Create an AI Poster for Your Location

The Global Culture Map is a fun little tool which uses AI to create a poster for any location chosen on an interactive. Simply click on the Global Culture Map and it will use a generative AI to design a poster based on that location.

Currently I would say that the Global Culture Map is an interesting fun experiment rather than a completed, fully-realized AI poster creation tool. At the moment the map poster creation tool doesn't have an 'about' page so I don't know for sure which AI is being used to create the posters but the text errors in some of the 'Recently Generated Images' suggest that Midjourney is the generative AI creating the completed posters.

The text errors on some of the created posters are one example of why you probably won't want to actually print out a Global Culture Map completed poster and hang it on your wall (I think the text errors could be overcome fairly easily by allowing users to add their own text on top of the AI generated posters). As the Global Culture Map is using an AI to create posters it also makes sense to allow users to choose their own 'style' prompts for the AI generated posters so that users aren't restricted to the generic 'poster' style prompt currently being used by the tool.

Despite these quibbles I think the Global Culture Map has a lot of potential to become an impressive location based poster creation tool. One that could be easily monetized by allowing users to order prints of their poster designs (see Mapiful as an example)

If you want to create an actual map poster (featuring actual maps of your location) then you might also like these other map poster tools:

Prettymapp
Figureground Posters
Street Patterns

The EJAtlas: A Map for Environmental Justice

Around the world the ever demanding quest for economic growth and profit is having an impact on natural environments. The result is that local communities and groups are often forced into fighting governments and multinational companies in order to try to save their local environments from the eternal forces of 'progress'.

The Environmental Justice Atlas has set itself the task of documenting and mapping these social conflicts centered around environmental issues. The EJAtlas interactive map highlights the struggles of different communities around the world for environmental justice. It aims to make these protests more visible and amplify the voices of those affected, ensuring their stories reach a global audience. By doing so, it seeks to foster greater awareness and understanding of the injustices faced by marginalized communities, build solidarity among those fighting for their rights, and promote accountability from corporations and governments responsible for environmental harm.

Environmental conflicts are shown on the map using colored map markers. The colors of the markers reflect  different categories of conflict, including nuclear, water management and mineral extraction. The map also features a number of filters which enable you to adjust the environmental conflicts displayed on the map by category, population, type of project, type of protest and environmental impact.

The Featured Maps section of the EJAtlas showcases a number of interactive maps focused on specific thematic or regional maps concerned with particular environmental justice issues, conflicts, or regions. These maps are curated to showcase selected cases or topics that deserve special attention due to their significance, scale, or urgency.

The Map to the White House

NBC has launched the 2024 edition of its Road to 270 interactive electoral college map. The map visualizes the current likely, possible and fantastical outcomes of the 2024 U.S. Presidential race. Last night Kamala Harris and Donald Trump went head-to-head in their first presidential debate. The Philadelphia debate was a hugely significant opportunity for both Harris and Trump to present their case for the presidency.

Following the debate you can now use ABC's map to predict the result of November's election. You can click on individual states on the map to predict whether you think they will swing for either Harris or Trump. The map will then automatically assign that state's electors to the chosen candidate and tally the total number of votes of each candidate. A candidate needs at least 270 electoral votes to win the 2024 presidential election.

As well as allowing readers to predict their own electoral map NBC has also mapped out a number of possible outcomes. Steve Kornacki's 'electoral tie' map outlines a theoretical drawn outcome where both candidates receive 269 electoral votes (in which case the deadlock would be broken by the House of Representatives). Kornacki has also mapped out Trump and Harris' most likely direct path to the White House, while Kristen Welker has mapped out scenarios for 'Trump's Dream Path' and 'Harris' Dream Path' to the Presidency.

If you want to know how last night's debate has affected the possible results of the election then you can also refer to 538's Who Is Favored To Win The 2024 Presidential Election? (although at the time of writing 538 has yet to update with the results of the post-debate polls - but I am sure it will update soon). 

If you click on a state on the 538 map you can discover how many electoral votes are up for grabs in the state and which candidate is most likely to win those votes based on the polls and 538's election simulations. 538's simulations are based on extensive polling, economic and demographic data, 

Tracking Russia's 'Dark' Shadow Ships

Asya Energy's AIS track places it in the Norwegian Sea, at the same time satellite imagery shows it at the ALNG2 plant

In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine the West has imposed sanctions on the sale of Russian oil. In an attempt to avoid these sanctions Russia has been operating a shadow fleet of covert oil tankers. The West has been working on strengthening international cooperation to try to limit the use of these covert oil tankers.

SynMax claims that Russia is also developing a 'shadow' fleet of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) tankers. In The Inception of Russia’s LNG Ghost Fleet SynMax maps out how a number of LNG tankers have been using AIS spoofing tactics in order to conceal their visits to Russia's Arctic-2 LNG Export Plant. (ALNG2)

At the same time as their spoofed AIS tracks show them supposedly in the Norwegian Sea a number of LNG tankers have been spotted on satellite imagery by SynMax actually at the ALNG2 plant 800 miles away. These ships are part of a dark fleet assembled by Russia’s Novatek to avoid sanctions imposed on transporting cargoes from ALNG2.

Alongside the AIS spoofing activity mapped by SynMax these ships also show a common pattern of frequent changes in ownership, vessel names and country registrations. All common tactics used by tankers trying to avoid sanctions on the sale of Russian oil and LNG. At least one ship has also been tracked taking the perilous sea route south through the Red Sea. SynMax speculates that "Russia may have negotiated a deal with Yemen’s Houthis ... allowing for “safe passage” through the Bab el Mandeb Strait". 

AI Search of San Francisco

AI and machine learning are revolutionizing the field of remote sensing. The ability of machine learning algorithms to automatically detect and identify objects in satellite images has enhanced our abilities to monitor deforestation, identify illegal fishing, track wildlife, and more quickly implement disaster response.

Thanks to AI it is now also possible to see who owns a Tesla car in San Francisco. Bluesight.ai has released a new interactive map to demonstrate how objects can be identified in aerial imagery of San Francisco. Using natural language searches it is possible to explore the Blue Explorer map for things like Tesla cars, dry patches, boats, and tennis courts. Just type your search criteria into the Blue Explorer search box and the AI will automatically search the aerial imagery of San Francisco and show the results highlighted on the interactive map.

Some other recent examples of machine learning being used to search aerial imagery include OneSoil (which uses AI to detect where different the types of crops are being grown), Земляна проказа (identifying illegal amber mines) and Curio Canopy (identifying tree canopy cover in European cities).

Robin Wilson also recently  released an impressive Aerial Image Search Demo which allows you to explore an AI image search of aerial imagery in the UK port town of Southampton. Clay Explore is another impressive interactive AI map demo, allowing you to search aerial imagery of Southern California, Seoul and Puerto Rico using machine learning.

China vs America - World Influence Map

The Global Influence Index (GII) shows the influence of the United States and China on 191 countries around the world based on 28 different economic, security, and political criteria. Using the GII's new 3D globe you can tell at a glance where in the world either the U.S. or China has the greatest influence.

Individual countries on the GII globe are colored to show whether they are aligned more with China or the U.S. (green being U.S. aligned and red being aligned with China). If you select the 'stories' button you can view a number of guided tours of the influence that China and the United States hold in different regions of the world (including Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and the Indo-Pacific).

According to the GII currently the United States holds sway in Europe. This is based partly on the strong historical ties between Europe and the U.S. but also on Europe's growing concerns over the strategic threat posed by China. In many other regions of the world, for example in Africa, the U.S. is losing the influence battle to China. According to the GII China has pursued 'sustained and deliberate engagement with nations throughout Africa', which is reflected in its growing influence in the region.

According to the GII the 'Indo-Pacific is the epicenter of strategic competition between the United States and China'. Australia, India, South Korea and Japan retain very strong economic and strategic ties with the United States. However many other countries in the region are developing very strong ties with China.

A full breakdown of the variables and methodology used to determine the influence scores of each individual county are available on the about section of the GII website.

2024 Fall Foliage Map

Autumn is nearly upon us. Although the Autumn Equinox is not until the 22rd September the 2024 Smoky Mountain Fall Foliage Map shows that the most northern counties of the United States will already have begun to notice the colors of the leaves changing.

Every year Smoky Mountain releases an interactive Fall Foliage Map, which plots the annual progress of when and where leaves change their colors across the United States. According to the map some northern states will already have begun to notice a change in the colors of leaves. 

The Fall Foliage Map uses historical weather records from all 48 continental states to predict the arrival of Fall at the county level across the contiguous United States. The map includes a date control which allows you to view the leaf color you can expect for any date from the beginning of September through to the end of November.

The Book Banning Map of America

The American Library Association (ALA) reports that attempts to ban books "surged 65% in 2023 compared to 2022 numbers, reaching the highest level ever documented by ALA." Nearly half of the books targeted for banning were related to issues of LGBTQ+ communities or race.

Now the ALA has partnered with Little Free Library and PEN America to release an interactive map which shows the number of books which have been targeted for bans in every US state and county. The map also shows the locations of Little Free Library’s book-sharing boxes.

The Little Free Library is a nonprofit dedicated to encouraging the free exchange of books through small, community-run book-sharing boxes. These book-sharing boxes can be placed by anybody in any accessible location, like a neighborhood park or outside a local store. Using the boxes people can take and leave books, encouraging reading, and making books freely available to everyone.

The Book Ban Map has now been released to show "the areas hit hardest by book bans and the nearest Little Free Library book-sharing box locations". The burger menu on the map allows you to switch between viewing the number of books which were attempted to be banned at either the state or county level. The county data is from PEN America’s 2022- 2023 Index of Book Bans (which is a compilation of attempted book bans reported in schools). The state data is from ALA’s Book Ban Data (which lists attempted book bans in public schools and libraries across the United States.

The blue markers on the map show the locations of Little Free Library boxes across America. Click on these markers and you can view the library's charter number, which can also be used with the Little Free Library World Map.

Write Your Name in Landsat

the word 'love' in Landsat images

Soon after the emergence of Google Maps, a short while after getting bored zooming in on their house in satellite view, some people began searching for satellite images of Earth forms and patterns which resembled letters of the alphabet - when viewed from above.

The first pareidolia sufferer that I can remember becoming hooked on discovering typefaces in nature is Rhett Dashwood. In 2009 Rhett published his Google Maps Typography, a collection of 'land formations or buildings resembling letter forms' all found on Google Maps from the satellite images of Victoria, Australia.

A couple of years later Che-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy, by now bored of looking for letters, began searching for numbers in satellite imagery. Having found the 10 decimal digits (0-9) they took the next logical step and created the Earth Clock. The Earth Clock (previously the Google Earth Clock) is an online digital clock which uses satellite imagery resembling numbers to display the current time where you live.

Now NASA, having become bored staring into the vast void of space, has also turned its attention towards searching for satellite views of Earth which resemble letters. Landsat satellites have been observing Earth from space for over 50 years. During that time NASA has found a number of locations around the world which, when viewed from space, resemble letters.

Using these locations NASA has created Your Name in Landsat. Type a name into Your Name in Landsat and you can observe your name spelled out in Earth features found in Landsat images.  You can even download an image of your name spelled out in massive Earth letters by simply pressing the download button. Hover over the individual satellite images spelling your name and you can discover where in the world each giant letter can be found.

Mapping Moving Borders in Real-Time

The international border between Italy and Switzerland & Austria in the Alps largely follows the path of the watershed line. Unfortunately due to global heating and shrinking glaciers the Alpine watershed line keeps on moving. The result is that the border between Italy and its Alpine neighbors is also constantly moving.

In 2016 the Italian Limes project attempted to track the movement of the Italy-Austrian border in real-time. In order to do this it installed 25 sensors on top of a glacier at Mt. Similaun. Every two hours these sensors recorded and transmitted their positions. This allowed the moving border between Italy and Austria to be updated and mapped in near real-time.

3D map showing the position of the Italy-Austria border in 1920 and 2016 and the position of 25 border sensors

The Italian Limes project is beautifully illustrated using a 3D map of Mt. Similaun. On top of this map you can view the Italy-Austrian border in 1920 and the border's position in 2016. The map also shows the location of the 5x5 grid of GPS units which were used to track the glacier's movements in three dimensions in near real-time.

Via: The Visualising Data Newsletter

Land doesn't vote, people do!

Engaging Data has updated its US County Electoral Map – Land Area vs Population map so that you can now zoom in and explore the election results in each state. The map allows you to see the 2020 Presidential Election election results at the county level based on land area or population size.

If you select the 'Population' button on the map then the colored proportional circles change size to represent the county population size. Switching between the Land and Population buttons provides a dramatic illustration of how the same data can be visualized in radically different ways.

As Kenneth Field recently explained to Wired "People see maps of any type, and particularly election maps, as the result, the outcome, but there are so many different types of maps available that can portray results in shades of the truth." The Wired article Is the US Leaning Red or Blue? It All Depends on Your Map explores a number of different mapped visualizations of the 2016 Presidential Election to help illustrate how different map methodologies can tell very different stories. You can explore most of these maps in closer detail at Thematic maps of the 2016 Presidential election.

After the recent UK election nearly every election map I saw in the media included a cartogram view of the results. Similar to the US (and many, many other countries) in the UK sparsely populated rural areas tend to vote more right-wing, while more densely populated urban areas vote in greater numbers for parties of the left. 

To overcome the problem of showing most of the country dominated by the blue of the losing right-wing Conservative Party most maps of the 2024 UK General Election included a cartogram view which represented each electoral area as an equal-sized hexagon. As you can see in the example above an equal sized hexagon map does a very good job in reflecting the actual number of winning candidates for each of the UK's political parties. The compromise of course is that a cartogram is not as geographically accurate as many other methods of mapping election results.

Anime Pilgrimage Maps

Apparently many enthusiastic fans of anime like to go on anime pilgrimages, in order to visit the real-world locations that have featured in their favorite shows. Fans of anime, manga, or other animated media often embark on these pilgrimages to connect with the stories they love and to experience the places that inspired their favorite characters and scenes.

A number of interactive mapping websites cater to anime fans who like to explore the real-world locations which feature in animated shows. Even if you can't visit these locations in person these animation pilgrimage maps are a fantastic resource for discovering the locations used in your favorite shows and also allow you to explore these locations virtually.

Animation Pilgrimage (anitabi)

The Animation Pilgrimage interactive map features thousands of locations which have been used in an ever growing number of animes. If you click on one of the larger 'character' markers on the map then this opens a map sidebar displaying screenshots of locations used in the selected show (shown in chronological order of when the location was featured in the series). You can click on these screenshots from the show to view their real-world locations on the map. Each screenshot marker on the map when clicked reveals a link to view the real-world location on Google Maps.

AnimeNavi

Another popular anime interactive map has been created by AnimeNavi. Currently the map features the locations featured in three anime series, Heya Camp, Kimi no Na wa and Yuru Camp.

If you ignore the map and navigate to the dedicated page for each anime you can view individual episode breakdowns for each series of a show. On these episode pages individual locations featured in each episode are listed with links to OpenStreetMap and Google Maps. Follow the Google Maps link and you can then compare the actual anime depiction of the location with the real location on Google Maps Street View.

Anime Pilgrimage

Anime Pilgrimage (the only one of the three sites which is in English) features individual location maps for lots of different anime series. If you search for your favorite anime you can view a dedicated interactive map featuring the real-world locations used as settings for the animation. 

Under each anime map you can view a number of stills from the anime shown side-by-side with the same location as seen on Google Maps Street View. Click on the 'View Map' link and you can explore the location (virtually) for yourself using the interactive Street View imagery on Google Maps.

245 Russian Military Targets at Risk

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and Critical Threats have identified hundreds of Russian military sites that are in range of Ukrainian ATACMS. Currently the United States will not allow Ukraine to use US supplied tactical ballistic missiles for long-range deep strikes into Russia. According to the ISW its new map shows "the extent to which US restrictions on Ukraine's use of ATACMS constrain Ukraine's ability to strike important military infrastructure."

The map Known Russian Military and Paramilitary Objects in Range of Ukrainian ATACMS plots the locations of 245 different military sites, including Russian military installations, and regimental, brigade & division headquarters. The map also visualizes the ranges of Ukraine's ATACMS and HIMARS missiles inside Russian territory.

According to CNN this week Ukraine will present the US government with a list of Russian military targets which they believe are important in trying to stop Russia's continuing invasion of Ukraine. They hope that this list of targets will help to persuade the US to lift its current restrictions on Ukraine using American supplied missiles for long-range attacks on Russia.

The ISW also provides daily campaign assessments of the ongoing war in Ukraine. The Ukraine Conflict Updates includes daily static control-of-terrain maps and a regularly updated interactive map, Russia's Invasion of Ukraine, showing the extent of territory currently controlled by Ukraine and Russia. 

The Money Mountains of Los Angeles

Nick Underwood has visualized the average median household income in each Los Angeles neighborhood using the analogy of elevation. On his The Topography of Wealth in L.A. map city each neighborhood is displaced 'vertically based on median annual household income'. 

The map uses census data to show the average household income in each Los Angeles neighborhood as a 3D tower. Sea level on the map is set at the median US income of $59,000 per year. The map reveals that a number of L.A. neighborhoods, particularly in Beverley Hills and East Pasadena, soar above the median US income. However many of these wealthy neighborhoods ' lie immediately adjacent to others with income well below the poverty line.'

According to Nick the map actually underestimates the huge disparities in income between many neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The U.S. census caps household income at $250,000+ so it is probable that some L.A. neighborhood towers should actually be a lot taller.

Using the analogy of elevation to visualize economic and demographic data can be an effective way to present a dataset geographically. For example The Pudding's Human Terrain interactive map shows the world's population density using 3D population towers. On this map the taller a block then the larger the population. 

As you might expect the Human Terrain map shows that some of the most densely populated neighborhoods in LA are in Central Los Angeles, such as Pico-Union and Angeling Heights. These areas seem to be among the 'valleys' of the Topography of Wealth map, suggesting that the most densely populated areas of Los Angeles are also among some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city.

Text Search for Street View

all text for nyc (brooklyn) is a very impressive search engine which allows you to search Google Maps Street View imagery for any word. In the words of its developer it is "a unique digital archive of Brooklyn's typography. Users can search and visualize every sign, notice, and street art captured in street images".

Enter any word (or combination of words) into 'all text for nyc' and it will return interactive Google Maps Street View images from Brooklyn which contain your entered text. The 'about' section of 'all text for nyc' does not go into any detail about how the search engine was built, beyond stating it was made 'Using optical character recognition on street level imagery'. I'm guessing a pipeline was established using the Street View Static API to download all of Brooklyn's Street View imagery and then use machine learning to scan and extract all instances of words in those images.

all text for nyc is such an innovative idea that all its possible uses have not been fully explored or realized yet. I am sure that its ability to read street signs and also store names would be a fantastic resource for human-centric landmark-oriented directions (eg turn right at 'Jerk Chicken', go past the 'liquor store' and turn left at 'Danny's Donuts'. I am sure that 'all text for nyc' also has lots of possible uses which I wouldn't even come close to thinking of.

Also See - Text on Maps

Last year the David Rumsey Map Collection unveiled its Text on Maps feature which allows users to search one of the world's largest collections of digitized maps by text. The David Rumsey Map Collection contains over 57,000 geo-referenced vintage maps. Using the Text on Maps feature you can search these 57,000 historic maps for any word or combination of words (eg gold mine).

WorldGuessr on Street View

My seemingly endless quest to find an alternative to GeoGuessr may be finally over. GeoGuessr is (rightly) by far the most popular Google Maps game on the internet. Unfortunately GeoGuessr's subscription charges mean I can't afford to play it very often. Which means I'm always on the look-out for free alternatives.

GeoGuessr is an online geography game that challenges players to identify locations around the world based on their Google Street View images. Using the visual clues (such as the language used on road signs or the architectural styles of buildings) players have to identify the location where they have been dropped in Google's panoramic Street View imagery.

This is also exactly the same game play used in WorldGuessr. I have played a lot of GeuGuessr type games and I think WorldGuessr comes closest to the purest form of the original GeoGuessr game. I am a little worried however that WorldGuessr might not remain free for long. The Google Maps API charges are not cheap - which is why GeoGuessr now requires paid membership. 

At the moment if you identify a Street View within a correct country on WorldGuessr then you extend your 'country streak'. Get a country wrong and WorldGuessr asks if you want to watch an advert to keep your 'country streak' going. Currently you don't have to watch the adverts if you don't want to extend your country streak. This makes me think that WorldGuessr might struggle to keep the game free based on this model.

Just in case WorldGuessr is also forced to introduce a subscription only model you might also want to check out the games in this Six Free Alternatives to Geoguessr post.

How Smooth is the Earth?

One of the most interesting facts that I learned from the BBC TV series QI was that the Earth is smoother than a billiard ball. Unfortunately, like nearly every other fact I've remembered from that show, it is a load of bull (or should that be balls).

Shri Khalpada has created a three.js powered 3D globe of the Earth which allows you to view the Earth's elevation profile to scale (and when exaggerated). If you compare the 'to scale' globe in How Smooth is the Earth? to the exaggerated profile you immediately get a sense of how smooth the world actually is.

However, despite its relative smoothness, the Earth is not a smooth as a billiard ball. Alongside his visualization of the Earth's elevation profile Shri Khalpada links to Dr David Alcitore's paper Is a Pool Ball Smoother Than the Earth? (PDF) which concludes that "the Earth would make a terrible pool ball ... (the) Earth ball would ... be terribly non round compared to high-quality pool balls."

If you don't want to read a scientific paper comparing the Earth's smoothness to a billiard ball then XKCD's Bowling Ball does a very good job at explaining why the Earth is also not as smooth as a bowling ball. 

Have You Earned Your Air Pollution Stripes?

Ed Hawkins' Climate Stripes visualization of global heating has quickly become a data visualization classic. Climate Stripes (sometimes known as Warming Stripes) are a visual representation of the long-term increase in global temperatures due to climate change. Ed's striking Climate Stripes visualizations consist of colored vertical stripes, with each stripe representing a single year and the colors indicating the temperature anomaly for each year relative to a baseline period.

Inspired by Climate Stripes Edinburgh University has created Air Quality Stripes visualizations for a number of global cities. Air Quality Stripes use colored stripes to indicate average yearly air pollution levels in cities since 1850. Like Ed Hawkins' Climate Stripes these Air Quality Stripes are effective in providing a simple and easily comprehensible visualization of historical trends in a given dataset.

Each city's Air Quality Stripes can instantly convey the history of air quality in a city. For example, as Edinburgh University notes, the stripes demonstrate "the air in many cities in Europe is much cleaner now than it was 100 years ago." In contrast (as you can see in the screenshots above) the air quality in many Indian cities has become dangerously worse in the 21st Century.

Edinburgh University actually provides four different types of yearly air pollution levels for each city. Despite the effectiveness of the air pollution stripes visualization of the data I actually prefer the more traditional bar graph visualizations of the same data. These bar chart visualizations of yearly PM2.5  concentrations include reference lines to show the WHO Guideline (a target of a concentration of 5 micrograms om PM2.5 per cubic meter) and Edinburgh University's own 'Very Poor Air Quality' level. Alongside the use of color the height of each year's bar provides an additional guide to the average levels of air pollution.

200 Years of Irish Maps

The first ever large-scale survey of an entire country was started nearly 200 years ago. From 1825 to 1846 the Irish Ordnance Survey undertook a highly detailed survey of the whole of Ireland in order to create maps primarily at the 6 inch scale.

To celebrate 200 years of Irish mapping the University of Limerick and Queen’s University Belfast has created OS200. The OS200 website is a digital archive of Ireland's Ordnance Survey which allows anyone to browse and explore the Ordnance Survey's First Edition Six-Inch Maps, the OS Memoirs, Letters and Name Books.

The maps themselves are exquisitely detailed and beautifully drawn. Thanks to the digitization work by the OS200 project you can now explore these original Ordnance Survey maps of Ireland in the closest detail as interactive maps. If you are Irish, or have ever visited Ireland, you can have hours of fun exploring places you know on the OS maps, as they looked 200 years ago. You can have just as much fun browsing the Ordnance survey Name Books.

As well as spending years scientifically surveying Ireland the Ordnance Survey sent out agents of the Topographical Department to collect and compile lists of the historical forms of place-names to determine the correct place-name labels to be used on the maps. These Name Books list place-names (with English translations and alternate spellings) but also provide details on the people who live at each place, the people's religions, who owns the land, and who leases the land. It also lists information on the types of crops grown and the condition of the soil. These non-etymological details hint at one of the original purposes of the map -to help the British government levy local taxes.

The broader governmental aims for creating a national map of Ireland are also apparent in the Memoirs. As well as the geographical surveys and place-name collections the Ordnance Survey staff were required to gather additional information "on social and economic conditions, ... the landscape, topography, nature, geology, historical monuments and antiquities, estates, mills, infrastructure, people and culture ..., communications and (provide) 'suggestions for improvement'". These memoirs provide a fascinating glimpse into local life in Ireland in the early 19th Century.

Population Flags

World Population Flags is a Dorling cartogram in which country flags are sized by population. The cartogram is used to visualize where people live around the world and the relative size of each country's population.

A Dorling cartogram is a thematic map that is used to visualize quantitative data. On a Dorling cartogram areas are represented by circles rather than their actual geographic boundaries. The size of each circle is proportional to the variable being represented. In the case of World Population Flags the variable being represented by the circles is country populations.

Dorling cartograms are particularly useful for making it easy to compare values across regions, especially when the actual geographic area sizes are misleading or irrelevant to the data being displayed. For example in World Population Flags the world's biggest country in land area, Russia, appears to be roughly the same size as Bangladesh (which is much smaller in terms of geographic area) because both countries share a similar population size.

The Dorling cartogram in Word Population Flags is used in a scrollytelling presentation to take a closer look at population trends in the world's populated continents. As you scroll through World Population Flags the map zooms and pans automatically to illustrate the relative size of each continent's population. At the end of the presentation you can explore the cartogram for yourself, and hover over individual circles to view each country's population.

You can explore two other methods of visualizing population data on maps in the Maps Mania post If the Romans did Data Visualization.

One Million Screenshots. One Map!

Over the years a number of people have used the popular Leaflet.js mapping library to map image datasets. For example Nathan Rooy's Visual Book Recommender uses Leaflet to map the images of 51,847 book covers. The Pudding has also mapped images of 5,000 book covers on its 11 Years of Top-Selling Book Covers, Arranged by Visual Similarity. 

Mapping libraries have also been used in the past to visually map the internet. For example the Internet Map (which appears to be now dead) used the Google Maps API to visualize the 350,000 largest websites in the world. On this map different sized circles were used to represent individual websites on the Internet. The sizes of the circles were determined by the amount of traffic to each website - the larger the amount of traffic, the bigger the circle. The location of websites on the map was determined by the active hyperlinks between the sites.

Now One Million Websites has created a map which visualizes screenshots of the top one million websites in the world. One Million Screenshots is an interactive Leaflet map which allows you to pan and zoom around the screenshots of the top 1 million websites. To make the map Urlbox took screenshots of the top 1,048,576 ranked websites by Common Crawl Web Graph. 

Usually on maps of large image datasets some attempt is made to map the images so that related images appear near to each other. Whatever category One Million Screenshots has used to map their images doesn't appear to have worked very well. For example the screenshot of the New York Times on the map is flanked on one side by the website of the Municipality of Pictou County and on the other by Websunday (a Japanese manga magazine). I struggle to understand how these three website screenshots come to be mapped so closely together.

It isn't even as if Urlbox hasn't spent time trying to categorize similar sites. If you click on a screenshot on the map and go to a website's dedicated page you can view a number of different categories of 'similar sites'. If you select the 'similar description' option here you can find a lot of websites which do appear to be closely related. The 'similar description' metric looks to me to be the one that Urlbox should have used to determine the position of each website screenshot on the One Million Screenshots map.

Via: Data Vis Dispatch

How to Make Your Own Map Jigsaw Puzzle

I've been having a lot of fun over the last few days playing the map puzzles created by the Map Puzzle Factory. However I have been a little frustrated by the Japanese place-names used in the puzzles. I therefore decided to try to create my own map jigsaw puzzle using a map in which the place-names are displayed in English.

My Scrambled City game is a simple map of the City of London. Press the 'Scramble' button and all the map-tiles will be scrambled. All you have to do then is re-arrange the map-tiles and put them back in their correct positions.

If you want to create your own version of the map you just need to remix the Glitch page of my Scrambled City game and change the 25 map-tile URLs to the OSM map-tiles for the part of the world which you wish to map.

My map consists of 25 scrambled OpenStreetMap map-tiles. To download the URLs automatically for an area I wrote a little Python script to grab the map-tile image addresses from OpenStreetMap:

def generate_tile_urls(x_start, y_start, z, num_tiles=5):
    base_url = "https://tile.openstreetmap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png"
    urls = []

    for x in range(x_start, x_start + num_tiles):
        for y in range(y_start, y_start + num_tiles):
            url = base_url.format(z=z, x=x, y=y)
            urls.append(url)

    return urls

x_start = 32748 # starting x-coordinate
y_start = 21787 # starting y-coordinate
z = 16 # zoom level

tile_urls = generate_tile_urls(x_start, y_start, z)
for url in tile_urls:
    print(url)

If you want to create your own map you can adjust the x_start and y-start coordinates in this Python script. This will allow you to download the map-tile URLs for a 5x5 grid starting at your preferred position.

The image URL of an OpenStreetMap map-tile is in the format of:

https://tile.openstreetmap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png

You can get the OpenStreetMap x,y coordinates for a location using Geofabrik's Tile Calculator. The map menu of the Tile Calculator has a 'Tile coordinates' option. You need to select this option to view the tile coordinates for each map-tile image overlain on the map. You can then simply select the map-tile where you wish to start your 5x5 map grid (the top-left corner of your map) and change the x,y coordinates in the Python script to the x.y coordinates displayed on Geofabrik's Tile Calculator (you can also adjust the zoom level).

Piecing the World Back Together

The world is fractured and divided like never before. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to put the Earth back together.

The Map Puzzle Factory is a huge collection of map puzzles. Each puzzle is a map of a part of the world which has been divided into a collection of small squares. You simply have to drag the squares into their correct position on the map. In other words - each game is a map jigsaw which you have to piece together to make the completed map.

The puzzles are really fun to play - and a lot more challenging than they appear at first. So far I have only managed to complete the map of France (although I am on the verge of completing the world map). There are lots of puzzles listed on the Map Puzzle Factory home page, categorized by difficulty (level) and type (world, country or city map). Here are a few direct links to a few of the puzzles:

• World Map
• USA
• Central New York
• Europe

Note:

The Map Puzzle Factory is in Japanese but using Chrome's automatic translations I was able to easily navigate the site and play the individual puzzles. Each game however does seem to have a weird bug. The first time I press the 'start' or 'continue reading' button on a puzzle the game redirects to an error page. However I have found that refreshing the page and pressing 'continue reading' seems to let you play the game.

Via: WeeklyOSM

Turning Gaza to Rubble

This week the Gaza health ministry reported that 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel started attacking the territory in October. Over a third of those killed have been children. Much of Gaza itself has also been turned to rubble.

According to Bloomberg Israeli air strikes on Gaza have created 42 million tonnes of debris in the Strip. That is "enough rubble to fill a line of dump trucks stretching from New York to Singapore." The extent and the massive scale of the damage caused to Gaza is superbly illustrated in How Will Gaza be Rebuilt using a prism map, in which 3D towers are used to visualize the level of debris across the Strip.

One disadvantage of using prism maps is that taller prisms can obscure smaller ones, making it challenging to compare values in certain areas. This is mostly overcome in the Bloomberg article by rotating and tilting the map as different areas are covered in the article. The map also uses callout lines (to provide guidance as to the number of tonnes of debris represented by a prism's height) and place-name labels (for geographical accuracy).

The depiction of Gaza's debris using a prism map is a highly effective way to convey the devastation inflicted on the strip by Israel and to illustrate the immense effort that will be required to clear the debris before the territory can be made habitable again.

How the World Powers Itself

You can learn a lot about how the world powers itself from the Global Energy Monitor's Power Tracker. This interactive map shows the locations of nearly 18,000 power stations in 200 countries around the world, categorized by power sector.

Using the map's filter controls it is possible to explore where different types of power stations are distributed around the world. This allows you, for example, to investigate which countries are still most reliant on thermal power (coal, oil, gas, nuclear, geothermal, bioenergy) and which have shifted most successfully to renewables (solar, wind, hydro).

If you use the filter controls to view the locations of operational and planned coal power stations, you can see how western Europe has almost completely moved away from dirty coal power - except for Germany which is still hugely reliant on its coal fired power stations. Change the filters to view nuclear power stations and you can see one of the reasons why Germany is still so reliant on coal (the last three nuclear power plants in Germany were shut down last year).

Wind power stations in Europe

The distribution of wind power stations in Europe also reveals an interesting picture. For some reason the Alps and the Pyrenees are almost completely empty of wind power. My guess is that valley locations are not great for wind power stations because wind conditions are too variable and that placing wind power stations at the highest altitudes is too costly (in terms of construction and connecting to power grids). 

There may also be some aesthetic considerations why wind turbines are not stuck on the top of mountains. Wind turbines may be seen as anathema to the natural beauty of mountain regions. There may also be some zoning difficulties in that the Alps and Pyrenees have a lot of environmentally protected areas and national parks. Although these considerations don't seem to affect the construction of hydro-power stations. Check out the location of hydro-power on the Power Tracker map and you can see that a number of hydro-power stations have been built in both the Alps and the Pyrenees.

I am also intrigued by the locations of nuclear power stations around the world. Despite having large coastlines France and the United States place a lot of their nuclear power stations inland. In much of the rest of the world, where countries have large coastlines (for example China and Japan) nuclear power stations tend to be sited almost exclusively next to the sea (oceans offer a reliable and abundant source of cooling water to dissipate the heat generated during the nuclear fission process).

Virtual Indian Independence Day

Today is Indian Independence Day. On this day India celebrates its independence from the United Kingdom. On 15 August 1947 Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, raised the Indian flag above the Lahori Gate of the Red Fort in Delhi. Since then every year on Independence Day the incumbent Prime Minister repeats the ceremony by raising the flag over the Red Fort and by addressing the nation. Earlier today Prime Minister Narendra Modi hoisted the Indian flag for the 11th time and delivered a speech to the nation from the Red Fort. 

Don't worry if you missed today's unfurling of the Indian national flag over the Red Fort in Delhi because you can now view the scene virtually on Mappls' Celebrate Independence Day in 3D. On this interactive map you can view the Indian flag proudly flying in 3D over a 3D model of the Red Fort. Of course on Independence Day the national flag is raised over many, many buildings in India. The Celebrate Independence Day in 3D map also includes virtual scenes visualizing the Indian flag unfurled above buildings in Mumbai, Chennai, Lucknow, Hyderabad and many other Indian cities.

Mapping Train Connections

For ecological reasons I haven't taken a flight in over 30 years. Consequently I have probably spent many, many hours traveling across Europe by train. One of my retirement plans is to spend winters in Southern Italy. I have begun therefore to research how best to travel by train to southern Italy.

According to TrainConnections the best plan is probably to break the journey into two - to take one day to travel from London to Milan, spend the night in Milan, and then spend a second day traveling down to southern Italy. In total the journey takes nearly 25 hours on four different trains, so it makes sense to split the journey up into at least two different days.

TrainConnections is an interactive map which searches thousands of train routes to help you find and plan a European train journey. Enter your starting point and your desired destination and the map will calculate and visualize the best train route for your journey. It also provides a detailed itinerary for the journey outlining the length of each train, required station transfers, and the total journey time.

Direct Train Connections is another very useful map if you are planning a train journey in Europe. This interactive map can show you all the locations you can reach by direct train from any station in Europe, which is fantastic if you want to plan a journey which only involves one train. Select a train station on the Direct Train Connections map and you can instantly view all the other stations in Europe which you can reach without having to change trains.

This week I fancy getting out of London to escape the city heat. By selecting Stratford Station on Direct Train Connections I can see all the stations that I can reach by direct train from East London. These include a number of possible seaside destinations on the Kent and Essex coast. There is also a direct train to the Norfolk city of Norwich, which appears to be the longest journey I can take from Stratford without having to change trains. 

When taking very long train journeys across Europe I often prefer to take a night-train. When planning a romantic sleeper train you can refer to the Good Morning Europe, Night Train Map to discover which night-train routes are currently in operation across Europe. 

Büro des Präsidenten's interactive map is based on their own renowned night-train poster of Europe. Major cities on this map are marked with numbered night-train routes. If you hover over these numbers on the interactive map then the selected route is highlighted on the map, allowing you to quickly see where you can travel to in Europe by sleeper train from that city

Russia's Secret Nuclear Targets in China

The Financial Times has obtained secret Russian military files which detail how Russian forces train to use tactical nuclear weapons against both NATO and China.

A story-map in the article Russian navy trained to target sites inside Europe with nuclear-capable missiles (paywalled) shows a number of target locations in Europe and the Pacific for Russian conventional and nuclear missiles. In the Pacific these targets include cities in both China and North Korea, who are normally seen as allies of Russia.

Targets in Europe include cities in France, Germany, Norway and the UK. The FT claims that the Russian military files "describe a threshold for using tactical nuclear weapons that is lower than Russia has ever publicly admitted".

According to Sweden's SVT Russia currently has 5,580 nuclear warheads. SVT's recent investigation into World Nuclear Forces includes a quote from the Swedish government that the "Russian population is being primed for a scenario in which it will be considered legitimate for Russia to use nuclear weapons".

The World Nuclear Forces article includes an interactive nuclear warhead simulator which allows you to explore the likely impact of different types of nuclear warhead on different locations around the world. For example in the screenshot above I have used the simulator to explore the effect of a 100 kiloton Russian warhead dropped on Shenyang (one of the Russian targets in China identified by the Russian military files).

Real-Time Radiation Maps

Yesterday a fire broke out at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Russian occupied southern Ukraine. On hearing the news of the fire I almost immediately rushed to the Real-Time Radiation World Map in search of any detected spikes in radiation in the area.

The Real-Time Radiation World Map visualizes radioactivity levels from Geiger counters around the world. Luckily, as you can see from the screenshot above, there don't seem to be any high levels of radioactivity showing up on the map anywhere in this region of eastern Europe. Unfortunately the map does not currently have many Geiger counters in Russia or any that are particularly near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant does feature on the European Commission's Radioactivity Environmental Monitoring map. The map shows the current gamma radiation readings from automatic surveillance systems in 39 countries. Thankfully the graph of the gamma dose rate at the Zaporizhzhia plant currently shows a very low level of gamma radiation, a level well within the range of natural background radiation.

Russia is reporting today that the fire at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been completely extinguished.

While on the subject of nuclear power plants I also recently stumbled upon the Nuclear Stations Map, which is a new interactive map of all the nuclear plants in the world, both decommissioned, in operation or in construction.

On the map the power plant markers are scaled by their capacity and the colors indicate their status (green = in operation, black = decommissioned and orange = in construction. On viewing the Nuclear Stations Map I was struck by two things. One (as you can see in the screenshot of the map) is the clear abandonment of nuclear power in Germany (the last three nuclear power plants in Germany were shut down last year). The other is that a little over a decade after the disaster of Fukishima, Japan appears to be building at least three new nuclear power plants on its coastline.

Memorial Day Weekend Helicopter Flights

The Gothamist has mapped out helicopter flights over New York City during the Memorial Day Weekend. The map accompanies a story on the rise in residents' complaints about helicopter noise in the city and the news that the City Council is introducing two bills aimed at reducing helicopter traffic.

The interactive map in NYC Council bills aim to soar above helicopter noise complaints uses data from flightradar24 to visualize the flight paths of helicopters over the city and their destination airports. The map is a very effective visualization of the huge number of helicopters flying over NYC, "nearly 2,000 helicopter flights recorded from the Thursday-through-Tuesday holiday weekend."

The map also illustrates the most common flight paths taken by helicopters in the city. In the screenshot of the map above you can see that helicopters in NYC tend to follow the Hudson, the East River and both the north & south shorelines of Long Island. This is a pattern which can also be observed using the ADS-B Massive Visualizer.

The ADS-B Massive Visualizer allows you to query and visualize the world's air traffic data. Using the visualizer you can query 50 billion flight data records. This allows you to map the flight paths of different types of aircraft anywhere in the world - for example the routes taken by helicopters in New York. 

On this map you can again see how helicopters in New York avoid the city's massive skyscrapers by following the Hudson and East River. These routes may also be popular as the rivers and shorelines can be used to help pilots navigate the city.

A similar pattern can be seen in the flight paths taken by helicopters in London. This query of helicopter flights over London shows that many helicopter pilots like to follow the river Thames, as far as the Isle of Dogs in the East End where they turn northwards and then follow the River Lea up through the Olympic Park (or vice versa if traveling in the opposite direction). Again these routes may be popular with pilots as they avoid tall buildings and are easy to navigate.

Helicopter flights over central Paris are heavily regulated. Because of this there is no flight traffic along the Seine in central Paris. Instead helicopters appear to follow the Peripherique in south and east Paris, the path of the Seine in the west and the Autoroute du Nord in the north of the city.

Tripgeo Cities

A few months ago Map Channels kindly offered to create a json feed for my Guess This City game. I had been complaining about having to add a new city to the game every day. Map Channels then volunteered to create a feed for the game which gives the name, coordinates, population and a description of a different city each and every day. The result is that Guess This City now updates daily without needing any input from me.

Map Channels created the json feed by building a large database of major global cities. This database was created using a combination of GeoNames, Open AI / ChatGPT and Wikipedia. This cities database includes a lot of information which actually isn't needed or included in the daily Guess This City feed. Some of this additional information is however now used by the Tripgeo Trivia game.

TripGeo Trivia is a daily geography quiz which requires you to identify ten cities based on a number of clues. Every day ten new random cities from around the world need to be identified. To help you in this task you can view three clues as to the identity of each city. The data behind the game all comes from the same Map Channels city database which powers Guess This City.

The Map Channels city database is now also used by Tripgeo Cities. Tripgeo Cities is a new interactive map containing information about 10,000 cities and towns around the world. Click on any of these cities on the map and 20 markers are added to the map to highlight some of the most important landmarks in the selected city. A significant description of the city is also provided beneath the map, alongside information on each of the mapped landmarks.

Some of the information about each city is generated by AI. This means that the information may not be 100% accurate and the project is definitely a work in progress. However in general the data is pretty good and, with further development, will improve over time. Tripgeo aims to expand and improve the TripGeo Cities resource in the future and to incorporate the data into more mapping projects. 

For now Tripgeo Cities is a great way to discover some of the most significant places to visit in cities around the world. It is also a fantastic tool for a little virtual tourism. For example, if you use the eye and arrow buttons under each city map you can take a fascinating virtual tour around the selected city's most interesting and significant landmarks on Google Maps Street View.

The Presidential Medal of Cartography

Kamala Harris' Vice-Presidential pick Tim Walz loves maps. As a former high school geography teacher it should come as no surprise that Walz has an interest in cartography, but it appears that he is in act a full blown GIS nerd who only last year called for November 15th to be 'GIS Day'. According to Politico Tim Walz has also "addressed the geographic information systems software company Esri’s annual conference for the past three years."

With such a self-declared interest in all things cartographical I would like to propose that the next administration should establish a new Presidential Medal of Cartography - an award to be presented to the creators of outstanding maps. If you watch Tim Walz's 2024 address to the Esri conference you can get an insight into the kinds of maps which might win my proposed Presidential Medal of Cartography.

In his address Walz talks about how it is possible to increase our understanding of "an interconnected world through graphic representation of data". He says that maps are a means to an end and that 'the end product of these maps is a more sustainable economy, a more sustainable environment, and lifting up of people's lives in a way that they can thrive". Later in his Esri speech Walz also explains how "conveying data to people (using GIS)  helps to build trust." It is clear that Walz believes that maps can both increase our understanding of the world and can help drive positive social outcomes.

The new Presidential Medal of Cartography could therefore be awarded to maps which make a significant contribution to our understanding of the world and promote sustainable economies, environments and improve people's lives.

During Walz's Esri presentation it is clear which maps he thinks meet these criteria. As Governor of Minnesota Tim Walz was able to use "what I knew about mapping and the visual display of data to convey complex issues." He says that the reason that the John Hopkins's Covid-19 Map is the most viewed interactive map in history is because people wanted to know "where we were having (the) highest level of transmission".

The Minnesota Executive Map Portfolio has numerous examples of the kinds of maps which Walz believes convey complex data, enhance understanding and improve lives. In his speech he highlights the Universal School Meals Map (showing the increase in the number of students who can get free school meals under the Minnesota Free School Meals Program), the Potentially Restorable Peatlands Map (showing where peatlands can be protected) and the Broadband Speed Map (showing where broadband infrastructure need more development in Minnesota).

Watching Tim Walz's Esri speech you can begin to understand why Kamala Harris chose this former geography teacher as her running mate. You can also begin to understand the likely criteria that the possible next Vice-President might introduce for a future Presidential Medal of Cartography.

Before I get accused of being completely partisan in proposing a Presidential Medal of Cartography I would like to remind you that Donald Trump also likes to use maps to help convey complex information. For example in September 2019 the then President used a NOAA hurricane map to explain how he hadn't made a mistake when he warned that Alabama was in danger from the approach of Hurricane Dorian. On this map Donald Trump used a sharpie pen to extend the cone of uncertainty into Alabama to prove that he knew more about the hurricane's forecast path than the experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.