeable swing towards the Democrats. Although Biden looks to have won the Presidency it is clear that there was no huge blue wave in this election.

The Washington Post has released a really interesting animated map which visualizes where in the country the vote swung to the left and where it swung to the right. The Post's The Political Winds in the U.S. are Swirling uses animated flow lines to show the swing in the votes in this election.  Using animated flow lines (as made popular by animated wind maps such as earth::) the Post visualizes the change in the vote margin across the United States.

The areas which saw the biggest blue swings are found in medium sized cities and suburbs. The biggest red swings are in the southern most points of the country, in the southern tip of Texas and southern Florida.

You can also see this big swing towards Trump in southern Texas and Florida on the New York Time's 'Shift from 2016' map. The New York Times's Presidential Election Results 2020 includes a swing map which shows where votes have swung left and right since the 2016 election. 

The Times map also shows a huge swing to the Republican candidate in Utah, which doesn't seem to appear on the Post's map. The swings towards Trump in these areas are much bigger than the swings towards Biden in other areas of the country. However Biden has managed to pick up enough smaller swings across the whole country (particularly in suburbs and cities) to apparently win the Presidency.

The National Flooding Dashboard

The USGS has released a new interactive map which provides real-time information about water levels, weather and flood forecasts. The new National Water Dashboard can provide critical real-time information to the public during flood events. 

The new USGS map is designed to be a one-stop resource for accessing all USGS water data. The map includes data from 13,000 monitoring stations across the United States measuring stream, lake, reservoir and groundwater conditions. It also provides real-time information on rainfall levels and tidal conditions. If you turn on the map's Weather Conditions layer you can view data on recent rainfall, rainfall forecasts, snow depths and drought conditions. Select the Watches section in the Weather Conditions layer and you can view all the areas in the USA which currently have a Flood Advisory warning.

The National Water Dashboard interactive can also be used by local emergency managers during critical flood conditions. It can help them to decide when and where to issue flood & evacuation warnings and help them to establish safe evacuation routes and emergency response efforts.Conversely during droughts the National Water Dashboard can be used to help monitor and manage scarce water supplies.

Red, Blue, Green & Yellow Towns

Today's #30DayMapChallenge is to use the color red in a map. Yesterday the challenge was to use the color blue. Tomorrow the challenge is to use green and the day after it is to use yellow. I've decided to cheat by creating just one map for all four days. My Red Towns interactive map shows all the towns and cities in the USA with the colors red, blue, green or yellow in their names.

My map isn't very interesting. However it is a neat example of the power of importing and styling your own data in Mapbox Studio. This ability to add and style your own place-name labels in Mapbox Studio was used very effectively last year in The Pudding's A People Map of the USA.

To get the data for my map I ran searches in Overpass Turbo for towns and cities including the letters 'red', 'blue', 'green' or 'yellow'. I then downloaded the results as a GeoJSON file and uploaded it to Mapbox Studio to create a new data tileset. I then added this tileset to a new Mapbox map style. In Mapbox Studio I turned off all the other place-name labels and styled my new tileset so that all my place-name labels are colored to reflect the color in the name of the town or city.

As you can see from the map Green is the most popular color used in U.S. place-names. Red is the next most popular color and then blue. My search for yellow towns and cities returned just one result, the town of West Yellowstone.

Russia's Secret Invasion Maps

London's East End showing the strategically important docks

During the Cold War the Soviet Union carried out a huge secret project to create detailed military maps of the west.From the 1940's right up until the 1990's the Soviet military worked on mapping the whole world in very fine detail.

The most detailed 'city' maps include street names, the locations of factories, important public buildings and transport networks. Information that might prove very useful to Soviet Spies and any invading communist armies.

You can explore a huge number of these maps on this OpenTiles Soviet Military Maps interactive. On this interactive map you can zoom in and explore thousands of Soviet military maps of Europe, the Middle East and large parts of Asia. The Soviet military created their maps at many different scales. You can use the map layer control to switch between the maps produced at the various different scales. 

You can view some of the Soviet military maps created for U.S. cities (and the rest of the world) on GeaMap's Soviet Military Mapping of the World.This map can be a little confusing to navigate as map tiles disappear at some zoom levels. Red circles or squares show where there are Soviet military maps to view. You may have to zoom in very closely on a city before the Soviet Military map appears.

John Davies has written an interesting article on the Soviet military maps for the British Library. Soviet Military Mapping of the Cold War Era includes more information about the composition of the Soviet military maps, the cities mapped and some informed speculation on how these maps were made.

You might also be interested in exploring Germany's Secret Invasion Maps of Britain.