The OS Mapping Toolkit

The UK's Ordnance Survey has a released a GeoDataViz Toolkit designed to help map makers 'communicate data effectively'. It includes colour palettes, map symbols and visual deconstructions. It also includes lot of advice for creating effective visualizations and many links to other helpful resources.

The Basemaps section of the toolkit will probably be of most interest to users of the OS Maps API. However the Colours, Symbols and Visual Deconstructions sections have more cross-platform appeal and should be of interest to all online map makers, whatever your preferred mapping platform.

The different sections of the toolkit are full of useful guidelines and recommendations for visualizing data with maps. Each section also includes lots of links to other useful resources. You can learn more about the GeoDataViz Toolkit and how it is used internally within the Ordnance Survey on the Ordnance Survey Blog.

Beyond Cartogram Elections

Yesterday we looked at some of the visualization methods used by the New York Times to map the election results in the Virginia governor's race. These methods included using scaled markers, directional arrows and color intensity. The Washington Post has also been experimenting with new visualization techniques for mapping the Virginia election results.

In How Virginia went from blue to red and back again the Post uses scaled pyramids to show the number of votes cast in each electoral precinct and the margin of victory. These pyramids are colored to show the winner in each district. The height of the pyramid represents the size of the winning margin, while the width of the pyramid represents the size of the vote.

These scaled pyramid markers work quite well visually. They accurately portray how the Republicans continued to do well in the less densely populated rural areas while the Democrats dominated the race by winning in urban areas where more voters live.

If you want to know more about how the New York Times created their different views of the Virginia election results then you should read Mapbox's report New York Times live-mapping Virginia election. This blog post explains how the Times used Mapbox GL JS expressions in order to create their different views of the election data.

From Africa to Europe - Refugee Journeys

More than 5,000 refugees died last year trying to get to Europe across the Mediterranean Sea. Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by Boat - Mapping and Documenting Migratory Journeys and Experiences is an international research project, led by the University of Warwick, which carried out 257 in-depth qualitative interviews with people who have made this journey.

The project has released an interactive story map which allows you to view some of these migratory journeys on a map, while also learning about the individual experiences of the people who actually made the journeys.

Each of these individual journeys are mapped to show each stage of the person's migration from Africa to Europe. 'Back' and 'Next' buttons allow the user to follow each stage of the journey made by the interviewed refugees. As the map updates the map side-panel also updates to provide information about the journey. This information includes the first-hand experiences of the individual refugee and more general information about the conditions that refugees experience at the mapped locations.


15 Years: Fortress Europe is an animated map of migrant and refugee deaths in Europe over the last fifteen years. The map uses data from the Migrant Files to show where and when migrants have died in trying to get to Europe, or in trying to move around the continent.

As the map plays through the fifteen years of data red markers are added to the map to show the location of each migrant death. The map sidebar continually updates to show details about each migrant death and you can click on individual markers on the map to read more details about each of these deaths.

Since 2013 the Migrant Files has been maintaining a database of migrants who have died in Europe or on their way to Europe. The database lists more than 30,000 people who have died trying to get to Europe since the year 2000.

An interactive map on the Migrant Files website shows that a large proportion of these deaths occur in the Mediterranean, particularly among migrants trying to cross from Libya & Tunisia to Italy.


The Silk team has also created an interactive map from the Migrants' Files data examining the number of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean. Their map allows you to query the information about migrant deaths by year, location and cause of death.

If you click on a map marker on the Fatal Migration Incidents in the Mediterranean map you can read details about the mapped incident, including the number of casualties and the date of the incident.


The Migrant Map 2000-2015 is another interactive map of the Migrant Files data, visualizing the number of dead or missing migrants across Europe and Africa. The map presents a truly shocking picture of the scale of this human tragedy.

You can select markers on the map to learn more about the individual cases reported and about the source of the information. The map also includes an animated heat-map layer which helps to highlight some of the hot-spots for migrant deaths over the last six years.

US Election Results

The New York Times has mapped out the results of yesterday's elections in Virginia, New York and New Jersey. For these election results the newspaper has used the Mapbox GL mapping platform and provided users with a variety of different visualizations of each result.

The default view on the mapped results provides a simple choropleth view of the results in each county. This default view of the vote share allows readers to see the vote share of each candidate in each electoral precinct.

This 'vote share' view suffers from a common problem of electoral mapping, where larger rural precincts with less voters dominate the map at the expense of smaller urban precincts (where a majority of voters actually live). You can see in the screenshot above that in this 'vote share' view, for Virginia, the Republican Ed Gillespie actually appears to have won in most of Virginia, despite having lost the election.


To overcome this slightly misleading picture the NYT's electoral map also includes a 'vote density' view. In this mapped view the hue of the color used in each precinct is based on the density of voters. As you can see in the map above this helps to address some of the problems with the 'vote share' view. The muted red no longer visually dominates over the stronger hued blue on the map.

A third 'vote lead' view uses scaled circular markers in each precinct. The size of these markers reflects the size of the lead of the winning candidate in each precinct. Again this map presents a more accurate picture of the actual result of the election. Another 'shift from 2016' view uses colored arrows to show the swing in votes in each precinct since the last election. This view provides a great visual picture of the huge swing in Virginia from the Republicans to the Democrats.

California Air Quality

In June of this year Google and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) released an interactive map of air quality in Oakland, California. The map was the result of a collaboration between EDF and Google.

For this collaboration Google's Street View cars were equipped with sensors to measure nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide and black carbon as they drove the streets, while also capturing the panoramic Street View imagery used on Google Maps. Google has now completed air quality tests for the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and California’s Central Valley.

So far no interactive maps have been released of this data. However the Google Blog has a few videos looking at the mapped results of these air quality measurements. The Aclima Blog has also published a number of data stories exploring the data. In addition Google says that air quality scientists can also request access to the data itself.

Controlling the Weather

Geoengineers never watch disaster movies. If they did then they obviously wouldn't keep trying to change the climate and weather. From seeding clouds with silver iodide (in order to increase precipitation) to using algae to consume CO2 many scientists seem keen to control the environment. What could possibly go wrong?

The Geoengineering Monitor is attempting to track and monitor attempts to geoengineer the climate around the world. It has mapped the location of over 800 geoengineering projects. The Geoengineering Map provides information on Carbon Capture, Solar Radiation Management and Weather Modification projects.

These three different types of geoengineering are shown on the map using color-coded map markers. If you click on a marker you can view details on the selected project. These details include information on the companies involved and a brief explanation of the science being used to try and control the climate or weather.

What People Think of Donald Trump

Lots of people think Donald Trump is an idiot. Here's where over 13,000 of those people live.


Perhaps someone who works at the White House will frame this map and hang it somewhere prominent in the Oval Office.

Of course not everyone thinks that Trump is an idiot. Some people think he is a genios (sic). Here's where those 40 people live.


These two maps come from Trump in One Word, a website which asks you to describe Donald Trump in (you get guessed it) just one word. After you have described Donald Trump you can view the results from all the other people who have visited Trump in One Word. Just click on any of the words that have been used to describe Trump and you can see an interactive map of where all the people who submitted that word live (exact addresses not used).

Toronto's Caffeine Gang Wars

Toronto's caffeine gang wars are tearing the city apart. As rival coffee gangs fight for territory local residents can do next to nothing to stop the relentless spread of caffeine. Innocent residents can only sit back and watch in horror as their neighborhoods are overrun by blank-eyed caffeine addicts.

Neoformix is more informed than most. They have been busy mapping the spread of coffee shops throughout Toronto and its surrounding suburbs. They have even managed to map out out how the rival coffee gangs have carved out the city between them.

The Toronto Coffee Shop Territory Map shows you which parts of Toronto belong to which coffee shop gang. Using a Voronoi map Neoformix has divided Toronto into a patchwork quilt of new neighborhoods based on the nearest coffee shop chain.

In the center of the city you can see how Tim Hortons (red) and Starbucks (green) have conquered lots of small territories. However smaller independent coffee shops still manage to thrive in some places. If you zoom-out on the map you will discover that outside of the city Tim Hortons has carved out a lot of territory. As the population gets less dense there is more of a chance that your nearest fix of caffeine will come from a Tim Hortons.

Explore the Seafloor

Have you ever wondered what lies beneath the ocean waves off the coast of America? If you have scuba diving experience you could always explore the seafloor for yourself. Or you could just let the U.S. Geological Survey do all the diving for you.

As part of the Coastal & Marine Geology Program Seafloor Mapping Project the USGS has been busy collecting video and photography of the seafloor off of the U.S. coast. You can explore the seafloor videos and photos for yourself using the USGS's Video and Photograph Portal. From the portal you can access interactive maps of California, Pacific Islands, Pacific NW, Alaska, New England and the Mid Atlantic.

All these interactive maps include seafloor video and photo imagery which you can explore directly from the map. Locations where video imagery is available are marked red on the map. The photo imagery is colored blue. Just click on these blue & red dots to view the seafloor imagery.

Fantasy Map Generators

Oskar Stalberg's City Generator is a fun little application which can automatically create a map of a fictional town, complete with buildings, roads and trees.

Just click on the empty canvas to start generating a city map. You can then watch as urban sprawl starts to spread out from the location where you first clicked. If you don't like any of the gaps in your map you can click on the canvas again to add more buildings and roads to your randomly generated map.


The Medieval Fantasy City Generator is another fun tool. This one creates random fictional maps of medieval towns. Just choose your size of town or city and the Wizard of Maps will magically create your very own fantasy medieval map.

All the maps created by the Medieval Fantasy City Generator include a number of similar features. Each town or city is centered around a central market place. Each town is surrounded by a city wall. The city wall has up to four gates, where up to four roads enter the city. All of these roads end at the central market. A castle is also placed somewhere along each city's wall.


The Fantasy Map Generator is a d3.js based wizard for creating fantasy maps of fictional lands. The generator creates a fictional world complete with coast lines, regional borders and map labels. The generator also includes a number of customization options which allow you to change the color of the map and the number of features generated.

The Fantasy Map Generator is very much a work in progress and the author has lots of new developments in the pipeline. Details about these developments are covered in his blog Fantasy Maps for Fun and Glory.


If you enjoy fantasy worlds and maps then you should follow Uncharted Atlas on Twitter. This Twitter bot publishes random fantasy maps created by a fantasy map generator.

The details on how these maps are created can be viewed on Generating Fantasy Maps and Generating Placenames. The code for the generator is also available on GitHub.