Mapping

• Mapping the drug wars in Mexico

  February 1, 2012 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Diego Valle-Jones maps homicides and trafficking routes in Mexico.

  To unclutter the map and following the lead of the paper Trafficking Networks and the Mexican Drug War by Melissa Dell, I decided to only show the optimal highways (according to my own data and Google Directions) to reach the US border ports from the municipalities with the highest drug plant eradication between 1994 and 2003 and the highest 2d density estimate of drug labs based on newspaper reports of seizures. The map is a work in progress and is still missing the cocaine routes, but hopefully I'll be able to add them shortly.

  There's lots to look at and interact with here. To start, there are bubbles that cluster homicides by region and major highway routes in black.

  Click on any bubble and you get a time series for the corresponding area, going back to 2004. Or if you like, draw your own polygon to see the time series for specific regions. Pointers on the time series highlight significant events. There's also a slider that lets you see numbers on the map for different years. A layer underneath the bubbles lets you see high density areas for marijuana, opium, and drug labs.

  Take a look at the full map for yourself. This is nice work by Valle-Jones.

  [Diego Valle-Jones | Thanks, Diego]

• Geographic connectedness via Twitter locations

  January 24, 2012 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Eric Fischer has mastered the art of making use of geotagged things from social sites like Twitter and Flickr. In his most recent set, Fischer maps connectedness via geotagged tweet density (using Dijkstra's algorithm). I just got back from Berkeley a few hours ago, so the map of East Bay travels is of most interest to me.

  The main implication, as far as I am concerned, being that because of its traditional focus on downtown commuters, BART does not do a very good job of serving the most promising corridor in Berkeley and North Oakland, which would run approximately under San Pablo, University, the UC Berkeley campus, Telegraph, a jog over to College, Broadway, 40th/Linda, Grand, and some sort of route from the Grand-Lake district crossing Park Boulevard to near 14th and Foothill. Some of this, especially at the south end, would be difficult because of topography, but it could probably be approximated. Needless to say, if this were to be constructed, it would have to be pretty much entirely in subway to avoid tearing down the neighborhoods it would intend to serve.

  There are also maps for New York and Chicago.

• High resolution biomass map, at management scale

  January 18, 2012 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  In 2010, NASA released a map that shows world forest heights. Robert Simmon, using data from The Woods Hole Research Center, has produced an even higher resolution map, down to the management scale:

  In the end, the research team was able to construct a map with higher resolution and more precise detail than any large-scale map of forest biomass ever made. The map reveals the checkerboard patterns of logging in the old growth of the Pacific Northwest and the highly managed tree farms of the Southeast. In the Midwest, trees outline the rivers and the edges between farms, while forests re-emerge on land that was once cleared for crops. In the Mid-Atlantic and New England, lands that were stripped bare in the early years of the nation are now tree-covered again—though with many urban developments amidst the forest.

  [NASA | Thanks, Michael]

• Find out what percent you are in

  January 15, 2012 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Accompanying an article on the variations of the wealthiest one percent, The New York Times provides this interactive map to see what percent you're in. Simply enter your household income and see how you compare in metropolitan areas with over 50,000 households.

  Nation-wide, a household income over $383,000 puts you in the top one percent. However, a lower household income of $179,000 puts you in the top one percent in Flint, Michigan. The same wage in San Diego, California puts you only in the top eight percent.

  Also: what jobs the top one percent have.

  Update: There was also a fine print version.

  [New York Times]

• World subway paths at scale

  January 13, 2012 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Urban planner Neil Freeman maps the world's subway systems to scale in a minimal style resembling the scribbles or renderings of weird sea creatures by a two-year-old. I wish there were nodes to show stops, too, but the contrasts between the compact TRTA in Tokyo and RATP in Paris, and the spread out Seoul Metro and Transport for London is an interesting look.

  [Neil Freeman via @kennethfield]

• Designing Google Maps

  January 10, 2012 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Google Maps is one of Google's best applications, but the time, energy, and thought put into designing it often goes unnoticed because of how easy it is to use, for a variety of purposes. Willem Van Lancker, a user experience and visual designer for Google Maps, describes the process of building a map application — color scheme, icons, typography, and "Googley-ness" — that practically everyone can use, worldwide.

  We have worked (and driven) around the world to create a "map" that is a collection of zoom levels, imagery, angles, and on-the-ground panoramas all wrapped into one. Through these varied snapshots of our world, we are attempting to sew together a more seamless picture of the Earth—from its natural beauty to the surprising (and often absurd) details that make it our unique home. As our work progresses, new technologies give us the opportunity to get away from the limitations and complexity of standard cartography to provide a much more approachable and easy-to-understand map, loaded with data and information.

  Remember when we had to refresh the page to see more of map?

  [Core77 via @awoodruff]

• Map of Reddit

  January 9, 2012 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Reddit user Laurel Quade mapifies the wonderful world of Reddit. Each country represents an area of interest, and "cities" are sized by inhabitants. I'm not familiar enough with the communities to know how accurate it is, but judging by the comments, I'd say pretty good.

  [Redditland via @adamsinger]

• Where people are looking for homes

  January 6, 2012 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  In August 2006, real estate search site Trulia had 609,000 visitors. Five years later, there were 27 million. Trulia's most recent visualization shows this growth (bottom bar graph) and where people are searching for homes (map). Press play and watch it go. It's pretty much population density, but for me, the method is more interesting than the material in this case.

  The grass aesthetic is kind of nice. It looks like you have a one pixel blade of grass for each zip code with a significant search count (If only there was something to provide scale...), and where there's more search there's more grass.

  I also like the relatively simple tech behind the graphic. We usually see animated and interactive maps generating everything on the fly, but the maps and bar graphs for this are pre-generated for each month. Then each image is displayed one after the other chronologically like a flip book.

  [Trulia via @shashashasha]

• Hand-crafted wall map of the United States

  January 3, 2012 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Seth Stevenson, for Slate Magazine, covers cartographer David Imus' hand-crafted wall map, which Stevenson calls the greatest paper map of the United States you'll ever see.
  Continue Reading

• Mapped: Transportation check-ins on foursquare

  December 12, 2011 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Transportation check-ins on foursquare. This is from this past Thanksgiving, but relevant again with Christmas around the corner. White represents check-ins on highways and roads (really?), orange is for trains, and blue is of course is same-day check-ins at airports. I guess no one takes Amtrak cross-country anymore.

  [foursquare via datavis]

• Every death on the road in Great Britain

  December 7, 2011 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  As part of their series on road accidents, BBC News mapped every recorded death on the road in Great Britain, from 1999 to 2010. That's 2,396,750 road crashes. As you'd expect, the map looks a lot like population density, but check out the videos, which show twelve years of data compressed as if it were one week, played out over a few minutes. Each light represents an accident.

  Contrast with road fatalities in the United States.

  Update: The BBC headline and copy seem to conflict, but this seems to be just accidents, and I'm not sure when casualties enter the equation. At 2.4 million crashes over 12 years, that's about 455 per day.

  [BBC News via @aaronkoblin]

• What seven billion people looks like

  December 5, 2011 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Form design intern at Fathom, James Grady, maps population density in Dencity:

  Dencity maps population density using circles of various size and hue. Larger, darker circles show areas with fewer people, while smaller, brighter circles highlight crowded cities. Representing denser areas with smaller circles results in additional geographic detail where there are more people, while sparsely populated areas are more vaguely defined.

  While we've seen population density mapped, both directly and indirectly, the circle approach adds a different aesthetic that seems to add something about what it's like to live somewhere. Compare to a broader country-level map or one that uses only color. Doesn't this version feel like more?
  Continue Reading

• US road fatalities mapped, 9 years

  November 29, 2011 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  For The Guardian, ITO World maps about 370,000 road-related deaths from 2001 through 2009, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Association. The map is kind of rough around the edges, but it gets the job done. Easily zoom in to the location of choice either by clicking buttons, or type in the area you want in the search box. Zoom in all the way, and you'll notice each accident is represented by an icon indicating type of accident, the age of the person who died, and year of crash.

  As you might expect, accidents are more concentrated at city centers and on highways. What I didn't expect was all the pedestrians involved.

  [Guardian and ITO World]

• American migration map

  November 17, 2011 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Overhauling his migration map from last year, Jon Bruner uses five year's worth of IRS data to map county migration in America:

  Each move had its own motivations, but in aggregate they ­reflect the geographical marketplace during the boom and bust of the last decade: Migrants flock to Las Vegas in 2005 in search of cheap, luxurious housing, then flee in 2009 as the city’s economy collapses; Miami beckons retirees from the North but offers little to its working-age residents, who leave for the West. Even fast-growing boomtowns like Charlotte, N.C., lose residents to their outlying counties as the demand for exurban tract-housing pushes workers ever outward.

  Compared to last year's map, this one is much improved. The colors are more subtle and more meaningful, and you can turn off the lines so that it's easier to see highlighted counties when the selected county had a lot of traffic during a selected year. Speaking of which, you can see map the data for 2005 through 2009 via the simple bar graphs in the top right.

  Update: Jon also explains how he built this map sans-Flash on his own blog.

• What your favorite map projection says about you

  November 13, 2011 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  For the map nerds. xkcd says what your favorite map projection says about you. Mercator? "You're not really into maps."

• A month of swearing in 90 seconds

  November 7, 2011 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  A fun map by Jamie Popkin of Little Earth that animates the use of the F-bomb, C-word, and "regular swear word" over a month. There isn't much information about where the data comes from, but I'm guessing Twitter. Each circle represents the use of a swear word, and the intensity grows as time passes. Too bad it doesn't cover the world or the entire United States.

  [PottyMouth via @awoodruff]

• 7 billion people in the world: past, present and future

  October 31, 2011 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  According to estimates from the United Nations Population Division, there are now over seven billion people in the world. That's enough people to fill, like, an entire room. Yeah. Visualization firm Bestiario, for The Guardian, shows this growth by country, using their home-brewed visual programming language, Impure.

  There are a few options to play with. You can click on the bubble for a country to see the time series on the bottom for population from 1950 to 2010, through a projected 2100 population. Life expectancy for the same range is also shown. To compare geographically, you can also choose the year filters in the bottom right to compare, say, population in 1950 to that of 2010.

  India and China of course pop out in that range, whereas many African populations are expected to increase a lot, percentage-wise, during the next century.

  [The Guardian]

• Horrors coming to each state this Halloween

  October 31, 2011 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  So many movies, so many creepy crawlies that go bump in the night. Very Small Array continues its ongoing run of charts about movies with this map, just in time for Halloween. Watch out Indiana. Daylight Saving Time is coming to get you.

  Speaking of Halloween, my wife bought two bags of handout candy from Costco this year. I predict ten pounds will be going in my stomach next month.

  [Very Small Array]

• Language communities of Twitter

  October 27, 2011 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Eric Fischer maps language communities on Twitter using Chrome's open-source language detector. Each color, chosen to make differences more visibly obvious, represents a language. English is represented in dark gray, which is used just about everywhere, so it doesn't obscure everything else.

  The emergence of borders without actually drawing them in is interesting. There's a little bit of blending, but the splits are pretty well-defined. Especially in the Netherlands, where the tweet dispersal seems to be abnormally dense in that area. What's going on over there?

  There's also a world version, but Europe is where all the action's at.

  [Language communities via @enf]

• NASA maps a decade of fires, a global tour

  October 24, 2011 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  Using satellite data that goes back to 2002, NASA maps tens of millions of fires worldwide in this global tour.

  The tour begins by showing extensive grassland fires spreading across interior Australia and the eucalyptus forests in the northwestern and eastern part of the continent. The tour then shifts to Asia where large numbers of agricultural fires are visible first in China in June 2004, then across a huge swath of Europe and western Russia in August. It then moves across India and Southeast Asia, through the early part of 2005. The tour continues across Africa, South America, and concludes in North America.

  Bright shades of yellow indicate hotter fires, and darker shades of green represent higher levels of vegetation. Analyses show that 70 percent of fires occur in Africa, whereas only two percent occur in North America. Fascinating to watch vegetation grow and burn each year.