Global Connectivity Revisited; mapping out 58,288 flight routes

Sep 042011
 

I guess we can call this part two of the global con­nec­tiv­ity by flight exper­i­ment, which I have been work­ing on the past cou­ple of days. Once again, the data comes from openflights.org/data.html and is avail­able for free to the pub­lic. It is a very detailed set of data that requires just a lit­tle bit of mas­sag­ing to be usable in a desk­top work envi­ron­ment. In this blog post I would like to take you through some quick help­ful tips that should get you from down­load­ing the data and clean­ing it up to map­ping it in ArcMap. In all hon­esty, I would have loved Con­tinue reading »

Open Flights; Mapping Global Connectivity

Sep 022011
 

Open FlightsAfter hav­ing seen the many iter­a­tions of the global con­nec­tiv­ity map, I have decided to give it a try myself. The maps are being pro­duced using this data, which offers pub­lic air-traffic data in tab­u­lar format. The data is avail­able in three cat­e­gories: air­ports, air­lines and routes. The air­ports and routes data can be manip­u­lated, com­bined and cleaned-up to cre­ate a com­pli­men­tary table that lists the lon­gi­tude and lat­i­tude of each flights ori­gin and des­ti­na­tion. This allows us to con­nect each flight ori­gin and des­ti­na­tion. How­ever, straight lines of Con­tinue reading »

Exploring Germany through Cartograms

Aug 282011
 

My inten­tions for this blog are to spur intel­li­gent and thought pro­vok­ing dis­cus­sions and to pro­vide some insight and/or help to those who may want to delve into var­i­ous spa­tial analy­ses and car­to­graphic trends/methodologies. Car­tograms are def­i­nitely one of the most trend­ing top­ics in dis­cus­sions on how to alter­na­tively geo­vi­su­al­ize spa­tial phe­nom­ena. The idea roots back more than half a decade and has evolved from a ‘pen­cil and graph paper’ skill to a geo­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion sys­tem (GIS) tool{box}. We can add… Con­tinue reading »

Typographic Maps

Aug 222011
 

An inter­est­ing form of car­tog­ra­phy to say the least! Typographic maps have been around for some time, and only recently was I exposed to the con­cept. Per­haps my favourite (and quoted by many) are the maps pro­duced by Axis Maps. They pro­duce some of the most jaw-dropping typo­graphic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of cities that I have ever seen. I par­tic­u­larly like their use of white space (and by use, I mean there isn’t much white space left untouched!). Which leads me to the point of this post. I have been toy­ing with the idea of pro­duc­ing some Con­tinue reading »