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Mapping of the Arctic region has historically proved to be a challenge for cartographers and geo-scientists, though as referred to in a previous article (see here),  local knowledge is valuable in contributing to knowledge of the often perceived ‘wilderness’ by ‘Westerners’. In many ways, as alluded to in Alastair Bonnett’s brilliant book, Off the Map, despite living in an age of digital mapping, there is much geographic knowledge still to be discovered. This is perhaps most relevant and important, given global warming, in the Arctic region, and two recent articles associated to this piqued my interest in this area, and thought it would be aRead 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 →

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While this site lives a digital world of geographical information, there is nothing quite like going to visit a real life, physical ‘map den’, and for those who are able to, I’d highly recommend going to visit The British Library in Central London. Their map room has one of largest collections of geographical information, with approximately 4.5 million entities. This alone should be a pull factor to have a ‘map’ day in London. However, up until March 1st 2017, there is a further reason to venture down, and this is because of the fantastic “Maps and the 20th Century: Drawing the Line” exhibition which isRead 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 →

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So this isn’t strictly a GIS or mapping tool or tip that I thought I’d share, but considering the amount of time and importance of joins, spreadsheets, datasets and databases in the profession, or even outside geospatial work, this little tool called ‘Fuzzy Lookup’ may come in handy. Often when trying to query, search or join up one table to another, or for whatever purpose, VLOOKUP can do just the job, ‘vertically looking up’ one value, in order to display another. If you are new or unfamiliar to VLOOKUP, Debra Dalgleish has an awesome blog, Contextures to help with this and much more even forRead More →

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How would you define a map? A type in a popular search engine beginning with ‘G’, has a familiar definition, “a diagrammatic representation of an area of land or sea showing physical features, cities, roads, etc.”, and indeed the word map derives from the word ‘mappa’ meaning sheet/napkin. However, ironically though ‘map’ isn’t restricted to this two dimensional version we can fold up; as we all know, we live a digital age where you navigate the world around you with your laptop or smartphone too. But what happens if you live somewhere with little to no mobile internet signal and sub-zero temperatures most of theRead More →

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In a world where digital maps are available within a few clicks and can rely pre-loaded map projection systems to ensure we are mapping in the right location, for me it is always humbling and breathtaking the painstaking efforts and relative accuracy of older maps. One particular example is the Selden map of China (acquired from estate of London lawyer John Selden in 1659), one of the oldest surviving merchant trade maps, and one of the first Chinese maps to reach Europe, roughly dated 1607-1617. In many ways the beauty and craft of this map speaks for itself (see here), but there is more to thisRead More →

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I recently came across a copy of an old school book, “Picture Map Geography of Canada and Alaska” by Vernon Quinn, that includes charming woodcut picture maps by Bruno da Osimo, a then noted Italian illustrator, for each of the Canadian provinces (other than Nunavut, which was then part of the Northwest Territories). Originally published in 1944 […] via Vintage Picture Map Geography of Canada — O’ CanadaRead More →

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Whether you drive an electric car, a ‘normal’ car, or don’t drive at all, this web and mobile (Android and iOS) application from ZapMap is well worth taking a look at. Powered by Google Maps API, this mapping tool provides the locations of electric car chargers, providing pop up boxes with the latest status of these charging points, types and directions on how to get there. Although the shading of the vector tiles is a bit gaudy, with an ability to log in, map and comment on charging points, there is potential for up-to-date community empowered mapping to provide latest running statuses and charging locations.Read More →