The Map of Really Rude Place-Names

In 2004 the residents of the small town of Fucking in Austria had a vote on whether they should change the name of their settlement. Many residents had become tired of the frequent theft of the town's street signs and the endless visits of puerile English speaking tourists. Fortunately, for those of us who are are amused by infantile humor, the residents voted to keep the Fucking name.

Of course Fucking isn't the only town with a place-name which sounds rude to English speakers. Around the world there are many locations which have names which sound rude to English speaking ears. I could list hundreds of examples, like the town of Vagina in Russia, the towns of Clit in Romania and Condom in France. But why list all the rudely named places around the globe when I can show you them all on an interactive map.

The Really Rude Map is an interactive map of rudely named places around the world. I created the map using Mapbox GL. In truth however most of the effort behind this map was done by Gary Gale for his Vaguely Rude Places. Gary's own interactive map of the data is currently offline (which is partly why I created my map). If like me you want to create your own map from the data then it is available under an Open Data Commons Attribution license.

The 45 Types of Road in Paris

There are 45 different types of road in Paris. Les types de voies à Paris is an interactive map which allows you to view the distribution and location of all 45 different types of road in the French capital.

By far the most popular type of road in Paris is the simple 'rue' or road. 3,422 or 57% of all roads in Paris are 'rues'. The second most popular type of road is 'place' (549). The third most popular type of road is 'voie' (433). If you select a road type from the map menu you can view every instance of this type of road on the interactive map. On the map all the public roads of this type are colored pink and the private roads are colored red.

When you select a road type from the map menu you also have the option to read a definition of the chosen type of road and an analysis of how that road type is distributed in the French capital (in French). For example if you select 'place' from the map menu you will learn that 'places' are one of the earliest examples of town planning. They were particular popular in the time of Henry IV, in the sixteenth century, when they were constructed to highlight a statue or monument and provide a public space for meeting and strolling.

Many 'places' in Paris are connected to 'avenues'. For example the Place Charles de Gaulle, where you will find the Arc de Triomphe, is the starting point of 12 different avenues. Many of Paris's avenues are in the west of the city where prestigious districts developed in the second half of the 18th century.

The Poor & Urban Heat Islands

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

The detailed maps produced by NOAA show that the hottest areas in both cities are the areas with the densest built environment and the most roads. This is a result of un-shaded roads and buildings absorbing heat and then radiating it out to their surroundings. The coolest places in both cities are in parks or in other areas with lots of tree cover. The dark surfaces of roads and built materials, such as bricks and concrete, absorb more heat than grass and vegetation. Which is why the densest built areas tend to be significantly warmer than areas with tree cover or parks.

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

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

Who's to Blame for Climate Change?

In 2016 countries around the world signed up to fight global heating. So three years later how well are individual countries meeting their individual targets to restrict climate change? You can find out using a new interactive map called the Climate Action Tracker.

195 countries from across the globe have signed the Paris Agreement on climate change. By signing the agreement governments have pledged to hold global heating to well below 2°C, and to pursue efforts to limit heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

The Climate Action Tracker rates countries around the globe based on how well their current pledges and targets are "consistent with a country's fair share effort to the Paris Agreement 1.5°C temperature goal". On the interactive map countries are colored based on how well they are meeting their targets. Countries colored black or red are the countries which are completely failing to meet their 'fair share' of action limit global heating. The worst performing countries include the USA, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

The countries colored green on the map are consistent or exceeding their obligations under the Paris Agreement. Currently the only countries colored green on the map are Morocco and Gambia. If you select an individual country on the map you can read its full profile. This profile explains in more detail why a country has achieved its individual Climate Action Tracker rating and how well it is meeting its targets under the 2016 Paris Agreement.

Mapping Japanese Land Values

A new interactive map visualizes how Japanese land values have fluctuated over the last 30 years. Every year Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism publish details on the value of land at around 26,000 different locations. The 3D Map of Land Values in Japan: 1989 - 2019 map allows you to see how the cost of land has fallen and risen across Japan each decade since 1989.

On the map land values are visualized by both color and height. Each hexagon on the map has a radius of 2000 meters. When two or more locations from the ministry's report fall within one hexagon area then the color and height of the hexagon reflect the average price of all locations. You can compare the 2019 land values with previous decades by selecting a year from the drop-down menu. On these comparison views the hexagons are colored to show how the 2019 land values compare with the selected year. Blue indicates that values have fallen and red indicates land values have risen since the chosen year.

Commercial areas in Tokyo make up all of the twenty most expensive locations in Japan. The next most expensive area is in the business district in Osaka. Despite the still relatively high cost of land in Japan compared to twenty or thirty years ago the cost of land has actually fallen in most areas. However this year's land value survey reveals that on average residential land values in Japan have risen for the first time in 27 years.

NASA Earth Observation in 3D

Emerson Walsh's WebGL Globe allows you to explore a number of NASA satellite views of Earth on a fully interactive 3D globe.

The 3D globe visualizes a number of different layers from NASA Earth Observations. These layers include global population density, land & sea surface temperatures, albedo, crowd fraction, leaf area index, vegetation index and chlorophyll concentration. You can learn more about each of the different layers visualized on the globe by hovering over the layer's name in the bottom-right hand corner of page.

NASA Earth Observation has numerous other global data-sets of Earth's ocean, atmosphere and land surfaces, all of which can be downloaded in various image formats. These images are all derived from satellite data obtained from NASA's constellation of Earth Observing System satellites.

Emerson's WebGL Globe was created using Three.js. If you want to make your own WebGL globes using Three.js then you might find How to Make the Earth in WebGL useful. This tutorial on WebGL globes was created by the creator of planets, a collection of 3D globes of all the planets in our solar system.

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.

Slopeless in Seattle

If you want to avoid the hills of Seattle then you can use AccessMap, a map which provides walking directions that avoid hills and other accessibility barriers.

Streets on AccessMap are colored by the steepness of their incline. The map also includes the locations of marked and unmarked crossings. When you ask for directions from one part of Seattle to another you can assign the maximum uphill and downhill steepness that you are comfortable with. The map includes a number of preset options which are designed for wheelchairs, powered chairs and walkers with canes.

After a query the suggested route for your journey is shown on the interactive map. If you click on the 'Trip Info' button you can view an elevation of your suggested route, the total distance of the route and the estimated time. If you select the 'Directions' button you can see step-by-step instructions for the trip.


If you are a wheelchair user in Seattle, or anywhere else in the world, then you can use Wheelmap, to find out how accessible buildings and services are. The colors of the markers on the map indicate how accessible a venue is. Green markers indicate that a building is fully wheelchair accessible. Orange markers show a location is only partially accessible and red markers indicate venues which cannot be accessed by wheelchairs.

Wheelmap is a crowd-sourced project which means that anybody can add information to the map. The grey markers on the map indicate venues that Wheelmap has no information about. If you have information about the venue's accessibility to wheelchair visitors you can simply click on the marker and select whether it is wheelchair accessible, partially accessible or not accessible.

Europe's Renewable Energy Potential

According to the Paris Agreement all signatory countries should increase the market share of renewable energy to at least 20% of the total energy market. According to a new interactive map this is potentially achievable by all European countries. The Possibility for Electricity Autarky map shows the potential that every country in Europe has for producing all its electricity demands from renewable energy.

Countries on the map are colored based on their potential for generating all their electricity needs from renewable energy sources. Therefore, according to the map, every European country is capable of meeting 100% of electricity demand with renewable electricity, generated locally from wind and solar power. If you hover over a country on the map you can view the country's population, electricity demand and how much electricity potential there is from local wind and solar power.

If you zoom in on the map you can view the potential for renewable energy within individual administrative areas within European countries. At this zoom level you can begin to see areas where renewable energy doesn't have the potential to meet demand. Many of these areas appear to be urban areas which are densely populated. I'm guessing this is due to the higher numbers of electricity consumers combined with less room for wind and solar power generation.

The data used to create the map comes from the peer-reviewed article, Home-made or imported: on the possibility for renewable electricity autarky on all scales in Europe.

German State Election Maps

Yesterday two state elections were held in Germany. The two states, Saxony and Brandenburg, are both in the part of Germany which was once East Germany. In both of yesterday's state elections the far-right AfD made strong gains but failed to become the most popular party in either state. The AfD were the second largest party in both states but it is likely that they will be frozen out by the other political parties from playing any role is either state's coalition government.

The Berliner Morgenpost has created two interactive election maps; one for Saxony and the other for Brandenburg. On both maps electoral districts are colored to show the party which won the most votes. You can also click on individual political parties on both maps to see how they performed across each state. In Saxony Angela Merkel's CPD party won the most votes, but the party saw their vote drop by 7.3% compared to the last state election in 2014. In Brandenburg the left-wing SPD won the most votes overall, but saw their vote drop by 5.7% since 2014. In both states the far-right AfD saw a significant two digit increase in votes since the 2014 elections.


Zeit has also mapped out the results of both state elections. Zeit's Saxony map, like the Berliner Morgenpost map, shows that the AfD performed particularly strongly in the east of the state. All constituencies in the state were won by either the CDU or the AfD. The CDU performed particularly well in the most westerly constituencies. The Green party picked up their largest share of the vote in cities and towns and performed less well in more rural constituencies.

Zeit's Brandenburg election map reveals a similar east-west split. In Brandenburg, as in Saxony, the AfD performed much better in the eastern constituencies. In this state however it was the SPD who picked up the most votes in most western constituencies.


Waz has also created interactive maps of the Saxony and Brandenburg state elections. Alongside the traditional choropleth maps Waz has published some interesting swing maps. These maps visualize perfectly the increase in the vote share of the AfD and the large falls in the vote share for both the CDU and SPD, since the 2014 elections.

Waz has also created interesting tables which show how the different political parties could combine to create a working coalition in each state. It is likely however that neither the SPD or CDU will want to work with the AfD.