The Atlas of Surveillance

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Atlas of Surveillance (screenshot)

The Electronic Freedom Foundation’s Atlas of Surveillance is an interactive map and searchable database of surveillance technologies used by law enforcement across the United States. “We specifically focused on the most pervasive technologies, including drones, body-worn cameras, face recognition, cell-site simulators, automated license plate readers, predictive policing, camera registries, and gunshot detection. Although we have amassed more than 5,000 datapoints in 3,000 jurisdictions, our research only reveals the tip of the iceberg and underlines the need for journalists and members of the public to continue demanding transparency from criminal justice agencies.” [Maps Mania]

Creating a Fantasy Map in Photoshop

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Chris Spooner’s step-by-step tutorial on how to create a fantasy map in Photoshop offers some insights on how to create the look and feel of a digitally generated fantasy map with Photoshop. Because its method of generating land masses is more or less random (it uses the cloud rendering tool to create landforms and topography), it’s not a tool you could use to generate a map of a specific secondary world—in other words, not something that could elevate your rough sketch into something professional looking—but it looks fun to play with. [Alejandro Polanco]

Georgia’s COVID-19 Maps: Bad Faith or Bad Design?

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

In How to Lie with Maps, Mark Monmonier warns that map readers “must watch out for statistical maps carefully contrived to prove the points of self-promoting scientists, manipulating politicians, misleading advertisers, and other propagandists. Meanwhile, this is an area in which the widespread use of mapping software has made unintentional cartographic self-deception inevitable.”1

So which of these two scenarios—careful contrivance or unintentional self-deception—is at play on the Georgia Department of Public Health’s COVID-19 daily status report page?

https://twitter.com/andishehnouraee/status/1284237474831761408

Twitter user @andishehnouraee notes the difference in scale between two county-by-county COVID-19 maps of Georgia. The earlier map maxes out at 4,661 cases per 100,000, the later (and as of this writing, current) map maxes out at 5,165 cases per 100,000. As they point out, there has been a 49 percent rise in total COVID-19 cases between the two maps, but you wouldn’t know it at a glance, because the scales have changed in the meantime.

Is this, as @andishehnouraee suggests, a concerted attempt to hide the severity of the outbreak in Georgia—or, as T. J. Jankun-Kelly thinks might be the case, something that happens when you max out the old scale. In other words: bad faith or bad design? (Or both: it can be both.)

Update 19 Jul: See Twitter threads from Darrell Fuhriman and Jon Schwabish disagreeing with critiques of the Georgia Public Health maps. It’s worth clarifying that only one map is ever viewable at the website: the map’s scale has changed over time, but it’s not like they’re side-by-side except in @andishehnouraee’s tweet.

Update #2: See Jon Schwabish’s blog post critiquing the data visualization critique in more detail.

Mapping Mask Wearing in the United States

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
The New York Times (screenshot)

Wearing a mask in public is increasingly being encouraged or required as a measure to slow the spread of COVID-19. The New York Times maps the rate of mask wearing in the United States. The county-level map is based on more than 250,000 responses to a survey conducted in early July, in which interviewees were asked how often they wore a mask in public.

The map shows broad regional patterns: Mask use is high in the Northeast and the West, and lower in the Plains and parts of the South. But it also shows many fine-grained local differences. Masks are widely worn in the District of Columbia, but there are sections of the suburbs in both Maryland and Virginia where norms seem to be different. In St. Louis and its western suburbs, mask use seems to be high. But across the Missouri River, it falls.

[MAPS-L]

Mapping COVID-19 Exposure Risk at Events

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Screenshot

The COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool is a county-by-county map of the U.S. that shows the risk of coming into contact with a COVID-positive individual at an event. “This site provides interactive context to assess the risk that one or more individuals infected with COVID-19 are present in an event of various sizes. The model is simple, intentionally so, and provided some context for the rationale to halt large gatherings in early-mid March and newly relevant context for considering when and how to re-open.” A slider changes the size of the event; risk goes up dramatically with bigger events, of course. Which you’d think would be intuitively obvious. You’d really think so, wouldn’t you. [Cartophilia]

A County-by-County COVID-19 Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Screenshot

COVD-19 is hitting the United States very hard right now. This interactive map from the Harvard Global Health Institute measures COVID-19 risk at the county level. The four colour-coded risk levels are based on a seven-day rolling average of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people: less than one means green (“on track for containment”); more than 25 means red (“tipping point”). It’s explained here. [Matthew Edney]

What an Atlas Does

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Chris Wayne’s article for Directions Magazine, “Stories and Lies: What an Atlas Reveals,” does something interesting that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before (which at this point is saying something): it talks about atlases as a class, exploring what they do and how they’re arranged. For example: “Page pairs are arguably the most effective format for blending narrative and cartography. With two facing pages, a self-contained story is told; then each page pair becomes a building block in the epic of the atlas itself.” In other words, it looks at atlases as objects in themselves. [WMS]

Maine Reviews Registry Containing Racist Place Names

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Portland Press-Herald: “State officials have removed an official registry of Maine islands for review after the Press Herald inquired about how at least five privately owned islands and ledges still have names incorporating racial slurs, decades after they were forbidden under state law.” The registry is the Coastal Island Registry, which lists state- and privately owned islands; a 1977 Maine law explicitly banned place names with the n-word, and was later amended to include slurs against indigenous peoples. [Osher Map Library]

Previously: Racist Place Names in Quebec, Removed in 2015, Remain on Maps; Washington State Senator Seeks Removal of Offensive Place Names; Review: From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow.

Racist Place Names in Quebec, Removed in 2015, Remain on Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Despite the fact that Quebec’s Commission de toponomie removed 11 offensive place names, some involving the n-word or its French equivalent, in 2015, those names still appear on maps from third parties, including Google Maps. The commission says it asked Google to remove the names, but as the person behind a new petition to get the names changed points out, the offensive names have, with one exception, only been removed, not replaced. (The commission says they’re working on it.)

I imagine what’s at play here is that Google and other mapmakers would honour a request to change a name, but not to leave a previously named place unnamed; but then again I’d have thought they wouldn’t be so tone deaf. I expect this to change presently.

Previously: Le Jardin au Bout du Monde.

Online Map Tracks Nitrogen Dioxide Concentrations

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Screenshot

A new online map tracks tropospheric global nitrogen dioxide concentrations—which we’ve seen drop sharply this year as the pandemic shut down economic activity. “This online platform uses data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite and shows the averaged nitrogen dioxide concentrations across the globe—using a 14-day moving average. Concentrations of short-lived pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide, are indicators of changes in economic slowdowns and are comparable to changes in emissions. Using a 14 day average eliminates some effects which are caused by short term weather changes and cloud cover. The average gives an overview over the whole time period and therefore reflects trends better than shorter time periods.” [ESA]

Previously: Mapping the Lockdown-Related Drop in Emissions; Emissions Drop Due to Coronavirus Outbreak.

Remains of Lost Fortifications in Gibraltar Found Thanks to 18th-Century Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The remains of a fortified wall, originally part of Gibraltar’s northern defences but since lost to rubble, vegetation and time, was re-discovered and excavated thanks to an eighteenth-century map of the territory held by the British Library.

The map clearly indicated the location of the Hanover Wall, which had stretched from the Tower of Homage—the Moorish castle at the pinnacle of the defences—down to the Hanover Batteries lower down the Rock, but whose location had been lost. The Hanover Wall appears (under another name) on other maps at least as far back as 1627, when Spain held Gibraltar.

Workers directed by Carl quickly found the remains of the wall, which remained intact, although fully submerged under dirt and foliage. The efforts of these men revealed the long-lost wall, a critical part of the Northern Defences which had been lost amidst the rapid changes in Gibraltar throughout the 20th Century.

Real-Time Transit Maps on Circuit Boards

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Traintrackr circuit board maps
Traintrackr

Harry Beck’s original London tube map was inspired by circuit diagrams, so it’s only fitting that TrainTrackr’s tracking maps showing the real-time positions of trains on the London Underground and Boston MBTA are literally circuit boards, using LEDs to indicate train positions. (They also have an LED map showing rainfall data in the British Isles.) Prices range from £99 to £249 (US$149 to $315). [Mapping London]

John G. Bartholomew, 100 Years After His Death

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

John G. BartholomewA short piece in the Edinburgh Evening News last April noted the 100th anniversary of the death of John G. Bartholomew (1860-1920), the fourth of six generations of mapmaking Bartholomews; their firm, John Bartholomew and Son, was responsible for the Times atlases before they were taken up by HarperCollins.

Speaking of his ancestor’s legacy, great-grandson, John Eric Bartholomew, told the Evening News that the fact John George Bartholomew is recognised as the man credited with being the first to put the name Antarctica on the map remains a great source of pride.

Little known is that, in 1886, Bartholomew had a brief flirtation with considering the name “Antipodea” for oceanographer John Murray’s map depicting the continent, before settling for Antarctica.

More about John G. Bartholomew at the Bartholomew family’s website and the NLS’s Bartholomew Archive. [WMS]

Previously: Robert G. Bartholomew, 1927-2017.

Apple Maps Updates Coming in iOS 14 This Fall

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Updates to Apple Maps announced at WWDC last month include electric vehicle routing, cycling directions, traffic and speed camera notifications, and the ability to derive your location when GPS signals are weak by scanning the buildings in your area (presumably limited to cities with Look Around). In addition, Apple’s new, built-from-the-ground-up map data, which as of last January now covers the entire U.S., will be coming to Canada, Ireland and the U.K. later this year. The updates are a part of iOS 14, which launches in the fall. More at Engadget and The Verge.

Update, 7 Aug: MacRumors has a piece on what’s new in iOS 14 Maps.

Meander

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Meander, created by Robert Hodgin, is “a procedural system for generating historical maps of rivers that never existed.” That statement takes some unpacking. It creates maps inspired by Harold Fisk’s 1944 map of the historical path of the Mississippi River with the Houdini 3D animation app. It starts with an input guideline; the river flows and meanders and oxbows from there. Then the system creates land plots that follow the path of the river. And then it creates a road network on top of that. And then it generates names for all these procedurally generated map features. In other words, Meander doesn’t just procedurally generate a river, it generates the entire country it runs through. Whoa.