Thursday, May 28, 2015

The World Lichtensteined

Another cool Mapbox project (continuing from yesterday's Blueprinted post) is Katie Kowalsky's, Roy Lichtenstein-themed world.
 Here is the US Capitol Building area. Now a gradual zoom out.




If you're wondering how Liechtenstein looks in Lichtenstein format, here it is!
Finally, if you want to know where to find a Lichtenstein painting in Liechtenstein, there's this page.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

The World Blueprinted

Philadelphia Data Scientist Lauren Ancona has created a blueprint map of the world. Mapbox enables you to create and cover the world in a style. In Philadelphia, she added extra details from city's open data site.
When you reach the city's edge the level of detail drops off a bit.
However, because Mapbox uses OpenStreetMap data, you can go anywhere. There's a remarkable level of detail in most urban areas. For example, Rio De Janeiro.
 
Kathmandu has seen a great increase in mapping detail thanks to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. Importantly, you can see where the Baskin Robbins is.
 
The lack of detail in many places makes it tough for wayfinding. I could not clearly find the place I helped map in Nepal a few weeks ago but it is  somewhere around here.
Of course, it looks nice when you're zoomed way out too!


Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Live Animated Trains!

TRAVIC is a visualization of public transit around the world, using live feeds where available and otherwise using schedule data.
TRAVIC is a collaboration between Geops, a German geospatial company and the University of Freiburg. The major and even minor transportation authorities in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand are covered along with a few other cities on other continents. When zoomed out to a continental scale, you can see how well covered Europe is.
Here is the coverage in my neck of the woods.
As you zoom in further you see the vehicles. At the local scale they begin to move. Here are some still frames from Philadelphia.
I chose Philadelphia partially out of my personal bias, but also because it's one of the few places in North America that actually labels the commuter trains by destination, adding a layer of interest.
The larger orange dots are for the Broad Street Subway (Orange Line) and the smaller blue dots are bus routes. Clicking on a vehicle brings up schedule information as seen in this screen shot from Berlin
I'll leave with an animated shot from America's hardest working transit system. Watching the trains going under the East River is the best part.
Thanks to Urban Demographics for alerting me to this site.