The Maps of the Week

This week's Maps of the Week features no Google Maps based applications. This may reflect a growing shift in the balance of power in mapping API's away from the Google Maps API and towards other providers - but I'll leave that debate for another time.

For now lets concentrate on some of the best maps of the past week.


This week I was very impressed with two maps that look at the thorny issue of immigration and refugees. Whatever your view on immigration the stories of migrants deserve to be told and I haven't seen the migrant's story better told than in the Global Mail's new mapped interactive report on Hussain's Journey.

Filmmaker Matt Abbott gave Muhammad Hussain, a Hazara Pakistani about to set out on a journey to seek asylum in Australia, a video camera and asked him to film his experiences. The Global Mail's mapped report starts off with Matt Abbot's own recordings of Muhammad Hussain's family and life in Karachi.

When Muhammad set off on his dangerous journey to Australia he took over the filming himself. The mapped report of this journey allows you to view his experiences in safe houses, in smugglers’ homes and the final stretch across the ocean in a rickety boat. 

 
Since the start of the Syrian civil war at least two million refugees have fled the country and more than five million have been displaced internally. Most of the refugees have fled to neighboring countries. This humanitarian crisis has placed a huge burden on Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan.

Al Jazeera has created a mapped visualization to help convey the scale of rehousing seven million people. Where would 7 million displaced Syrians fit? allows you to overlay the area needed to rehouse 7 million people on any location in the United States.

The area of land needed at each US location is based on the current population density as revealed by the 2010 census. Viewing the refugee overlay on top of your own home-town really helps to convey the humanitarian crisis caused by the Syrian civil war.


It is now over a month since Russia arrested 28 Greenpeace activists and two journalists. The 30 are now facing a charge of hooliganism, a charge that could result in up to 7 years in jail.

Greenpeace has released a time-line and map of the events leading up to the illegal boarding of the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise by the Russian coast guard and the arrest of all on board. Into the Arctic maps the journey of the Arctic Sunrise from July 1st when it set sail on its mission to expose the dangerous oil drilling in the Arctic.

The map shows the track of the Arctic Sunrise and the time-line explains the ship's mission and also tells the stories of some of the activists now facing trial in Russia.

You can show your support for the Arctic 30 by sending a letter or e-mail to your Russian embassy.

Telling Stories with Maps

The Northwestern University's Knight Lab has released a new tool, called StoryMapsJS, to help users create mapped stories.

Perhaps the best way to understand a StoryMapJS created map is to look at the provided example. The StoryMapJS site includes a demo map that explores the mean center of the US population from 1790 to the present day. The map presents a series of map markers each of which are associated with an explanatory slide, which is displayed under the map.

Users of the map can progress through the slides chronologically by clicking on forward or back buttons or can load a slide by clicking on any of the map markers. StoryMapsJS therefore appears to be a good creation tool to use for maps that have a chronological progression, for example for mapping a journey, trip or historical development.

StoryMapJS is currently in an early Alpha release. Currently you need to download the framework from GitHub. Eventually however you should be able to just load the library and append the location data via a JSON file.

The Live DDoS Attack Map

Google Ideas and Arbor Networks have today launched a live map of distributed denial of service attacks. A DDoS attack is a method of taking down a website by overloading it with unwanted traffic using several computers.

The Digital Attack Map provides both a live visualization of current DDoS attacks around the world and the ability to view historic trends and related news reports of outages happening on a given day. As well as the map view it is possible to view current and historical attacks in table form.

Climbing the 3d Matterhorn

MapBox has created a series of maps using some amazing aerial imagery of the Matterhorn captured by drones. The imagery was collected by Sensefly.

Among the maps is this interactive 3d Pointcloud Matterhorn which allows you to explore the imagery in 3d. Mapbox has also created a mosaic map using the drone captured imagery and a relief map using the UAV sourced data from the drone fly-over of the mountain.

Maps of the Week

The Battle of Antietam was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Union soil. It is the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, resulting in 22,717 dead, wounded, and missing on both sides combined.

The Civil War Trust's Battle of Antietam Animated Map is a lovingly produced video of the bloodiest day in American history. The video includes re-enactment footage alongside a number of animated maps that recount the attacks and counterattacks by both sides in this bloody battle.


The site also includes a number of interactive 360 degree panoramic tours of some of the important battlefield locations. After watching the video map of the battle it is fascinating to be able to view the 360 tours and get a first person view of the battlefield on the ground.


Trafficways is a wonderful collection of beautiful map layers on one OpenStreetMap map. The maps include visualizations of air flights, Flickr photos, US census data, GPS lines & speed and a whole lot more.

The map also includes a number of options that allow you to refine the appearance of the different map layers. The visualization options include brightness and gamma controls and options to adjust the number of dots used in presenting the mapped data.


One of the most shared maps on social media this week was Stephanie May's Rental Housing Affordability in San Francisco. The map shows how many full-time minimum wage jobs you need to afford a two bedroom flat in each of San Francisco's neighborhoods.

Let's just say that if you want a flat in Mission Bay you better start applying for a few more jobs.

How to Double the World's Food Production

The Institute of the Environment at the University of Minnesota has created an ESRI story map to highlight how the world can increase food production. Crop production needs to double by 2050 to fulfill the needs of the growing worldwide population.

Feeding the World contains a series of heat maps visualizing the current crop production around the world and how and where crop production can be increased to meet rising demand. The first map shows the locations of the world's current bread baskets. Navigating through the other maps reveals where crop yields can be increased by better land management, improved through increasing water efficiency and by decreasing the amount of crop production dedicated to feeding animals.

The Racial Dot Map of Toronto

The Racial Dot Map has rightly been one of the most discussed online interactive maps in the last few weeks. The map is a fascinating visualization of the geographic distribution, population density, and racial diversity of the USA.

Well hang onto your hats Torontonians as you now have your very own Toronto racial dot map. Toronto Visible Minorities shows a single point for every person in the Toronto area, coloured by visible minority status. Like the Racial Dot Map the Toronto Visible Minorities map provides a fascinating insight into population and the distribution of visible minorities.

The Maps of the Week

I Bike Cph is a gorgeously designed bike routing map for Denmark. Using the application you can find the fastest bicycle routes throughout Denmark. The map even includes the option to find routes for cargo bikes, avoiding stairs and narrow passages.

I Bike CPH makes great use of OpenStreetMap data to include features useful for cyclists, such as cycle paths, traffic lights, bike stands and stairs.


The New York Times has published a crowd-sourced map to help New Yorkers discover locations in the city where it is possible to experience a few moments of peace. Finding the Quiet City shows over 800 suggestions submitted by the Times' readers.

As well as readers' suggestions the map contains links to 27 videos of quiet and secluded spots in New York City.


The Red, Blue and Purple: 2012 Presidential Election Map is a dot map of the 2012 US Presidential election.

The 12.6 million dots on this map show where Obama and Romney received the most votes. At the highest zoom level each dot represents 10 people. Users can click anywhere on the map to review the results at county level.

Mapping America's Downtrodden & Uninsured

Civis Analytics has released an Uninsured Census Tract Map to help visualize which census tracts in the United States are the most uninsured.

Civis Analytics was created by some of the veterans behind Obama for America (OFA) Analytics. Civis Analytics want to take some of the lessons learned in analyzing big data to target potential voters and use those lessons solve some of the world’s biggest problems. The Uninsured Census Tract Map was created to help show where the uninsured live and give the people doing enrollment a better sense of where to focus their efforts.

The map includes three base layers, the map tile, population and the uninsured census tract data. It is possible to select any combination of the three layers. If you turn off the population and map layers you can see most clearly which areas have the highest density of uninsured people.


The areas with the highest percentage of the population uninsured seems to co-relate fairly closely to those areas with the lowest median income. The Texas Tribune this week published the 2012 American Community Survey Map.


The Texas Tribune map visualizes median household income levels for each state. A cursory comparison of the two maps does suggest some co-relation between the low levels of median income in north-western and southern states and low levels of insurance.

The Texas Tribune Map also includes a visualization of health insurance levels in each state. This state by state visualization and the Uninsured Census Tract Map both seem to confirm that the highest levels of insurance are seen in the Midwest and in the north-eastern states of the US.

The Maps of the Week

We've already featured Block by Block's Brooklyn Past and Present map on Google Maps Mania, which uses NYC's Pluto dataset to map Brooklyn's buildings by age.

The Five Boroughs: Building Age NYC uses the same data to map the age of all buildings in the five boroughs of New York City. That is an incredible 1,053,713 buildings in total. The map is a great resource to help you find New York's hidden historical buildings.


Luminocity is a facinating insight into where people live and work in the UK. The map uses UK census data to provide heatmaps of population and employment density.

Using the map users can zoom in on UK towns and cities and visualize the areas where people live and where they work. The map also includes a population density change heatmap which allows the user to view areas that have seen a fall or rise in population growth between 2001-2011.


The Rim Fire in Yosemite National Park continues to burn. This Yosemite Rim Fire map animates the spread of the fire from August 19th up to the present time.

As well as viewing the animation of the fire's growth users can overlay Manhattan, Sacramento and Berlin on the map to gain some perspective of the area affected by the blaze.

Here Be Monster Maps

Slate has created a beautiful interactive map of Olaus Magnus’ 1539 Carta Marina. The Carta Marina is brimming with wonderful sea monsters.

Slate has made each of the monsters selectable on their interactive map, so users are able to click on each of the monsters and read how Olaus Magnus described each monster in his own commentary to the map.


Also marine related, and just as beautiful in its own way, is this live currents map of the Great Lakes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. The Great Lakes Surface Currents Map is an animated map simulating the flow patterns in the Great Lakes.

The map visualizes water motion based on data of the lake currents at the present time. The map is based on hint.fm's gorgeous Wind Map.


Unrelated to monsters or the waters deep (but a lot of fun) is GeoLive. This Leaflet map allows you to draw and add markers to a live map. That in itself is kind of neat but if there are other users on GeoLive you can watch them make their own additions to the map in real-time.

The map even includes a chat option. You can therefore chat to other users of the map and, if so inspired, collaborate and work together on your mapping missions.

Staring Through a Wormhole in New York

The Smithsonian has found a strange wormhole in New York through which you can stare back to 1836.

The Smithsonian & ESRI History Maps are a series of maps combining historical maps from the David Rumsey collection with Esri's modern aerial imagery. Each of the maps includes a neat magnifying glass tool that allows you to view the modern day aerial image through the historical map. You can even switch the views around and compare the historical map on top of the modern aerial imagery.

The series includes historical maps of a number of US cities, including New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington DC, LA and Denver.

And Some Non-Google Maps

The Contrail Science Flight Map is a great visualisation of worldwide flights. The map animates through 24 hours of world flight data revealing some really interesting patterns in global traffic.

The map includes a number of options to control how the visualisation displays. I suggest turning on the 'night' option, which adds an animation of daylight / night on the map, and then speed up the overall map animation to observe how flight pattern change over the course of the day.


Last year the New York Times created an interesting map that allows Americans to view how their annual income compares to the national average. The What Percent Are You? map allows you to enter your annual income and view how your income compares to other Americans.

After entering your annual income you can click on any state on the map to see how your income compares to the average income in that state.


After you have worked out how your salary compares to the rest of the country you might want to check out this Cost of Living map. This map shows the cost of living around the world based on a number of cost of living indices.

View the Age of 10 Million Global Buildings

One very noticeable growth area in interactive visualizations over the last few months has been the sudden trend in maps that show the age of buildings.

CitySDK has created a map that shows the age of a staggering 9,866,539 buildings in the Netherlands. Buildings on the map, throughout the country, are colored on the map by their age of construction. You can even click on any of the nearly 10 million buildings to view the exact year of construction.


Ljubljana Building Ages is a map of building ages in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Buildings on the map are colored by age and a line graph provides a quick visual overview of the ages of the city's buildings.

The Ljubljana map was inspired by the Portland, Oregon: The Age of a City. This MapBox map colors 544,033 buildings in Portland by age.


Block by Block, Brooklyn’s Past and Present is a great map for anyone who is interested in discovering and visiting Brooklyn's oldest surviving buildings. The map shows the age of 320,000 buildings in Brooklyn.

Each building on the map is shaded according to its year of construction and users can click on any of the buildings to discover its exact year of construction. The data for the map comes from the NYC Department of City Planning.

The Prettiest Heat Map You'll Ever See

Forecast.io has created a beautiful heatmap of planet Earth and MapBox has quickly put together an animated version on the map. The Forecast.io Temperature Map animates through global temperatures recorded on August 10, 2013.

The map uses the new Quicklsilver map from Forecast.io. Project Quicksilver is a high resolution real-time map of global temperature, that updates every hour. GeoTIFF images of the map can also be downloaded from Forecast.io.

The Synaesthesia Taste Map

Harry Beck's London Underground map has to be the most copied map style in the world. The number of 'infographics' inspired by Beck's map seem to grow daily. There are also countless reinterpretations of the London Underground map, from the London Anagram Map to the literal German translation map (if you want more of these the Londonist has a useful guide to Alternative London Tube Maps).

James Wannerton has now created a Synaesthesia Station Taste Map. Thanks to a a neurological condition called synaesthesia James tastes words when he reads or hears them. This means that for James each of the London Underground stations has a unique taste. His Synaesthesia Station Taste Map reworks Harry Beck's map to show how each station tastes.


This week Business Insider asked Americans what they thought about people living in other states. In the survey they asked respondents to answer a series of questions about a state that wasn't their own. The questions ranged from which states were the drunkest to which had the silliest accents.

Business Insider then created a series of static maps revealing what Americans think about each of the 50 states.

The Changing Face of New York Mapped

A New York Times interactive called Reshaping New York looks at how New York has changed in the 12 years of Michael Bloomberg's reign as mayor.

The interactive centers around an impressively large 3d map of the entire city. As the user scrolls down the page the 3d map moves and zooms into the areas of the city that have seen the most amount of change during Bloomberg's term of office.

Each of these locations is accompanied by analysis from the New York Times and before and after photographs of the development that has taken place.

The Maps of the Week

The 3d Tube Map is a real-time map of the London Underground in glorious 3d.

The map shows the live position of trains on all the London Underground lines. Portraying the lines in 3d enables the viewer to visualise the depth of the individual lines and stations on the network. Each of the lines can be highlighted on the map via the buttons in the map menu.


The Pulitzer Centre has released a map looking at road death tolls in countries across the world. The Roads Kill Map shows the levels of road deaths in nearly every country.

According to the World Health Organisation by 2030 road deaths are set to become the fifth leading cause of death in the developed world. The map highlights some interesting differences in road safety between countries. For example, the USA appears to have a very low level of road safety compared to other wealthy nations.


The Global Peace Index from Vision of Humanity is map visualising the levels of peacefulness in 162 countries.

The index measures internal and external levels of peace based on 22 indicators. The map includes a time-line that allows you to view global peace levels by year for the last five years.

The Maps of the Week

The United States Census Bureau's 2011 Language Mapper is a great tool for exploring the languages spoken in the USA. The data comes from the Community Survey.

Users of the map can select a language and an ability level from the map sidebar and visualise on the map where that language is spoken in the US.


Andrew Hill has used Leaflet and CartoDB to provide a series of maps exploring tax lot level data from the NYC Department of Finance.

The PLUTO Data Maps explore a range of issues, including the ownership of buildings in New York, building height, the age of buildings and which building lots are the furthest away from public spaces.


Also in New York WNYC has been mapping Where New Yorkers Don't Vote.

Using MapBox WNYC has created a map that shows the percentage of New Yorkers who don't bother to vote by census tract. The data used is from the last mayoral election in 2009. 

Mapping the Mars Rover Curiosity

Wired and MapBox have come together to map the Mars rover Curiosity. The Curiosity Rover Images Map displays the track of the Mars rover and the location of photos taken by Curiosity.

The map tiles of the Martian surface are generated from HiRISE, a super high-resolution camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The Wired article on the map also includes an interesting account of how the actual track was plotted.

You might also like Joe Knapp’s Curiosity track, which uses Google's Mars map.