Web Mapping – Page 8 – The Map Room

Le Grand Paris en Cartes

Published on 22 January 201622 January 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Le Grand Paris en Cartes is a collection of interactive maps and infographics about the Grand Paris Express, a multi-billion-euro project to extend Paris’s Metro and rapid transit network deep into the surrounding Île-de-France region (if you can read French, the official site and French Wikipedia page provide a lot more information). These maps not only illustrate Parisians’ commuting routes and Metro usage, but also (see above) the kind of sociological data that underpins transit planning: employment centres, population density and so forth. In French. [via]

Cities and Memory

Published on 22 January 201622 January 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Cities and Memory is an exercise in sound mapping: a map of ambient sounds from hundreds of locations. Stuart Fowkes writes, “Every location and every faithful field recording on the sound map is accompanied by a reworking, a processing or an interpretation that imagines that place and time as somewhere else, somewhere new. The listener can choose to explore locations through their actual sounds, or explore interpretations of what those places could be—or to flip between the two different sound worlds at leisure.” It’s open to submissions.

Urban Scratchoff

Published on 21 January 201624 January 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Using an interactive interface to compare present-day and historical maps and aerial imagery is done all the time—on this website I use a slider plugin—but Chris Whong’s Urban Scratchoff uses a familiar metaphor to compare present-day aerial images of New York City with imagery from 1924. Give it a try. More on how Chris did it. [via]

Mapping New York City’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Published on 21 January 201624 January 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

By cross-referencing public data on energy consumption with georeferenced tax lot data, Jill Hubley has created an interactive map of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions by property, colour-coded to show the biggest emitters. More on how she did it, and what the data reveal. [via]

Beware of Fake Snowfall Maps

Published on 19 January 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Meterologist Dan Satterfield warns about fake snowfall maps appearing on social media. “[R]esponsible meteorologists do not post raw model data more than 3 days away from an event. It’s just not likely to be correct, and could actually give someone a false sense that the storm will not impact them. […] If you see a map showing snowfall totals, it almost certainly did not come from NOAA, or an AMS Certified meteorologist. There are even hoax maps floating around from storms in the past” (emphasis his).

Earthquakes in Canada Since 1980

Published on 18 January 201618 January 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

cbc-earthquakes

CBC News has an interactive map of all earthquakes in Canada since 1980 that were higher than magnitude 4.0. The page also has a map of fault lines in British Columbia.

The Best New York City Maps of 2015

Published on 16 January 201624 January 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Over on Metrocosm, Max Galka has assembled his pick of the 10 best New York City maps of 2015. The list includes maps of buildings, trees and languages, pathogens and crime, housing and “interestingness,” among others. [via]

Google Maps Updates

Published on 15 January 201616 January 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Recent Google Maps updates include driving mode, an Android-only navigation mode that, as Android Police describes it, “uses your location history and web searches to make assumptions about where you’re going and give traffic updates and ETAs as you travel” [via]. Also this week, the world’s largest model railway, Hamburg’s Minatur Wunderland, was added to Street View. Quite engrossing if you’re into model trains.

Japanese Municipal Economy Map

Published on 15 January 201616 January 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

An online map of Japanese municipalities that uses census data to measure their relative economic health. [via]

Mapping the Refugee Crisis

Published on 12 January 201616 January 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Here are two interactive maps that show the scale of recent refugee migrations. Lucify’s interactive map (screenshot above) shows the flow of asylum seekers to European countries since 2012. And this interactive map, compiled by The Conversation from UNHCR data, shows the size of refugee populations originating from or residing within each country from 1975 to 2010. In each case, the numbers grow with each passing year. More from Scientific American’s SA Visual blog. [via]

Mapping CDRC Datasets

Published on 11 January 201616 January 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Data available through the Consumer Data Research Centre’s map interface include age of residential properties (modal age and percent built after 1945) and top method of travel to work (screenshot above) for the U.K.

Mapping Aid Worker Attacks

Published on 7 January 201616 January 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

An interactive map of attacks on aid workers since 2000. IRIN: “This map, a joint product between IRIN and Humanitarian Outcomes, is the first time ever the full scope of aid worker security events has been presented in visual form, which can be searched and filtered and browsed. It shows events from the beginning of 2000 until the end of May 2015. It’s a sobering testament to the dangerous work of saving lives.” [via]

And in Google Maps News …

Published on 26 August 201518 November 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Google’s Map Maker is in the process of reopening, with six countries reopening on August 10 and another 45 countries last Monday. Map Maker, Google’s tool allowing users to make changes to Google Maps, was suspended last May after some embarrassing edits came to light. Regional leads are now in place to review user edits before they go live on the map.

If mapcodes and other geographical shortcodes aren’t Googly enough for you, take a look at Open Location Codes, a Google-developed, open-sourced project. Generated algorithmically rather than with data tables. Announced for developers last April, they can now be used in Google Maps searches.

RIP Yahoo Maps

Published on 4 June 201518 November 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Citing changing priorities, Yahoo announced today that Yahoo Maps is among the products that it will be shutting down; it’ll go dark at the end of this month. “However,” says Yahoo chief architect Amotz Maimon, “in the context of Yahoo search and on several other Yahoo properties including Flickr, we will continue to support maps.” Business Insider, TechCrunch, VentureBeat.

For a few years Yahoo Maps got frequent upgrades and improvements. The current map platform launched in May 2007; it replaced a Flash-based map engine that first debuted as a beta in November 2005 and became the default map a year later, replacing an even older map service that, if my memory serves, was like the pre-Google Maps MapQuest. Since then Yahoo Maps has stagnated—but for a while there, before Google Maps became the dominant juggernaut it is today, it could have been a contender.

Map Anniversaries

Published on 10 February 201518 November 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Google Maps turned 10 years old on Sunday—a milestone observed by Samuel Gibbs in the Guardian. See also Liz Gannes’s retrospective at Re/Code. My reaction on launch day was pretty effusive—I was blown away mainly by the user interface. But it wasn’t immediately dominant: it took roughly four years for Google to surpass MapQuest in traffic.

Meanwhile, the Pro version of Google Earth, which used to cost $400/year, is now free. Google Earth itself launched in June 2005, so is approaching its own 10-year anniversary, but it began its existence a few years earlier as Keyhole EarthViewer 3D.

Speaking of map anniversaries, National Geographic Maps is marking its centennial.

The photo above marks another anniversary: It shows Apollo 14 astronaut Ed Mitchell consulting a map during his second lunar EVA on February 6, 1971. Apollo 14 returned to Earth 44 years ago yesterday.