A World of Plane Crashes / / No Comments If you are already afraid of flying then you might want to give CrashAtlas a miss. This interactive map of aircraft accidents is unlikely to do much for your aerophobia. On the other hand, if you’ve ever wondered whether a plane has crashed near your home, then CrashAtlas may prove to be a fascinating, if slightly macabre, diversion.CrashAtlas is a global interactive map dedicated to documenting Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Crashes, plane, World
The Map of Global Friendship / / No Comments Social Connectedness Index Map St. Louis, Missouri and Bosnia and Herzegovina are separated by more than 5,000 miles. Yet Facebook friendship data reveals that the two places share remarkably strong social ties. An unusually large number of people in St. Louis have Facebook friends in Bosnia and Herzegovina.The explanation lies in the Bosnian War of the 1990s. Tens of thousands of Bosnian Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Friendship, global
German Döner, English Curry & American Pizza / / No Comments German Döner Kebab restaurants have started popping up all over London. For some reason, the idea of a German kebab still strikes me as slightly incongruous – a bit like a Swiss curry or a French taco. However, according to a recent analysis of OpenStreetMap food venues, there are far more döner kebab restaurants in Germany than there are in Turkey. In fact, 51% of the world’s döner shops are Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: American, Curry, Döner, English, German, Pizza
The Most Optimal Road Trip Maps / / No Comments In 1954, a landmark paper in computer science famously solved the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) by proving the exact, shortest route to visit all 48 contiguous state capitals plus Washington D.C. The underlying puzzle is deceptively simple: given a list of destinations, what is the shortest possible route that visits each location once before returning to the start? That breakthrough Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: maps, most, Optimal, road, Trip
Free Map Tiles for Everyone / / No Comments Free Map Tiles Providers:OpenFreeMapVersaTilesMaptoolkit.orgOne of the biggest barriers to building web maps has always been the cost and complexity of map tiles. Services such as Google Maps and Mapbox offer excellent infrastructure, but commercial pricing can quickly become prohibitive as projects grow. Self-hosting OpenStreetMap vector tiles is an alternative, but maintaining a global tile Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: everyone, free, Tiles
The 5 Best 3D Subway Maps / / No Comments Shinjuku Station has a well-earned reputation as one of the world’s largest and most bewildering transport hubs. The Shinjuku Station Indoor interactive 3D map tackles that complexity by turning the station’s official indoor mapping data into a clean, schematic three-dimensional blueprint. This map strips everything back to the essential geometry of corridors, platforms and rooms, making Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: best, maps, Subway
SimCity Meets AI: Exploring New York’s New Digital Twin / / No Comments NYCSim is a truly impressive digital twin for New York City. Part real-time spatial platform and part living sandbox, this browser-based simulator allows you to explore a virtual Manhattan from the comfort of your own home. By pulling in live municipal transit data, real-time air quality metrics, and local weather feeds, the platform transforms a static city plan into a living, breathing map.& Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: digital, Exploring, Meets, SimCity, Twin, York's
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