The John Snow Map

The first 'modern' map perhaps, depicting the spatial relationship between cholera cases & drinking water supply in 1854 in London. Here are two great ways to explore it:

• Interactive Web App
• Great zoomable version

The interactive web app is nice, but also an example of how much more data viz and data storytelling you can do with an Esri Story Map.

Pipeline Spills

Here's an interesting interactive map showing pipelines, pipeline operators, and spills. That's about it. The map is not very professional, for example: use aliases for the field names and include a link to the data. This would have been better in Tableau in my opinion.

World Population Density

This World Population Density map is nicely-done and interactive, displaying population statistics in a pop-up window that adjust to your zoom level.

Germany's Power Sources

Well, here it is: Power sources in Germany (not all that impressive I think).

Boom to Bust

Boom to Bust by Enigma Labs is a well-designed Story Map showing the rise and fall of oil and gas exploration in North Dakota.

Who lives where?

'Raw' demographic data does not really tell the story of who actually lives in a particular area. Now we have Esri and CartoDB essentially competing for your attention (and business):

• CartoDB Demographics (part of CartoDBs Observatory)
• Esri Tapestry

Spies in the Skies

Nice map by BuzzFeed: Spies in the Skies

The Global Nuke Map

Mapped: The world’s nuclear power plants by CarbonBrief - simple and interactive.

Sexism in Location and Education: The Gender Income Gap

This is pretty incredible: the gender income gap of college graduates. Apparently, the data are from the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard.


Compare that to - for example - The Best and Worst Places to Grow Up: How Your Area Compares.

World City Population 1950 - 2030

World City Population 1950 - 2030 is a nicely-done interactive map using stacked graduated symbols - and that actually works in this case. Also nice: a Map Guide and Analysis pop-up window is included.

Drought Mapping using CartoDB

This is a great tutorial: Make a Thematic Map of Current Drought Conditions (using CartoDB)

Commons Lab

Commons Lab is (as they state on the website) a database of federal crowdsourcing and citizen science projects. Somehow I'm not impressed...am I missing something here?

Using CartoDB

CartoDB is one of these hip new online mapping environments and here is a selection of useful resources:

• Using different projections (i.e. no Web Mercator)
• More about projections
• Visualize 2015 Urban Populations with Proportional Symbols (tutorial)

Wikipedia's Climate Data on an Interactive Map

This map/visualization was quite popular this week: Wikipedia's Climate Data on an Interactive Map. I still think these Voronoi maps are ugly and the map seems a bit wonky - I can't figure-out the month wheel. The animated GIFs are fun:

Global Air Pollution

Global air pollution mapped by Yale University between 2000 and 2012 for countries and cities using CartoDB. Visually not all that impressive in my opinion, but they provide a nice description of the mapping process.

A slightly-different version can display cities, satellite data, and dirty power plants.

Volcanoes!

Here is a nice interactive map of all known volcanic eruptions of the last 2,000 years. Even better: Richard Husdon published a great tutorial on how to create this map using public data and CartoDB. (via Map Mania)

Earthquakes!

Visualizing earthquakes is pretty satisfying: they happen at a specific location and time, the global database extends back 100+ years, and they occur in a distinct spatial pattern that tells us a lot about the inner working of our planet. Here are three great visualizations:

1. As an animated map (1915 to 2015)
2. As a heatmap (1915 to 2015)
3. As a beautiful static map

Now...which data viz is the 'best'?

How about tremors over the past day, week, or month?
Or Understanding Earthquakes (based on 10 years of data)?

Odyssey.js by CartoDB

Odyssey.js by CartoDB is a nice way to create story maps - an alternative if you will to Esri Story Maps - give it a try using this tutorial.

Rivers Dams 1800 to 2002

This is a very nice presentation by the folks from CartoDB: Mapping the spread of dams in the US. Also included is a map of dams per state, maps in major watersheds, and a risk assessment map for all dams.

Landsat 8 on AWS and more

Landsat and Amazon were in the mapping news this week as the USGS and NASA are now making Landsat 8 data freely-available to anyone via the Amazon Cloud. Here's more from Jill Clark at Spatial Reserves: Landsat 8 Data Now Available on Amazon AWS - looks like the actual spectral bands are available, plus the metadata.

Here are two interesting Landsat 8 maps (via Maps Mania):

1. Landsat 8 creates a complete mosaic of the Earth every 16 days. Of course that does not mean that the image that your are interested in is actually usable - clouds are always an issue.
2. Landsat live is as close as you can get to a real-time picture of the entire Earth. Again, as before, your place of interest may be under clouds...just wait 16 days!