This is Still Not Normal / / No Comments Last month I posted a review of Klimadashboard’s European Heat Tracker, which visualizes how many people across Europe are exposed to extreme heat in real time. Since then, temperatures have continued to exceed seasonal norms across much of the continent, and new mapped visualizations have continued to document the unfolding heatwaves. El País’ How Extreme is this Heat? uses a Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Normal, still, this
The Entire History of Human Warfare / / No Comments Launched in late 2025, Prakrit Ojha’s War Atlas is an interactive map that visualizes more than 8,500 historical battles. Spanning from 1500 BC to the present day, it offers an immersive, guided tour through the history of human conflict.Now there’s another War Atlas on the scene. Not only does this new map share the same name, a very similar URL, and a nearly identical thematic DNA, it also Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Entire, History, Human, Warfare
How Maps Save Lives / / No Comments Fifty thousand people were killed on February 6, 2023, when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck southern and central Türkiye and northern and western Syria. The Night the Earth Shook, Strangers Started to Draw tells the story of how the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and thousands of volunteers responded by rapidly creating detailed maps to support rescue efforts. The Night the Earth Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Lives, maps, save
Mapping the Light: Sunrise & Sunset / / No Comments Sunrise and Sunset is an interactive map that displays the sunrise and sunset times for any location on Earth, for any day of the year. It also visualizes the sun’s altitude throughout the seasons.By moving the white dot around the calendar ring, you can change the date to view how daylight hours shift across the year. A yellow curve tracks the sun’s altitude above the horizon from dawn to Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Light, Mapping, Sunrise, Sunset
Rainbow Nation / / No Comments The New York Times has published An American Mosaic, an interactive map visualising the self-identified ancestry of Americans using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. The map is accompanied by an article which explores how today’s America reflects centuries of immigration and migration.The map uses colour to show the dominant ancestry in each census tract, drawing on Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Nation, Rainbow
Geographical Overlords / / No Comments This morning I listened to the song Geographical Overlord by MastaMic and Titus Chan. What immediately grabbed my attention was that the song’s lyrics are a series of questions and statements that might be found in a school geography exam about Hong Kong, e.g.,”Is Lion Rock higher than Fei Ngo Shan?Is Tai Mo Shan higher than Phoenix Mountain?…Gascoigne Road to Hung Hom Tunnel is incredibly Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Geographical, Overlords
This is Not Normal / / No Comments In the UK, the hottest June day on record has been broken three days in a row. And it’s not just the UK experiencing unprecedented levels of heat. France, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands have also recorded their highest-ever June temperatures in the past week.You can get a sense of the scale of the heat dome currently sitting over Europe with the European Heat Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Normal, this
Bending the Chart to Fit the Road / / No Comments Mapping Collision Density Along the A1 More than 350 years ago, cartographer John Ogilby transformed the way travellers navigated Britain. His famous strip maps turned the nation’s principal highways into continuous journeys on the page, allowing travellers to follow routes such as the Great North Road stage by stage across the country. Today’s A1 follows much of that same historic Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Bending, Chart, road