Before & After Irma

The Washington Post has used satellite imagery from before & after Hurricane Irma to show the scale of the destruction caused by the tropical storm in the Carribean and in Florida. Before and After Hurricane Irma uses high resolution satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe to provide an aerial view of just a few of the areas devastated by the storm.

NOAA has also released an interactive map which includes aerial imagery of Florida taken since the storm. Hurricane IRMA Imagery uses aerial imagery captured on Monday and Tuesday. The map includes post-Irma aerial imagery for much of the Florida Keys. The map also has imagery along the west coast of Florida, from Naples up to Punta Gorda.

Street Views of 1980s New York

Broadway in the mid 1980s had a lot to offer.  Karate Kid Part II was on at the cinema, Cats was being performed nightly at the theater and on Times Square you could buy just about any drug that you wanted. If that sounds appealing to you then get ready to jump into this new Street View time machine.

80s.NYC is a fantastic collection of vintage photographs of New York City street scenes, all taken in the 1980s. The photos were taken by the Finance Department of New York City in the middle of the 80s. In order to accurately assess building taxes the department photographed every single building in the five boroughs. The pictures could then be used to estimate property values.

Thanks to Brandon Liu and Jeremy Lechtzin you can now travel the city streets of 1980's New York City. Their 80s.NYC map allows you to browse the City's photographic collection by location. Just click anywhere on the map of the city and you can instantly view the vintage Street Views of that location. The map also includes a number of curated 'Stories'. These stories provide historical background to some of the more interesting photos and historical buildings in the collection.


If the sleaze of 1980s New York doesn't appeal then why not go back further in time to the beginning of the 20th Century. The New York Public Library has a complete collection of vintage photographs depicting Fifth Avenue, New York, from start to finish.

The photos provide a great resource for exploring New York at the turn of the last century. Especially if you use the library's own great Street View application. Street View, Then & Now: New York City's Fifth Avenue allows you to take a virtual stroll down Fifth Avenue in Street View while comparing today's New York to those vintage photos of the same locations taken at the beginning of the 20th Century.


If you enjoy exploring old vintage photographs of New York then you might want to help NYPL geo-tag its collection of vintage photographs of the city. The NYPL's Surveyor map is a citizen science project designed to hep the library index its collections of historical photographs by location.

Visit the Surveyor website and you will be shown a vintage photograph from the NYPL collection. All you have to do is show the location depicted in the photo by clicking on the interactive map. Luckily many of the photographs have an address in the photo's title or associated data. This makes the task relatively easy, even if you don't know New York very well.

Many of the photos in the NYPL's Digital Collections are in the public domain. This means that you will be able to use many of the photos that you geo-tag in your own interactive maps. Just like OldNYC has done with its interactive map of 40,000 vintage photos of New York from the NYPL’s photo collections.

10 Street View Games to Kill Your Day

1. GeoGuessr

There are lots of 'Can you guess the Street View?' type games but there is only one GeoGuessr. GeoGuessr is probably the most popular Google Maps geography game.

In this geography game you are shown a random Street View image and you must try to guess where in the world the Street View was taken. Once you have guessed you are shown how close your guess was to the correct location and awarded points based on how near you guessed.

What really sets GeoGuessr apart from other Street View guessing games is GeoSettr! With the release of GeoSettr you can now create your own GeoGuessr game based on your favorite locations and Street Views. Using GeoSettr you can create your own GeoGusser game of five questions. All you have to do is choose five locations on a Google Map and then you then get a unique link to your game that you can share with your friends.

2. Brick Street View

This one isn't strictly a game but who isn't going to have fun seeing their house turned into Lego. Brick Street View does just that, re-imagining Google Maps and Google Street View as they might appear in Legoland.

Type your address into this Legoized Google Map and then drop the Lego Pegman onto your street. You can then actually view your house as it might look if it was built with those little plastic colored bricks. Brick Street View works anywhere in the world where Street View appears on Google Maps. So after viewing your Lego house you can take a tour of some of the world's most famous monuments as they also might look in Legoland.

Brick Street View works by using the undocumented depth data stored in Street View. It uses this data to create a depth map which can be used to plot geometry and sprites in the 3d space of the Street View panorama.

3. Sakura

Have you ever wanted to cherry bomb your house. Thanks to this beautiful application you can now view your house covered in cherry blossom on Google Maps Street View.

Sakura allows you to visualize how your house might look if you could transport it to Japan in the springtime, just at the moment when the cherry blossom is in full bloom. The effect is so amazing that it can even transform my grey London street into a road where I might actually be happy to live.

4. Earth-Picker

On the surface Earth-Picker is very similar to GeoGuessr. In the game, like in GeoGuessr, you are shown a series of random Street View scenes. The object of the game is to try to guess the location of the depicted Street View image. To do this you simply place a marker on a Google Map to show where you think the Street View image is from.

What sets Earth-Picker apart from other Street View guessing games is the neat way it shows how close your guess was to the real location. Like in other Street View guessing games you are awarded points based on how close your guess was to the real location. However Earth-Picker also places a blue circle around the depicted location.

This blue circle shows you the average distance that all the other users of the game were to guessing the correct location. Therefore for each Street View image that you guess you are able to instantly see whether you beat most other users, or whether your guess was worse than most other players.

5. My Name is Hunt

My Name is Hunt is the world's first Street View based text adventure game. In this game you have to follow a number of clues to stay alive. Each textual clue is accompanied by a Street View image showing you where you are in your search for numerous antidote syringes which have been hidden around Rio de Janeiro.

Each clue is also accompanied by two (or more) paths for you to choose from. Choose wisely as each turn you take in this game costs you a little health. If your health reaches zero before you find an antidote then you will die.

6. Where in the World

Where in the World is another 'guess the location on Street View' game. In this fun game, however, you are helped a little as the locations are all well-known locations from around the world. All you have to do is choose the correct location for each Street View from three different answers.

The game allows you to choose from five different categories, History, Travel, Royal Attractions, Nature and Parks & Entertainment. Once you have selected your categories you are shown 10 different Street View images and your job is to guess where in the world each image is from.

The main difficulty with Where in the World is the time element. You are only given twelve seconds to answer each question, which isn't really enough time to explore the Street View scene in any detail. However, even with the time element, I found it easy to get ten out of ten each time I played. But then I spend way too much of my time exploring the world on Street View.

7. Allstate Holiday Home Decorator

If you are getting tired of roaming the world on Street View then why not enjoy a few relaxing moments at home, decorating your house on Google Maps Street View. The Allstate Holiday Home Decorator allows you to decorate your house on Street View with a number of Christmas themed decorations.

To decorate your home just enter your address into the Holiday Home Decorator. You will then be shown a Google Maps Street View of your home. Once you have the Street View image of your house you can add Christmas lights, candles, decorations, Christmas presents, trees and a little snow to the scene. When you are happy with the design of your Street View Christmas card just press the 'share your home' button and you can send a unique link to your card via Twitter or Facebook.

8. Urbanopticon

How well do you know your city? Test your knowledge with Urbanopticon. Yes, this is another Street View location guessing game but this time you get to contribute to a citizen science project while you play.

By now the formula of the game should be familiar - look at the Street view image and try to guess where in the world it is from. As you play, however, you are also helping Urbanopticon develop a collective mental map of your city based on your answers and the answers of other players. Using these answers the team can begin to answer questions about which areas in cities are memorable, why some areas are more memorable than others and how developers / city planners can better build communities that help make people feel more at home.

9. The Division Map of New York

This one is also not strictly a Street View game but it will appeal to fans of Ubisoft's video game of Tom Clancy's The Division. It also might appeal to New Yorkers interested in how their city might look in a dystopian future. The Division Map of New York features a number of 360 degree panoramic Street View images which allow you to explore scenes of New York as portrayed in the on-line game. These Street View images show a post-pandemic New York, devastated by the effects of a deadly disease which has brought chaos to the streets of America.

10. Spacehopper

Spacehopper is another great Street View based geography quiz. The game was built for school kids studying geography but is lots of fun for us slightly older kids as well.

The game presents you with a series of Street View images from locations around the world (with the odd photo thrown in for good measure). The object of the game is to guess the location of the Street View image by clicking on a Google Map. To help you in this task the possible locations are marked on the map with a little red dot.

You get three attempts to get the correct answer to each Street View. If you are struggling you can also ask for clues. The game includes some user settings that allow you to restrict the views shown to various regions around the globe.

Mapping Australia's Support for Gay Marriage

This month Australia is holding a non-binding national postal survey into the issue of same-sex marriage. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has released a really interesting story map which looks at the results of a poll which asked Australians the same question last year. How Australians think about same-sex marriage, mapped shows the level of support for gay marriage across the whole of the country.

The problem with a choropleth view of the survey results in each electorate is that it presents a slightly distorted picture of the situation. Larger, less populated rural areas show the least support for gay marriage. These larger more rural areas dominate the map when you are zoomed out and therefore could lead the user to underestimate the support for gay marriage in Australia.

ABC get around this distorted picture by exploring the results in different areas. As you progress through the story map ABC zoom in on Sydney to show how support in more populated inner-city areas is far higher than in outer suburban and rural areas. ABC proceed to show how this geographic tendency in the vote is true for other cities. In fact the geography of a voter appears to be a far bigger guide to their likelihood to support gay marriage than party support.

It will be interesting to see if this geographical tendency is repeated in this month's postal survey.

The Relative Cost of Housing

Last month the Housing Affordability Story Map used Esri’s Housing Affordability Index to map the local affordability of housing across the United States. The map looked at the share of average income in an area to the size of the average mortgage to determine how affordable local property is for local people.

Mortgage Magnitude is another Esri story map which uses the Housing Affordability Index to show how affordable property is for local people across the United States. This map also looks at the median local income and median local home value to show the relative affordability of property in each US county.

The success of Mortgage Magnitude is due in large part to the simple measurement of property values to the local median salary. In other words the value of the average property is expressed in the number of years salary it costs. This measurement is represented visually on the story map by the number of red people (each person representing one year's income).

This simple form of measurement is then used to look at the affordability of housing across the United States. As you scroll through the story map Mortgage Magnitude is able to show you counties in the USA where local property costs around one year's income (in other words where property is reasonably affordable). It then progresses to show you counties where property is around two years total salary, three years salary, four years salary and so on ... until we reach 9-10 years local salary for those living in some California coastal counties.

Global Sea Level Rise Since 1933

The Permanent Service of Mean Sea Level has been measuring sea level changes around the world since 1933. To do this the organisation has over 2,000 tide gauge meters measuring sea levels across the globe. CORRECTIV has mapped the records from 500 of these meters to provide an insight into how sea levels have changed in the last century and how they might change in the future.

Using CORRECTIV's Rising Seas map you can select any of the 500 mapped meters anywhere in the world. When you click on a meter you can view a graph of the meter's measurements since 1933. The map sidebar also provides an overview of how sea level has changed at this location since the measurements began.

As well as measurements from the 500 meter readings the Rising Seas map also includes an overlay which shows you coastal areas which are within 10 meters of sea level and therefore most at risk from rising sea levels.

I really like the use of breadcrumbs to help you navigate this map. Users can use the links at the top of the information panel to step back through different zoom levels. From being zoomed in on the location of an individual meter you can quickly step back to the country zoom level, the continent level and finally to the whole world. When the map is zoomed in on a country the map sidebar updates to show the average number of CO2 produced by each inhabitant of that country.

The Languages of Sydney

Small Multiples has used the Language Spoken at Home (LANP) data from the 2016 Australian census to map the languages spoken in Sydney and Melbourne. The languages we speak in Sydney and Melbourne includes two interactive dot maps (one for each city) which show the languages spoken at home by those cities' residents.

The individual dots on both maps represent 5 people. The colors of the dots show the language spoken. If you zoom in on a neighborhood you can get a good overview of the density of different language speakers in the area.


Back in 2014 the Sydney Morning Herald also created an interesting mapped analysis of the languages spoken in Sydney. The map shows the top non-English languages spoken in each of the city's suburbs, the density of English as a first language and the linguistic diversity in each neighborhood, based on data from the 2011 census.

Sydney's Melting Pot of Language reveals that east Asians predominantly live in the north shore while Arabic speakers dominate the western suburbs. Over 250 different languages are spoken in the city and nearly 40 percent speak a non-English language as their first tongue.

Accompanying the mapped visualization is a bar graph showing the numbers of speakers of each of the non-English languages spoken in the city. The graph groups the languages into global regions but you can select any of the region bars to view a percentage breakdown of the individual languages.

Dreamliner by Dreamliner

Last month Boeing drew a massive geo-glyph of a Dreamliner aircraft during a test flight over the United States. While performing engine performance testing a Dreamliner test aircraft flew for 18 hours from Seattle to Seattle. Its flight path (which took it as far south as the southern tip of Texas) just happened to be in the shape of a giant, USA spanning, airplane.

You can review the whole plane-shaped flight path of Flight N7874 on Flightradar24. The plane's flight path is displayed for you on a Google Map. If you press the play button on the map you can watch as the plane marker follows the flight path on the map. The dashboard display, beneath the map, continually updates with the plane's speed & altitude during the test flight.

All the Bikes in All the World

The Bike Sharing Atlas is a great data dashboard which allows you to explore real-time data from over 1,000 bike sharing networks around the world. Using the dashboard you can view individual bike networks and compare and contrast how different cities operate their bike sharing networks.

The 'Networks' view provides small multiple maps of bike sharing networks around the world. These multiple maps allow you to compare the geographical distribution of bike sharing stations in different cities side-by-side. You can also click on any of these small maps to explore an individual bike network in more detail.

Exploring the interactive map of an individual city's bike sharing network gives you access to lots of data about that city's network. You can view the location of all the individual bike stations and explore the current status of bikes & empty slots in each station and its average utilization. You can also explore the bike stations by elevation, which allows you to discover the city's highest & lowest bike sharing station.

The History of the Hurricane

Much has been made about the record breaking nature of Hurricane Irma. The intensity of Irma and the length of time it maintained that intensity meant that it broke all sorts of records. But don't take my word for it. You can compare Hurricane Irma to any other hurricane over the last 100 odd years for yourself using NOAA's interactive map of hurricane tracks.

NOAA's Historical Hurricane Tracks map allows you to view global hurricane data dating back as far as 1842. Using the map you can search and visualize hurricane data by storm name, location and by date. If you enter the name of a hurricane (for example 2012's Hurricane Sandy) you can view the hurricane's track on the map. Points along each hurricane's track allow you to view details about the wind speed and pressure for each day. A link is also provided to read a PDF of NOAA's storm report for each hurricane.

If you select the 'Hurricanes' option from the map menu then you can view all the historical hurricane tracks on one map. If you select the 'County Strikes' option you can view a choropleth map of U.S. coastal counties. The counties colored dark red have historically had more hurricane strikes than the counties colored with a lighter red.


This map of historical Hurricane and Tropical Cyclone Track Density uses Carto's Torque library to animate the track density of hurricanes and tropical cyclones from 2000-2013. The map uses data from the National Climatic Data Center - NOAA.

The Hurricane and Tropical Cyclone Track Density map doesn't allow you to explore individual hurricane tracks but the heatmap does reveal the areas of the world which are most prone to hurricanes and tropical cyclones. As the animation plays the seasonal nature of hurricanes and tropical cyclones is also revealed by the rise and fall of storm activity on the map.