Google’s low- and medium-resolution satellite imagery has gotten a comprehensive update with new imagery from the Landsat 8 satellite. It’s the first such update to its seamless, cloud-free mosaic in three years. The Atlantic has detailed coverage (that helpfully points out, among other things, that this doesn’t apply to the highest zoom levels: those images come from DigitalGlobe satellites and aerial photography).
Category: Web Mapping
Fifteen Years of Migrant Deaths
Moris Büsing’s interactive map chronicles the deaths of migrants and refugees trying to reach Europe over the past 15 years—more than 32,000 deaths in all. [Boing Boing]
India Says No to Street View
Citing security concerns, India’s interior ministry has rejected Google’s plans to bring Street View to that country.
Satellite Imagery of Fort McMurray Wildfire Damage
Satellite imagery from the Pléiades-1A satellite showing the extent of wildfire damage caused to Fort McMurray, Alberta can be viewed through a web-based mapping application released by the government of Alberta. (Doesn’t work in Safari for Mac; works fine in Chrome.) [CBC News]
Previously: DigitalGlobe Satellite Imagery of Fort McMurray; Fort McMurray Fire Roundup.
‘What Happened to Google Maps?’
In an essay called “What Happened to Google Maps?” Justin O’Beirne notes that between 2010 and 2016 Google Maps has changed from emphasizing cities at the expense of roads to emphasizing the road network at the expense of cities—a turn he chalks up to the shift to mobile device usage—and turns to a 1960s-era paper map to demonstrate what he thinks a balanced Google Maps should look like. An interesting look at the design choices in online maps. [Cartophilia]
Rail Travel in Ukraine
This interactive map of the number of intercity rail trips between Ukrainian cities would be a little easier for me to parse if I could read Ukrainian, but I agree with Aleks Buczkowski’s assessment that it’s well designed. [Geoawesomeness]
Green Mars
Kenneth Field’s map of Mars (note updated link) now includes an option to add oceans, with checkboxes to fill the landscape to various elevations.
You can irrigate the planet below the areoid on this map using the water layers. You’ll notice the water layers aren’t blue. On Earth, water appears blue due to red, orange, yellow and green wavelengths of light being absorbed more strongly than blue and also the reflectence of the blue sky. Since Mars has relatively little atmosphere and it’s farther from the sun it’s likely water will appear differently. We’re imagining wavelengths will be absorbed differently, perhaps returning an alien green?
[Maps Mania] A print version is also available: it’s a one-gigabyte PDF that measures 38″×72″ [Kenneth Field].
Previously: Kenneth Field’s Map of Mars.
Immigrants in France
Le Télégramme, a French newspaper based in Brittany, maps the percentage of immigrants in France by canton; a second map shows the largest source of immigration (Portugal shows up more than any other country). In French. [Maps Mania]
Putting Slums on the Map
In Smithsonian, Erin Blakemore explores the on-the-ground, amateur efforts to get disadvantaged communities—slums, shanty towns, whatever they may be called—on the map, like the Map Kibera and Mapillary projects, and the implications of such projects.
Sterling Quinn, who is earning his Ph.D. in geography at Penn State, notes that there are downsides to user-generated maps. Just because an underserved community makes its way onto the map doesn’t mean it becomes less vulnerable, says Sterling. “Putting yourself on the map may make you more vulnerable to people who want to exploit the area,” he tells Smithsonian.com.
Previously: The Geospatial Revolution Project, Episode Four; Crowdsourcing Street Photos of Dar es Salaam.
Edmonton Building Age Map
Online maps showing the age of buildings in cities seem to be a thing. In addition to the map of Paris we saw in February, there’s also this map for Edmonton, Alberta. (Wired put together a list of other cities’ building age maps in 2013.) [via]
The Washington Post on Google Maps Errors
“Although Google Maps is fast becoming the ultimate authority on navigation,” writes Karen Turner for the Washington Post, “the program is proving vulnerable to mistakes and hackers with results that at times can be catastrophic.” Turner focuses on Google and problems with its error-correction and verification processes; it’s worth remembering, though, that all online maps suck in some way: no map service has a monopoly on accuracy or error. [via]
The Design Details of Interactive Maps
Axis Maps’s Dave Heyman offers some advice on interactive map design—specifically, on the details, like colour usage and data interfaces. “Academic cartography provides good guidelines for thematic cartography, but interactivity and user-interface design are often ‘I know it when I see it’ type of things. What follows are 4 quick design concepts and techniques that can be applied in many situations to improve the look and feel of an interactive map.” [via]
A Multilingual Map of India
Arun Ganesh talks about making a multilingual map of India: “Hardly anyone in India even knows that OSM can handle regional languages, simply because its not visible anywhere on the map. After some recent interest from the community in making regional language maps for openstreetmap.in, I decided to give this a shot to make a multilingual place map for India using OSM and Mapbox Studio that I have been playing with recently.”
Fantasy Football and Election Maps
Development Seed’s Anna Scalamonga discusses the work they did on the Washington Post’s live interactive election maps. “Our challenge was to build a real-time data app that engages users and make it easy to track the most important information. Inspired by interactions and visual presentation from fantasy football apps, we designed tools for live election tracking that make it clear when the data is changing and provide contextual information to make these changes understandable.”
Kenneth Field’s Map of Mars
Another online map of Mars, this one titled (Is There) Life on Mars? and produced by Kenneth Field using ArcGIS. On the information pane he says, cryptically, “There’s a hidden element on the map that explains why I really made it. Happy hunting.” [via]