The 2018 Winter Olympics Medal Map

Currently two of the most northerly countries in the world (Norway & Canada) are dominating the medals won at the 2018 PyeonChang Winter Olympics. It's not surprising that Noway are leading the medal haul. With 329 Winter Olympics medals in total (not including the 8 won so far in PyeonChang) Norway are the all-time leaders in the number of medals won at Winter Olympics.

PyeonChang 2018 is an interactive map showing the numbers of 2018 Winter Olympics medals won by each country in the world. Numbered markers on the map show how many medals individual countries have won. You can filter the map to show the numbers of gold, silver or bronze medals won by each country or even show the total numbers won by each country.

If you want to explore how many medals countries have won in total since the first Winter Olympics in 1924 in Chamonix, France then you might like this LA Times History of Winter Olympic Medals interactive. This interactive data visualization allows you to explore the medals won by country, color of medal, year and by sport.

Mapping the History of Jewish Cultures

Jewish Cultures Mapped is an interactive timeline and map exploring Jewish cultures around the world within their historical context. The map allows you to explore the history of Jewish culture throughout history and across the globe.

Jewish Cultures Mapped provides three main ways to navigate your way through the history of Jewish culture. The map allows you to explore this history by location. Zoom in on a city and you can explore all the cultural stories associated with the city by clicking on any of the map markers. The markers are colored by date (you can use the timeline to determine the date of each color).

You can also explore the history of Jewish Cultures using the timeline running along the bottom of the map. This interactive timeline allows you to navigate to different periods in Jewish history to explore the history of Jewish culture at that time.

Jewish Culture Mapped also allows you to explore Jewish cultures by category. The history of Jewish cultures has been ordered into a number of different categories, including Projects, People, Place and Organizations. This allows you to explore the history of Jewish Cultures by theme, individuals and organisations, companies & groups.

The Katowice Building Age Map

The Evangelical Church of the Resurrection is the oldest building in Katowice. It was built in 1856. If you are interested in discovering more historic buildings in this Polish city then you should explore this building age map of Katowice. Katowice Buildings is an interactive map showing the age of nearly all the buildings in the city.

The colors of the building footprints on the map show in which historical period the buildings were constructed. You can select to view only buildings constructed in particular periods by using the interactive key. This key shows how the buildings have been categorized into important historical periods for the city. This allows users to view and compare selected periods and makes it easy to find buildings from specific periods, e.g. only those buildings erected before World War II.

Many of the buildings have additional information attached to them, which can be viewed by hovering over a building footprint on the map. This information may include the actual date of construction, names of the architect(s) and links to Wikipedia articles.

Here are a few other building age maps:

• Paris
• Brooklyn
• New York
• Los Angeles
• Barcelona
• Chicago, Chicago
• Detroit
• Ljubljana (Slovenia)
• Milwaukee
• Moscow
• Netherlands, all of the Netherlands - again
• New York
• Portland
• Reykjavík
• Vancouver
• St. Louis
• Atlanta
• Indianapolis

Galleries of Base Maps & Map Styles

OpenWhateverMap is a strange looking map. This interactive map of the world appears to be a random hotchpotch of different map styles. It appears this way because this is exactly what it is.

OpenWhateverMap is a showcase for a number of different base map styles that can be used with any of the leading interactive map libraries. It includes base maps designed by Mapbox, OpenStreetMap, Thunderforest,  Stamen and CartoDB.

If you like the look of one of the random map styles then click on the map tile on the map. This will open an information window containing the base map's template URL and the attribution you need to use the style in your own interactive maps.


Leaflet Provider Demo is another collection of base map styles for interactive maps. The demo map provides views of a number of OSM, MapQuest, Stamen and other map layers within a Leaflet map. The map even includes a JavaScript snippet for each layer so you can just cut and paste the code into your own Leaflet map.

Leaflet Provider Demo is geared towards Leaflet users and the example code snippets are for use with Leaflet,js. However I don't believe any of the base maps on display are restricted in their terms of use to only being used only with Leaflet. If you want to use a style with a different mapping library you can still get the base map's template URL from the provided code snippet. 

Mapping American Debt

The Urban Institute's Debt in America visualizes debt levels in every county in the USA. The map allows you to view the median debt levels in a county and compare them to debt levels for the state and the country as a whole. The map also allows you to view the average household income in every state.

Using the map sidebar you can select from a number of debt metrics, including the share and value of medical debt in each county. If you then click on a county on the map you can view the debt totals for the county in the map sidebar. The debt totals for the county, the state and for the whole country are also shown beneath the map.


$1.3 trillion in student debt is owed by 42 million Americans. Mapping Student Debt shows the average student loan balance in each household at zip-code level in the United States.

If you enter the name of a town or a zip-code into the map you can view choropleth leyers showing the average household student loan balance, the delinquency rate and the median household income in that area.

Below the map is some interesting analysis of the geography of student debt across the United States. For example, the map reveals that delinquency is more prevalent in low-income zip-codes than in better off neighorhoods. Affluent zip codes, on the other hand, have higher than average student loan balances per household.

A Million Maps

A number of Twitter users have been sharing their first Mapbox maps today, using the hashtag #1millionexploring. The maps being shared include the good, bad and indifferent. Here are a few of my favorites from the maps being shared:

Elevation Lines - a Joy Division inspired elevation map
Joy Division San Francisco - a Joy Division inspired map of San Francisco elevation
The Lord of the Rings Theme Map - a map inspired by LOTR
Coloring Book - made 'to print for my kids to color on'
Geologic Map of Arizona, Geologic Map of Vermont
Unused Building Height - how much taller buildings in San Francisco could be built
Occupy Directory - international movements concerned with justice and equality
West Side Stories - Gentrification in West Oakland
D.C. Snow Plow Map - where the city snow plows have been and how recently

I think my first Mapbox map might be this garish Kandinsky inspired map, an early attempt at playing on Mapbox Studio

OK - that's not quite one million maps. You can find more though using the #1millionexploring hashtag on Twitter.

Pyeongchang 2018

I remember the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics very fondly. The reason why I still occasionally think about the Sochi Olympics is entirely down to the beautiful Sochi 2014 Interactive Map. This fun animated map features some beautiful illustrations and includes a lot of information about the Winter Games, the different sports and the Sochi venues for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Unfortunately the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics doesn't seem to have inspired a similarly beautiful map. The Past is Prologue in the Race for Olympic Gold is an Esri story map created for this year's games. While it might not be able to compete with the Sochi 2014 Interactive Map on the beauty front it is still an interesting exploration of the history of winning gold at the Winter Olympics.

Past is Prologue in the Race for Olympic Gold looks at how many Winter Olympic golds different countries have won, how each country's gold haul has changed over time and the global distribution of Winter Olympic gold medals (this last one even has an interactive map).


If you do want to get to know Pyeongchang a little better then you can Explore Pyeongchang on Google Earth. This provides a short tour in Google Earth of some of Pyeongchang's most important sights and locations.  If you select the 'Voyager' option in Google Earth and navigate to the sports section you can also find a tour of the Olympic torch relay for the 2018 Winter Olympics. This takes you on a journey through a few of the 17 Korean cities and provinces the Olympic torch visited on the way to Pyeongchang.

Australia's Million Dollar Homes

The median house price in the Bellevue Hill suburb of Sydney is now $5,386,123. Five years ago the average house price was $2,963,568. 18.7% of Sydney's suburbs now have a median house price value above $2 million.

CoreLogic’s Mapping the Market interactive map can tell you the average house price in every suburb in Australia and how that price has changed over the last five years. Using the map you can discover a typical house price in each Australian neighborhood.

If you use the navigation tools in the map menu you can take a closer view of the housing market in each of Australia's major cities. For each city you can view the overall median value for houses and real estate units and how they have changed since 2012. You can also select individual suburbs on the map to view the median value of its housing market.


37.7% of Melbourne suburbs now have a median house value in excess of $1 million. As a whole the city’s median house price is $720,000. Urbis' Million-Dollar Melbourne map explores the growth of million dollar homes in the city since 1987.

The map includes a timeline slider which allows you to view the spread of Melbourne's million dollar homes. As you move the timeline the map shows areas where there have been more than three $1M+ house sales within 1km in the selected year.

The Disappearing Rivers of the American West

Humankind has had a huge impact on the rivers of the American West. Nearly half of all river miles in the West are no longer in their natural state. Disappearing Rivers allows you to explore how humans have impacted on rivers in the West and how far they have been unnaturally altered.

Disappearing Rivers is an interactive map which shows the degree to which all the rivers in the American West have been altered by humankind. All the rivers on the map are color-coded to reflect the percentage that each river has been altered. This is the combined percentage of floodplain and river flow which has been altered by human beings. A drop-down menu allows you to change the map layer to show river & stream flow restriction or altered floodplains instead.

If you select the 'Threats' option you can view dams, major human diversions, culverts and bridges on the map. If you select the option to view dams then scaled markers are added to the map. These markers show the locations and the sizes of river dams in the West.

Disappearing Rivers includes a detailed look at one river to highlight the kind of alteration that rivers have suffered in the American West. Over half the Colorado River is dammed, diverted or otherwise altered from its natural state. Disappearing Rivers uses a story map format to travel along the Colorado River, showing how agriculture, irrigation runoff, nearby mines, dams and diversions have combined to change the natural state of the river.

Light Pollution & How to Avoid It

Lots of people have created interactive maps showing how the Earth looks from space at night. These maps are usually based on NASA's 'Black Marble' or 'Night Lights' satellite imagery. Are the stars out tonight? also uses NASA's imagery of the Earth at night, like many of these other global night pollution maps. However it goes much further than most light pollution maps by exploring the history of light pollution, its global impact and those areas of the world which are now being protected from light pollution.

As you progress through Are the stars out tonight? you learn about how the combined effect of the invention of the electric light-bulb and the urbanization of the world's population has led to global light pollution. You can see the global effect of this electrified urban population on NASA's night-time satellite imagery of the Earth.

The story map goes on to explore the different types of light pollution and the impact light pollution has on astronomers and on animal and plant life as well. Most animals and plants can't escape human light pollution. Ironically many humans can. Scientists around the world are pushing for 'Dark Sky' initiatives, to establish and protect areas unaffected by light pollution. Are the stars out tonight? goes on to map dark-sky designated areas in North America, South America and Europe.