Spatial Analysis » Snow

2010: Mapped

James — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 22:33:22 +0000

I have selected 12 maps that capture some of the biggest, most interesting, exciting or newsworthy events over the past year, mainly from the UK. January has a bonus map at the expense of March (I couldn’t think of anything). This list is entirely my own and I am sure people will have plenty of suggestions. Few of the maps are cartographic masterpieces but they have all conveyed a key event to a large audience.

January

The coldest spell of winter weather for 3 decades. The UK was gripped by Arctic winds and covered in snow. This stunning MODIS image conceals the chaos below.

OpenStreetMap Haiti earthquake response. The efforts of the OpenStreetMap community placed the project in many of the national newspapers and served as a fantastic demonstration of the skills and goodwill of the mapping community.

OpenStreetMap – Project Haiti from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

February

2010 Winter Olympics. Vancouver was short on snow and Team GB brings home its first individual gold medal for over 30 years. This New York Times cartogram of Winter Olympic Medals shows just how far the Winter Olympics movement has to go before it deserves its global claims. March

Any ideas?

April

Eyjafjallajökull (aka the Icelandic Volcano). Air traffic mayhem as the ash cloud spreads over northern Europe. The map below shows some predicted extents of the ash cloud (from the UK Met Office). The video is an Ito World visualization showing the effect it had on air traffic.

Airspace Rebooted from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

May

The UK General Election resulted in a hung parliament leading to a Conservative/ Liberal Democrat coalition government. This is the map I produced showing the mixture of votes in each constituency. More here.

June

BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. For a neat interactive map see here.

July

Raoul Moat manhunt and mass shootings in Northumbria.

August

The London Elephant Parade. 260 hand painted elephants were placed around London to raise awareness about the decline of the Asian Elephant. This event really captured the imaginations of Londoners and added more colour to the city over the summer. The locations of the elephants changed, but people could request a free map to see if they could catch them all.

September

Another London map. This time of its cycle hire scheme. The Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme, or “Boris Bikes”, was launched at the end of July. Within a couple of months it was becoming clear that Londoners were making full use of the scheme to commute or relax. I have included an early animation of Oliver O’Brien’s excellent bike hire map.

24 hours of the London Cycle Hire Scheme from James Cheshire on Vimeo.

UK Chancellor George Osbourne outlined the Comprehensive Spending Review. This laid the foundations for the many cuts to public spending that have been announced in the last few weeks. The BBC produced an interactive map to show those areas most or least likely to be affected.

November

Wikileaks has had a massive impact on the news this year. November saw the release of US Embassy Cables. I have produced my own map with some of these data. I have included one from the Guardian below.

December

Some of the most violent riots in recent times occurred last week in London. Students (and anarchists) clashed with police over the proposed (now implemented) rise in tuition fees for English Universities. The students just across the UCL Quad from me occupying part of the university put together a “live protest map” using nothing but the default tools provided by Google. Protesters frequently updated this map with the locations of police etc.

Surnames for the Big Chill

James — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 22:53:58 +0000

Thanks to the jet stream, many parts of the UK have just had the coldest November night on record. During these extreme weather events we become especially interested in weather maps and, of course, the #uksnow map is busier than ever. In such times we often talk about Jack Frost, but what about Mr Blizzard or Ms Snow? I have produced a map to show the places you are most likely to find them. If you like the cold perhaps you can thank them; if you don’t, ask nicely and they may be able to arrange some warmer weather.

For Carto-Nerds: This map has not been adjusted for the underlying population density of Great Britain, which is why it closely resembles a map of urban areas. The underlying spatial units for the density analysis are Output Area centroids which have been roughly standardised for population. Taking the relative frequency of the name therefore makes little difference (I have tried it). There are some more involved ways of accounting for underlying population in density analysis (this forms part of my PhD research) but I haven’t bothered to use them in a map as tongue in cheek as this…

Snowtweets

James — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:39:58 +0000

Aside from an interest in surnames, I keep an eye on cold-regions research. I spent a lot of time as an undergraduate studying glaciers and became heavily involved in the Polar Science/ Cold Regions research community. Many of the results from this research are extremely relevant as they inform to a large extent the climate change debate. Unfortunately, I often found myself speaking with many researchers who lacked the technical ability and motivation to engage with the public and harness the growing power of Volunteered Geographic Information.

I am therefore extremely impressed with the University of Waterloo’s (Canada)Snowtweets Project. The project, inspired by a UK snow map from Ben Marsh, encourages people to measure snow depths in their local area and instantly publish them to the web via Twitter. Snowtweet users can downlo

ad a standalone viewer called Snowbird that has been developed with Adobe Flex and Papervision3D. The use of NASA Visible Earth Imagery, a clean interface and great graphics make this a very compelling application. I hope Snowtweets will become very popular in the Northern Hemisphere’s Winter so that it provides a great source of data by empowering the public to engage with cold/ temperate regions research.