8-Bit City Love
Jul 8, 2010 @ 10:49 AM by Kumiko Yamazaki -- game mapRemember the fantastic 8-Bit NYC map we saw earlier? Brett Camper has continued to design and develop similar maps for other cities. The list now includes:
New York
Amsterdam
Austin
Berlin
Detroit
London
Paris
San Francisco
Seattle
Washington, DC
Check them out! I can’t help thinking these will be great base maps for any sort of location-based gaming. Somebody, get on it :)
Future cities will include Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Portland (Oregon), Oakland, Boulder, Oklahoma City, Rome, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Nijmegen, Kyoto, Shanghai, and Singapore!
Mapping Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill- From the water up
Jun 4, 2010 @ 4:48 PM by Britta Ricker -- google earth imagery map visualizationHere are some links to mapping initiatives taking place to monitor the disastrous Gulf Oil Spill.
This mashup by Paul Rademacher portrays the size of the spill in relation to major cities. The map aims to give the reader a sense of the scale of this disaster (you will need the Google Earth browser plug-in).
Grassroots Mapping is covering the mapping of the oil spill. MIT students are using balloons and kites to map the disaster.
BP response maps – Static .pdf files
New York Times has a series of animated maps showing oil dispersion, where oil has made landfall, and links to multimedia coverage of the oil spill.
Also, almost every government agency is addressing the oil spill on their websites.
USGS is using satellite imagery. They also have a series of maps (static made with traditional GIS) showing the coastal washup of oil.
USGS data repository - Hazards Data Distribution System (HDDS). You could use this to make your own mashup!
NASA has the latest images of the oil spill here. They have also stitched together this movie. From a Geovisualization standpoint, this is a very simple animation of only satellite imagery but portrays a very powerful message.
EPA uses Google Earth!
This is by no means an exhaustive list of mapping the oil spill but a start.
Here is a picture of me at the Alligator Bayou about four years ago.
Kumiko and I both did work mapping for FEMA in Louisiana post Hurricane Katrina and Rita back in 2005-2006. I spent about two months in the region and I would return in a heartbeat. The Gulf Coast is absolutely an amazing place full of people who are warm and fun loving hard workers.
The wildlife and ecosystem are extremely unique. If you ever get the chance, you have to check this place out! Holy cow! Actually I see that Alligator Bayou is closed and for sale!!! If you love wetlands and have some cash, buy it and preserve this wonderful place!
Mapkist Earth (Prototype)
Apr 9, 2010 @ 10:00 AM by Kumiko Yamazaki -- atlas map openlayersI believe it’s time we show off our latest map creation: Mapkist Earth!!
Inspired by CEC’s North American Environment Atlas, Mapkist Earth is a prototype atlas with KML interactivity and custom tiles built on the OpenLayers platform. It currently shows Earth’s population density for the past, present and future (1950, 2010, 2050).
Each data layer consists of both map tiles and KML files which preserves the visual appeal of traditional cartography and adds the interactivity that is expected of web-based maps.
I’ve also started to look into Amazon S3 and their CloudFront service for faster rendering of map tiles. Not sure if this is the solution I need but it might be worth a try - I know how impatient internet users can be :)
Future plans for Mapkist Earth involve expanding it to become a full fledged educational atlas in this format following National Geography Standards. Topics covered will range from the characteristics and spatial distribution of the Earth’s environment to the cultural mosaics of human life!
Don’t forget to let us know what you think so far, thanks!
Flash Madness
Mar 17, 2010 @ 10:08 AM by Kumiko Yamazaki -- game mapThe madness begins tomorrow and offices around the U.S. are expected to lose billions of dollars in worker productivity. They don’t call it March Madness for nothing, you know.
Over at ESPN, they have apparently aimed to INCREASE the amount of lost productivity by releasing a Flash game - Map Madness Bracket Teams. Like many map games, you must locate the school’s campus and will be awarded points based on time and accuracy.
Wow I’m terrible — 42,238 pts and I’ve been booted. Winthrop College? Morgan State?? What was your score?
Design Around the World
Mar 12, 2010 @ 10:57 AM by Kumiko Yamazaki -- map subway
Carrying on the subway maps theme, Webdesigner Depot has put together an awesome collection of metro maps from around the world.
Most of them are really clean and beautiful.. others, not so much. And why is the map of Kobe, Japan, written in Korean?
Which is your favorite?
Interactive Atlas Goodness
Mar 8, 2010 @ 4:56 PM by Britta Ricker -- geoweb map visualizationThe Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) is an organization that focuses on environmental issues across North America. This secretariat was formed as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to ensure that environmental degradation was being monitored fairly and carefully across the continent. 
One of the many noteworthy CEC initiatives is its new interactive atlas. The CEC works with the environmental ministries from Canada, the United States and Mexico to aggregate environmental data from across North America. They have developed an online atlas to show how environmental phenomenon does not stop at political boundaries. On this atlas you can view conservation areas, species habitats, pollution and waste depositories and other intriguing data sets for the entire continent. Check it out here. http://www.cec.org/atlas/
The CEC also has a featured video. You can see the back of my head around 2:05! Enjoy!
Kumiko is also building a beautiful open source interactive atlas that will be released soon. This atlas will be an exciting way to communicate and visualize a variety of information. The users will be able to navigate through the data at their own pace and hopefully gain new knowledge through this fun geospatial application!
Mining Statistics
Jul 23, 2009 @ 8:49 PM by Kumiko Yamazaki -- manifold map visualization: miningSo what do you do when a friend wonders about mining fatalities and the difficulties of putting into perspective the differences between U.S. and China? You make a map!.. an infographic?
A bit time consuming but I miss the design aspects of mapmaking especially in this age where mashups rule. This is not to say I’m against mashups - in fact, like a good geo-data girl, I’ve uploaded the U.S. mining dataset to Geocommons. Did you know Geocommons already provides 15 pages of ‘mining’ data already?
China’s figure of 3,215 coal mining deaths was provided by their State Administration of Work Safety (which, by the way, had originally mistakenly announced that 91,172 people have perished. Still, 3,215 deaths is 107 TIMES the number of deaths in the U.S. (30). It’s hard to believe China has actually reduced the number of mining accidents over the years. In 2003? 7,200 deaths….
Kumiko Yamazaki: kyamazaki@mapkist.com