It has been a while since I posted on this web­site; but you may have noticed that I have been fairly busy else­where, such as on LinkedIn or Twit­ter.

This post will stand as a reminder to myself that we can’t always fore­see the bumps along the road. I am speak­ing about the ESRI map­book sub­mis­sion that was due on Novem­ber 16, which I missed because of undue dif­fi­cul­ties in obtain­ing and manip­u­lat­ing triv­ial data. Why do I say triv­ial? Given the way my sub­mis­sion looks at the moment, I would say it is accept­able, if not near per­fect for the map­book cat­e­gories of trans­porta­tion and cartography.

Global Air and Sea Routes

The triv­ial piece of data miss­ing from this com­pos­ite image of global air and sea routes is in fact a sur­fi­cial mode of trans­porta­tion. How­ever, I would argue that the map in it’s cur­rent state is well orga­nized to respond to ESRI’s map­book request for sub­mis­sion. Given the hun­dred of thou­sands of fea­tures on the map, a strate­gic approach was taken to dis­play the map in a pleas­ing car­to­graphic rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Also, by dis­play­ing both of the trans­porta­tion net­works on one map, I empha­size the sig­nif­i­cant cross-boundary move­ment of per­sons and cargo in our truly glob­al­ized world.

By click­ing on the map below, you can down­load the full size ver­sion; Arch D; 2592x1728; 0.5mb image.

Given the cir­cum­stances with the ESRI map­book sub­mis­sion, I have cho­sen to pub­lish this map with the CC-BY-SA cre­ative com­mons terms. Feel free to make com­mer­cial use, remix or share the map, but remem­ber to attribute it to the orig­i­nal author (that’s me!).

This long hia­tus has allowed me to think about what types of posts my vis­i­tors want to see. Well, I think it is timely that I post another arti­cle about the global flight routes because that is one (of two) of my most vis­ited pages by far! But in real­ity, it is the tech­ni­cal posts that fair very well and con­sis­tently bring new vis­i­tors. I have a few top­ics that I want to get through almost imme­di­ately, which include car­to­graphic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Toronto Open Data, and tech­ni­cal how-to’s on Python Tool­boxes for ArcGIS 10.1 and Python Add-Ins for ArcGIS 10.1.

 
 
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