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January 2019 – Quiz Time! Firstly, a very belated happy new year! It’s still January as I write this, so think I can just about get away with it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a very busy start to the year, so thought I’d take a moment to slow down with this geography quiz. Turns out that both out of this world and on it, it’s been also been a busy month in geographical news. How much have you been paying attention to it? Find out with this short quiz below.   Happy Mapping, David  Read More →

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Further depth Those who’ve explored this site in the past will know that I have analysed the geography of train networks on multiple occasions, particularly in the United Kingdom. Maybe it’s my bias being a rail commuter, but it’s a topic I’m returning to again! Access to train networks shapes many people’s lives – and is two-fold. Am I near to a station and are the trains reliable? To investigate ‘access’, we start by exploring the relationship between population density and station density in the UK. Are there ‘gaps’ in train station provision? Next we examine then the temporal and spatial patterns of train punctuality.Read More →

World Cup Quiz

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Let’s get quizzical So today I’m going to be doing something a little bit different to normal. Rather than rambling about a great map or geographical subject, here’s something a bit more fun. I’ve talked about geography and football before (see here and here) and particularly recently with the World Cup currently taking place in Russia. Some of you may have enjoyed the excitement of the tournament, while some may have no interest in football whatsoever. However, hopefully some sort of love of geography and maps brings us all together – therefore I’ve made an interactive quiz below. While it relates to the 32 countries takingRead More →

GlobalFishingWatch_map

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Gone fishing Quick question – what do Leonardo Di Caprio, a New Zealand data visualisation agency and David Attenborough have in common? They have all used highly effective visual tools to highlight threats to marine life*. Allow me to explain. I recently stumbled upon a striking and important interactive map from an organisation called ‘Global Fishing Watch’ (GFW), an organisation which is supported by the Leonardo Di Caprio Foundation. In the words of the Oscar winning actor himself,  “with the data Global Fishing Watch provides, governments, fishery management organizations, researchers and the fishing industry can work together to rebuild fisheries and protect critical marine habitats.”Read More →

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For those of us in the fortunate position to be in paid work, we are lucky if our travel to work is a simple one. The last century has been the increase in flexible working practices in many businesses, the geographic centralisation of economy and rise of private transport in most Western countries. This has led to it being common for many to not live in the same city/area, let alone the same part of town as your place of work. Therefore, commuting time has become of greater interest to companies and employees, as well as influencing property prices, climate change and transport infrastructure. This isRead More →

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I’m a self confessed Dutchophile. There’s something about the colour ‘Oranje’, the unique sound of the language (which I’m ‘trying’ to learn), the windmills, clogs, tulips, hagelslag, stroopwafels, Edam cheese and (until recently challenged) liberal attitudes. I feel there is much to admire about the resourcefulness of the people of the Netherlands, once a economic powerhouse in the 1600s, where making the most of limited land has been vital. This was particularly embodied by the philosophy of ‘Totaal’, where the ability of space to have multiple uses influenced (particularly architectural) philosophies within the general liberal Dutch culture of the 20th Century. Famously, this was reflectedRead More →

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It’s been a while since I’ve added to this feature for various reasons, but thanks to the ‘The Pudding‘, a superb infographics and ‘visual essay’ based site, there is a excellent and important entry for Map of the Day. The Shape of Slavery evidences historical and modern day racism, by providing geographical representations of the areas of United States of America where proportion of African-Americans have been over time, the numbers of slaves up until it was outlawed, and the number of (black) incarcerations per state. This is a well designed and thought out web map, which utlises topojson.js and other Javascript libraries, to tie inRead More →

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Happy St David’s Day/Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus to all those around the world with Welsh links or sympathies. For those unaware, St David’s Day on 1st March,  is the national day of Wales, celebrating the saint day of the patron saint of Wales, David, and is an excuse (if ever needed) to stock up on Welsh flags, sup some Brains Beer, tuck into Welsh rarebit and Welsh cakes, and sing Calon Lân while watching reruns of Wales beating England in rugby. With all stereotypes out the way, the nation building of Wales/Cymru is an interesting one. The history is uncertain, but Wales has it’s originsRead More →

Urban Population Change 2010-2015

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One of the things I’ve enjoyed so far in creating The Map Den, is being able to share some of the latest and interesting pieces of work and tips coming out of the GIS and mapping industry. The ‘science of where‘ community is alive and strong. However, it’s time I did some original mapping content myself. Today I’m starting simple, but nonetheless importantly, looking at global urban and rural population increases. Created through static maps created in ArcGIS and joining with population data from United Nations between 2010-2015, these maps investigate the continuing phenomenon of global population increase and the urban to rural shift. WeRead More →

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Fantastic bit of code and tutorial about aggregating point data for JSON objects using SQL. geomaticblog NOTE: I’ll use CARTO but you can apply all this to any webmapping technology backed by a modern database. Get all the data So we start with the typical use case where we have a one to many relationship like this: Easy peasy, we have a map with many stacked points. From here you can jump to this excellent post by James Milner about dense point maps. My example is not about having thousands of scattered points that at certain zoom levels overlap. Mine is a small set ofRead More →