As 2011 draws to a close it is worth reflecting on what, I think, has been a defining year for mapping and spatial analysis. Geographic data have become open, big, and widely available, leading to the production of new and interesting maps on an almost daily basis. The increasing utilisation of technology such as Google Fusion Tables has made it easier than ever to map data. Sadly the number of bad maps is on the increase as a result (largely thanks to the web’s preference for the Mercator projection and push-pins) and I hope things will improve (over to you Google!) next year. To inspire another year of mapping, and in no particular order, here is the spatialanalysis “Best of 2011″. The maps here have been popular, engaged users, innovated, and raised the bar for cartographic standards. I bet I have missed some so feel free to link to your best map in the comments section.

Paul Butler’s Facebook Connections Map

This just sneaks in as it was produced in December 2010. The map is important for what it doesn’t show (most of Africa for example) rather than what it does. It has served as an inspiration for many others, and raised the bar in terms of the detail and extent of social media mapping.

National Geographic Surnames Map

I think the National Geographic Surnames Map is one of an increasing number of brilliant typographic maps that have been produced in the past year.  Typographic maps can show many variables (using colour, font size etc) and are often instantly engaging. This one was especially popular alongside its “sister” map of London Surnames.

Galaxy Survey Fly Through 

I really like this video as it serves to demonstrate just how vast the universe is. I spend my life mapping a few things over relatively small geographic areas and there is plenty for me to do. We have barely even started mapping the universe and I think this video captures the immensity of the undertaking.

iPhone Tracker

This map is not featured for its cartographic brilliance but for its unveiling of the volume of data our electronic devices, in this case iPhones, are capable of collecting. It served as a wake up call for many that data about our locations are collected all the time and it is easy to track where you have been.

Fedex Cartograms

Cartograms are becoming an increasingly popular way of mapping population data. I don’t have a problem with advertising so long as it is informative as well. I think these maps tick the box as they provide the best animations I have seen of cartograms morphing from one dataset to the other so I’m happy to give fedex a plug for this one.

Naming Rivers

The “Naming Rivers” map shows how different cultural and linguistic factors have influenced the naming of geographic features in the US. We talk about how we live in a “world without borders” but this plainly isn’t true as things we encounter on a daily basis are still influenced by the uneven movements of various populations over time.

Scientific Collaboration

This map, inspired by the Facebook connections map (above), demonstrates the dominance of a few countries within the scientific literature and the limited collaborations between a few countries. This pattern is seen in many datasets and is another illustration that  “global” is often only a minority of countries.

Eric Fischer’s Twitter Language Map

I really liked these maps both for their cartography but also for their demonstration that linguistic and national borders can be seen online as well. There has also been a tendency for fine scale mapping of Twitter data so it is nice to get a global perspective.

ITO 10 Years of Road Casualties UK (and US)

As I was writing this, the BBC have launched their own visualisations with this depressing data. It is often said that in the context of modern health and safety standards the car would never have been allowed. With maps such as the above it is easy to see why. ITO World have tried to be more intelligent with their use of icons- they have moved beyond the simple “pins on maps” we often see. It doesn’t work so well at the regional level, but as you zoom in clear accident hotspots unfortunately emerge.

NOAA Japanese Tsunami Wave Height

This year saw a devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit Japan. NOAA produced a series of excellent maps and visualisations to help chart and explain the events. The map shows likely tsunami wave heights. I found it interesting as it shows both the extent of the waves and the way in which they appear as tentacles circling Earth.

BBC Brief History of Time Zones

Good maps help to educate and I found the above interactive globe from the BBC a really great way to learn about time zones. The BBC are becoming increasingly ambitious with their maps and I think they have excelled themselves with this one.

xkcd’s What Your Favourite Map Projection Says About You

This captures the different opinions on some of the many map projections perfectly. You may have gathered from the opening lines of this post that projections are really important and often considered too complicated to bother with. I’m all for the Winkel-Tripel although I can’t claim to have been a fan before the National Geographic adopted it, as I would have been too young to care at the time.

The app is a big one- 355mb- and it takes a while to download and install. This is due to a rich range of content. The 750 points of interest have extensive written information, 150 have audio guides and there are 1500 images. POIs are shown as push pins on the map;

or as part of a searchable list…

Users can therefore find places that are in their proximity with the iPhone’s GPS or simply find a place of interest and navigate to it. Each point of interest contains plenty of info, and many of the POIs will be a pleasant surprise to tourists and Londoners alike.

Including historical maps is especially interesting and they have been nicely lined up with the contemporary base map. People may be surprised by how little the street network has changed over the past 3 centuries or so. The concept of maps from multiple time periods is really well suited to a mobile device as it enables people to go out and better engage in the area they are seeing. Looking closely can often reveal some evidence of what the cartographers saw several centuries ago.

The app isn’t cheap, but it is worth it if you want to add an extra dimension to walking around London. I hope that there are plans to update the app with more POIs every now and then to keep people’s interest once they have bought it.

Overall I found the app to be very impressive. You are greeted with a world map that you can instantly interact with by panning and zooming in the usual way.

The map tiles loaded surprisingly quickly- it took approx 5 seconds to zoom from the above view to building level with only 1 bar of signal.

Users can search for places of interest…

…but this provided the only disappointment with the map appearing to lack the required data.

Zooming out a little resolved this problem, but I am not sure how many people would think to do this. I suspect the problem is relatively easily  addressed and may well be in future updates. Offering standard maps is not particularly innovative and not what the app sets out to achieve. The real innovation is the ability to view layers available from the ArcGIS.com website. You can, for example, use OpenStreetMap as the base map

or overlay additional information, in this case the Gulf Oil Spill Forecast:

Navigation to layers is straightforward:

I especially like the fact that users can add their own servers and also bookmark their favourite layers. On top of these features users can measure distances and calculate areas.

I found these tools to be extremely intuitive and I expect they will become an integral part to many field based introductory GIS courses. In a recent talk I attended, Jack Dangermond said that GIS software in the past was made to be complicated. With this application ESRI have demonstrated that GIS can be made to be easy. I think all who use this app both from within and beyond GIS with be genuinely impressed.

**I have just discovered a more in depth review worth reading from James Fee’s GIS blog.**

I was very impressed with the final panoramas. The iphone (and other thin cameras) are well suited to panoramic photography as the pupil of the lens will naturally be above the centre of rotation when the camera is moved (providing the photographer stays still and has a steady hand!). This means that AutoStitch does not have to correct for large amounts of parallax error when stitching the images. In addition, by enabling users to stitch panoramas on the spot they can assess the quality of the panoramas and re-take any photos that were wonky or without sufficient overlap. Finally, thanks to AutoStitch  it is now possible for the mobile uploading of panoramic images to websites without the need for users to create the panoramas on a PC first.