Mark Ovenden has launched a YouTube channel focusing on transit map design—which is what you’d expect from the author of Transit Maps of the World (along with other books on transit system design and transport maps: he is by no means a stranger to this blog). It launches today with its first episode, an on-the-ground look at the history of the Madrid metro system and its maps.
Mastodon for Mappers
There is now a Mastodon instance—mapstodon.space—for map and geospatial professionals and enthusiasts. If it had been up and running when I started The Map Room’s Mastodon account (previously), I might have signed up for it there. (Update Nov. 20: In the end, I’ve moved there: @maproomblog@mapstodon.space.)
It doesn’t matter that much which instance you sign up at (you can connect to any other Mastodon account on any other instance, unless your instance blocks that other instance, which happens when, for example, an instance is full of racist trolls), but instances have local feeds, which is nice when your instance is full of people who share your interests. I’ve already found several familiar faces and/or institutions at mapstodon.space.
Mapping the Shoreline of an Ancient Martian Ocean
“A recently released set of topography maps provides new evidence for an ancient northern ocean on Mars. The maps offer the strongest case yet that the planet once experienced sea-level rise consistent with an extended warm and wet climate, not the harsh, frozen landscape that exists today.” Press release, video, article (JGR Planets). [Universe Today]
Maps Mania’s Election Map Coverage
A shoutout to Keir Clarke at Maps Mania, whose coverage of election maps is such that whenever I think, “hey, that country just had an election, I ought to write a post collecting some maps of the results,” I usually find that Keir has already beaten me to the punch.
ESA Considering Low-Orbit Satellites to Improve Galileo System
The idea of using low-earth-orbit satellites to provide greater GPS/GNSS accuracy isn’t limited to commandeering the Starlink constellation. The European Space Agency is exploring the idea of using low-flying satellites to increase Galileo’s accuracy and robustness: make it possible to use indoors, make it more resistant to jamming and interference, and enable positioning at the centimetre level. They’re planning an in-orbit demonstration of around six satellites to test the proposition. The satellites would supplement the existing Galileo constellation rather than replace it: for one thing, they would rely on the Galileo satellites’ atomic clocks, which would allow the low-flying satellites to be an order of magnitude smaller in size. [Universe Today]
Chronotrains 1911
Benjamin Tran Dinh’s interactive isochrone map of Europe showing how far you can go by train in five hours (previously) has a new variant that does the same thing for 1911 France. Getting closer in time and place to those original isochrone maps. [Maps Mania]
What Do You Mean, Three Norths?
The Ordnance Survey is making a small deal over a so-called “triple alignment” of true north, magnetic north and grid north early this month: “the historic triple alignment will make landfall at the little village of Langton Matravers just west of Swanage in early November and will stay converged on Great Britain for three and a half years as it slowly travels up the country.”
Now, grid north is an artifact of a map projection’s grid lines. On a map grid there’s always some difference between true north and grid north except along the central meridian, which in Ordnance Survey maps is two degrees west of Greenwich. The further away from that central meridian, the greater the difference.
What the Ordnance Survey is hyping is that magnetic north, which is constantly shifting, has moved to a point where magnetic declination (the difference between true north and magnetic north) is zero along that central meridian. Kind of neat—if you’re using an Ordnance Survey map. Because this particular triple alignment only exists for Ordnance Survey maps. It’s all a bit anglocentric, really (especially the bit in the video that describes true north as “the line which runs through Britain to the North Pole”).
Report: Google to Shut Down Standalone Street View App
According to 9to5Google, Google looks like it’s getting ready to shut down its standalone Street View app (previously). “This standalone app served two distinct groups of people—those who wanted to deeply browse Street View and those who wanted to contribute their own 360° imagery. Considering the more popular Google Maps app has Street View support and Google offers a ‘Street View Studio’ web app for contributors, it should be no surprise to learn that the company is now preparing to shut down the Street View app.” If their report is correct, the shutdown would take place next March. [The Verge]
The Map Room on Mastodon
Given what’s been going on with Twitter recently, I figure that a Mastodon account for The Map Room might be useful, at least for those who feel the need to jump from Twitter to Mastodon. You can find it here: @maproomblog@mastodon.social Update Nov. 20: I’ve moved it to maproomblog@mapstodon.space.
I have no plans to shut down any of The Map Room’s other social media presences (Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter)—not at this time, anyway. And you can always subscribe via RSS or email—no intermediating platform required.
David Nuttall’s Maps of Fictional Places
Geofiction involves creating imaginary worlds through maps—maps of fictional places, but without the story attached—and David Nuttall has been at it since the age of five. He says he’s gotten better since then (his gallery, sorted by medium: see if he’s right). One of his maps is featured in the new (6th) volume of the NACIS Atlas of Design; Nat Case writes about it here:
David’s maps do wear the sorts of stylistic suits of clothes “regular” referential maps use. They studiously use stylesheets from particular eras and schools of cartography. And the “places” mapped, like most historical fiction, has strong roots in actual geographies. The patterns of settlement and transportation, the way landforms relate to one another: David knows his stuff. And so this map, “Kjempsavor Ayars,” looks like the Faeroes … and the Shetlands, the Outer Hebrides, or the islands of Norway. And the map artwork looks a lot like a kind of map-making from the early mid-20th century, where old schools of hand-lettering and drafting met an ever-more-engineered modern world. But, and this is such a puzzle to know what to do with: It’s not actually of anywhere. There’s no stories to back you up about this bridge or that ferry route, the Viking history of that settlement or the modern fishing industry at that port. It suggests there ought to be a history like that, but it unexpectedly leaves you with that job.
The Atlas of Design, vol. 6, costs $25 and can be bought here; David’s shop is here.
Mapping Without a Licence
An odd story out of California, reported on by Vice’s Chloe Xiang, from earlier this month. Ryan Crownholm’s website, MySitePlan.com, sells residential and commercial site plans. California’s Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists has fined him $1,000 for practising land surveying without a licence and ordered him to shut down the site. He’s fighting the citation in court with the assistance of the libertarian Institute for Justice: see their page on the complaint. Their argument is that California surveying laws are vague enough that a literal interpretation would make any map drawn in California, no matter how informal or non-authoritative, illegal.
It’s unlikely to say the least that the Board intends to ban Google Maps or every California-based instance of GIS. This is an edge case. Crownholm’s defence turns on his drawings being “non-authoritative” and a disclaimer that these are not legal surveys. The Board apparently thinks that’s insufficient. A spot of litigation seems required to clarify things.
NACIS 2022 on YouTube
Starlink as GPS Alternative
The point of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, consisting of some 3,000 low-orbiting satellites (so far), is to provide broadband internet access. But it could also be used as an alternative to GPS that might be less susceptible to jamming or spoofing. The U.S. Army and a team at the University of Texas at Austin were interested in the idea, but SpaceX told them to go pound sand in 2020. Now said UT team has gone and reverse-engineered the Starlink signal to pinpoint a location to within 30 metres. Not as good as GPS, obviously, but the researchers say that a software update—and SpaceX’s cooperation—could get that accuracy down to within a metre. Their (non-peer-reviewed) paper is here. Coverage: El Reg, TechCrunch.
Tracking the Russian Invasion of Ukraine with Satellite Imagery
Bloomberg’s MapLab newsletter looks at how freely available satellite imagery has enabled widespread monitoring of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
When the invasion of Ukraine started, these images started popping up on social media and in the news so often that it seems like most of us have access to advanced satellite imagery intelligence in real time. […] But the role of commercial providers in acquiring and sharing so many images with such regularity is unprecedented. Their rise has made military-grade intelligence available to pretty much everyone who wishes to look into it.
What’s notable is that because the satellites are commercial, the images aren’t classified.
The Tellurometer, with a Girl to Help
To start off your weekend, here’s a 1961 clip from British Pathé depicting the surveying and mapmaking technologies of the era. [Massimo]