A Tour of the Irish Border

We need to talk about the border is an interactive story map which takes you on a multi-media tour of the Irish border. Since the Good Friday Agreement in 1988 there has been only a soft border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. 

The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is the only land border between the UK and the EU. Now that the United Kingdom has left the European Union the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland has by default become an external EU border. In theory it could once more become a hard border to support the infrastructure necessary to maintain custom checks for goods and people entering and leaving the EU. 

Elisabeth Blanchet & Laurent Gontier have traveled around the Irish border taking photographs and interviewing the people they met on the journey. 'We need to talk about the border' is an interactive story map which takes you on a photo-tour of the border. Overall the interviews with local people living along the border leaves you with a sense that there is an overwhelming sense of anger with the UK government for endangering the peace stemming from the Good Friday Agreement. 

 

In 2019 The Guardian created an animated map to show how much traffic passes across the Irish border every day. The Guardian's animated map visualizes the traffic crossing the border at 10 different locations during one hour on Monday 2nd, September 2019. A Typical Hour in the Life of the Irish Border uses data from under-wheel sensors at ten different locations on the border. The animated map helps to visualize the amount of activity on the Irish border. Traffic and trade which is likely to be seriously disrupted and slowed if a hard border is reintroduced between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. 

 

The 1998 Belfast Agreement played an integral part in ending the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The worry is that a return to a hard border would destabilize the Belfast Agreement and could even reignite anger and violence. If anyone is in any doubt about the level of violence experienced along the old hard border between the Republic and Northern Ireland they should check out the Irish Times' Explore the Border interactive map.

Explore the Border maps a sample of just some of the border incidents experienced during the Troubles. Click on a marker on the map and you are taken to one of the old crossings along the border. The map sidebar reports on any major violent incidents which occurred at this crossing. The number of bombings, shootings and arson attacks are also listed.

Explore the Border also uses Google Street View images of each mapped crossing on the border. This allows you to explore the border for yourself and highlights how a hard border would not only be difficult to implement but would be an ugly scar on a very beautiful country. 

 

Keith O’Faoláin has created an animated movie of the Irish border, Oh Border Where Art Thou. The movie uses satellite imagery to explore the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.Watching the movie it is very apparent that the current border is very 'soft'. There are very few hard geographical barriers between the Republic and Northern Ireland. Mostly the border just follows roads and fields.

The European Union and the United Kingdom have signed up to the Northern Ireland Protocol. An agreement that there will be no new checks on goods crossing the Irish border. Unionist and pro-Brexit politicians in Northern Ireland have tried to overturn the Northern Ireland Protocol, including trying to persuade the High Court of Northern Ireland to declare the Protocol unlawful.

One Hour on the Irish Border

One of the major considerations in the Brexit negotiations between the EU and the UK is the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. This is the only land border between the UK and the EU. When free movement and free trade between the EU and the UK ends there may need to be a return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

The Guardian newspaper has created an animated map which shows the traffic crossing the border at 10 different locations during one hour on Monday 2nd, September 2019. A Typical Hour in the Life of the Irish Border uses data from under-wheel sensors at ten different locations on the border. The animated map helps to visualize the amount of traffic between the two countries. Traffic and trade which is likely to be seriously disrupted and slowed if a hard border is reintroduced between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.


The 1998 Belfast Agreement ended the Troubles in Northern Ireland and removed the hard border. The worry is that a return to a hard border would destabilize the Belfast Agreement and could even reignite anger and violence. If anyone is in any doubt about the level of violence experienced along the old hard border between the Republic and Northern Ireland they should check out the Irish Times' Explore the Border interactive map.

Explore the Border maps a sample of just some of the border incidents experienced during the Troubles. Click on a marker on the map and you are taken to one of the old crossings along the border. The map sidebar reports on any major violent incidents which occurred at this crossing. The number of bombings, shootings and arson attacks are also listed.

Explore the Border also uses Google Street View images of each mapped crossing on the border. This allows you to explore the border for yourself and highlights how a hard border would not only be difficult to implement but would be an ugly scar on a very beautiful country


Keith O’Faoláin has created an animated movie of the Irish border, Oh Border Where Art Thou. The movie uses satellite imagery to explore the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Watching the movie it is very apparent that the current border is very 'soft'. There are very few hard geographical barriers between the Republic and Northern Ireland. Mostly the border just follows roads and fields. If a hard border does have to be created it will prove very expensive and we will probably have to ask Mexico to pay for it.

Mapping School Segregation

Sixty years after the 'Brown vs Board of Education' Supreme Court ruling that state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students was unconstitutional many schools in the United States remain, to all intents and purposes, segregated by race.

Diversity in New York City's Schools is a Google Map visualizing the largest racial group in each New York school. Each school is represented by a dot, colored to reveal the largest racial group within that school. If you select a school's marker on the map you can view a breakdown of that school's racial make-up.


The Miami Herald's report into The Changing Demographics of Miami-Dade Schools includes a revealing interactive map, which allows readers to explore the demographic of 460 Miami-Dade schools.

The map uses colored map markers to highlight schools on the map where 85% or more of the students are black or Hispanic. You can select individual schools on the map to view the complete demographic make-up of the student body, with percentages for the number of black, white, Hispanic and 'other' students.


The sectarian divide in Northern Ireland has resulted in a large proportion of people living in areas where the population are either predominantly Protestant or predominantly Roman Catholic. To overcome this religious 'apartheid' and to ensure that the children of both religions are not segregated Northern Ireland needs inclusive schools, schools where pupils are able to mix and learn alongside children of other religions.

Unfortunately Northern Ireland's schools are as segregated as the rest of Northern Ireland society. According to The Detail "almost half of Northern Ireland’s schoolchildren are being taught in schools where 95% or more of the pupils are of the same religion".

The Detail has used data from the Department of Education to map the religious segregation in Northern Ireland's schools. The Detail's Segregated Schools map reveals the percentage of Roman Catholic and Protestant pupils in each of Northern Ireland's schools.

The Educational Sectarian Divide

The sectarian divide in Northern Ireland has resulted in a large proportion of people living in areas where the population are either predominantly Protestant or predominantly Roman Catholic. To overcome this religious 'apartheid' and to ensure that the children of both religions are not segregated Northern Ireland needs inclusive schools, schools where pupils are able to mix and learn alongside children of other religions.

Unfortunately Northern Ireland's schools are as segregated as the rest of Northern Ireland society. According to The Detail "almost half of Northern Ireland’s schoolchildren are being taught in schools where 95% or more of the pupils are of the same religion".

The Detail has used data from the Department of Education to map the religious segregation in Northern Ireland's schools. The Detail's Segregated Schools map reveals the percentage of Roman Catholic and Protestant pupils in each of Northern Ireland's schools.

The map uses pie chart map markers to reveal the percentages of the religious intake of the country's schools. If you want to add proportional pie chart markers to your own map then you can use the Google Visualization API to create your pie charts. Once you have created your pie charts you can then add them as markers to your Google Map.

E-techpulse's How to Create Pie Charts on Google Maps, includes all the code that you will need to add Google Visualization pie charts as markers to a Google Map.

Tech Maps Around the World

Companies Near Me is a Google Map of tech companies in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The map includes options to filter the companies displayed on the map by location and by sector. The map is primarily focused on the San Francisco Bay Area but the developers say that they have plans to expand the site to include other tech hubs such as New York, Los Angeles and Boston.


Made in NI is a Google Map of Northern Ireland's start-up's, tech companies and co-working spaces.

Tech maps for individual cities are now being created for many locations around the world. However we don't often see attempts to map entire countries / provinces. Made in NI is a nice attempt to map all of Northern Ireland's burgeoning technology companies.

As well as mapping individual companies, Made in NI also maps wi-fi spots, code clubs and learning spaces.

Also See

Represent Map - a map of tech maps created around the world using the RepresentMap platform

Made in NY  - New York's digital industry mapped
Represent.la - a Google Map of the burgeoning tech scene in Los Angeles

Tech Britain - UK tech map
Tech City Map - map of the technology companies and startups in east London
Cambridge Cluster Map - Cambridge's high-tech sector

Madri+d Mapa del Conocimiento - a Google Map of Madrid's research, technology and science companies.

Belfast's Maritime History on Google Maps

Belfast Maritime from the Northern Ireland Community Archive is an interesting look at Belfast's maritime history which includes a clever implementation of the Google Maps API.

The story of Belfast's maritime history is told in one scrollable column on the page, whilst important locations discussed in the narrative are displayed in a Google Map that is held in another static column. Therefore as the user scrolls through the text the map remains in place.

When locations are mentioned in the text or shown in photographs the map updates to display the relevant location. The red markers on the map indicate the current location being discussed.

Ambulance Response Times on Google Maps

The inaugural Data Journalism Awards were announced this week. Yesterday I looked at one of the six winners, Pedestrian Crashes in Novosibirsk.

Today I want to mention, How Quickly Did Help Arrive?, which was given an honourable mention by the judges. This Google Maps visualisation, from The Detail, explores ambulance response times in different locations in Northern Ireland.

The map uses coloured map markers to show the ambulance response time in different postcode districts in Northern Ireland. The province has a target that says that at least 72.5% of life threatening incidents should be responded to within eight minute.

Using the map it is easy to find the 12 of the 80 postcode districts where only 10% or less of all life threatening incidents were responded to within the key target of eight minutes.

Belfast Wi-Fi Hotspots on Google Maps

BelFi

As part of a university course in Interactive Multimedia Design Andrew McCrum created this Google Maps mashup showing Wi-Fi hotspots in and around Belfast, Northern Ireland.

BelFi shows the location of free and paid Wi-Fi hotspots on a Google Map. The markers are colour-coded to show which spots are free and which spots need to be paid for. If you know of a Wi-Fi hotspot that isn't currently featured on the map you can submit the spot to BelFi.

There is a mobile version of the site at http://m.belfi.co.uk

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Street View in Northern Ireland

PropertyPal Northern Ireland Street View Map

To help their customers get a better idea of the new Street View coverage in Northern Ireland PropertyPal have created this fun Google Maps mashup. Users of the map can drag 'Charley' around the map and drop him on a location to view the Street View at that location.

PropertyPal also use Google Maps Street View with their property listings. If you carry out a search for properties for sale on PropertyPal the results for each house give you the option to view the property on a Google Map and in Street View.



Including this Street View option allows prospective buyers to take a virtual tour of the neighbourhood around a house, to scope out local shops, schools and the environ.

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