14 replies to this topic

[Felix]

Hi everyone,

I submit to your kind attention a map I created depicting today's global transportation system, for educational purposes only and, quite frankly, for the sheer fun of it.

Air networks of 18,756 flights are from ICAO statistics provided by Andy Tatem of Oxford University.
Global paved and unpaved roads come from ESRI's Digital Chart of the World.
Shipping lanes data were taken from NOAA's SEAS BBXX database, between 14.10.2004 and 15.10.2005.
Urban areas are from www.naturalearthdata.com -- thank you so much for this amazing site.

Comments and critics welcomed!

Regards,
G.

Attached Files

•  anthropogenic_planet_2_small.jpg   720.88K   374 downloads

[frax]

Interesting! Note that 'roads' is misspelled...

[Jacques Gélinas]

I like this,
Gives a quick overview of 'human' activity.
Your sources are well stated.
What is the printed size, or is it just for the web?

My comments,
-Not sure about the title.
-Logo is IMO too BIG

Regards,

[DaveB]

Interesting. The other three colors stand out pretty well, but the green for roads seems much lower in the visual hierarchy to me. The legend almost seems like an afterthought. Might be worth spending a little time with arranging it and placing it. (I think it would balance the map out better if it were placed in the lower left rather than lower middle)

[Felix]

Thanks for your comments!
It was done for a Keynote HD presentation but I'm considering to make a much bigger one now.

I've made a few changes.
Here's a new version in a better resolution.

http://www.globaia.org/temp/gts.jpg

Very best,

Felix

[Jean-Louis]

Very good Felix, I like it a lot.
It has an very slick and engaging look overall that conveys the central message well

[Pete]

This is probably a daft thing to say but I love the kinetic feel of the map - the way you've exectued it (the bright colours and hairline routes) is much more stylish than those transport maps you see with the big goofy arrows pointing every which way.

...

... can I ask you a favour? You can say no if it's too much work but do you have any more information in the air networks data, such as whether or not they are within the country or inter-continental, or possibly heights?

The only reason I ask is that as soon as I saw your map I was reaching for my Chromadepth glasses and it work really REALLY well. You do look a proper fool sitting in the office with red card glasses perched over your reading glasses (or maybe I just can't rock that look?) but the chromadepth does a great job of separating out the layers - there is a pronounced and pleasing "step down" between the road network and the shipping routes but the air network gets stuck and doesn't really take off ... if you pardon the pun. If you could maybe make short flights orange and long flights red it would separate better? It's just a thought for an unconventional display method but I love the map as is!

[Matthew Hampton]

Great map Felix! I work in the transportation industry and I really like what you have put together (although you might consider adding Rail to the mix).

Pete's post convinced me to dust off my Chromadepth glasses - and indeed it looks really sharp. If you worked with the flight paths in an orange-red value, it would be exceptionally super-duper.

For the sake of simplicity Chromadepth works such that elements that are close to the eye are displayed as red and those farthest away are displayed as blue.

[Felix]

Thank you Jean-Louis, Pete and Matthew for your kind comments.

I did create a map with railways but, along with paved and unpaved roads, it rapidly gets rather confusing. I'll find a way to show both elegantly.

I'd love to make some tests for Chromadepth glasses. However, the data I have for air networks are not very detailed -- no altitude, no country, etc. Only city-to-city informations.

These datasets look very promising:
http://openflights.org/data.html

But, on a Mac, I can't find a way to map them.

Spatial-analyst.net has created a script to handle these data properly but it can only run on a PC:
http://spatial-analy...ge:Airroute.png
Description: http://spatial-analy...rroute.rdcnuoty
Script: http://spatial-analy...etOpenFlights.R

This might not be the best place on this forum to discuss such technical matters. But if someone has a tip for, it would be much appreciated!

Greetings,

Felix

[Kalai Selvan]

Hi everyone,

I submit to your kind attention a map I created depicting today's global transportation system, for educational purposes only and, quite frankly, for the sheer fun of it.

Air networks of 18,756 flights are from ICAO statistics provided by Andy Tatem of Oxford University.
Global paved and unpaved roads come from ESRI's Digital Chart of the World.
Shipping lanes data were taken from NOAA's SEAS BBXX database, between 14.10.2004 and 15.10.2005.
Urban areas are from www.naturalearthdata.com -- thank you so much for this amazing site.

Comments and critics welcomed!

Regards,
G.

It Looks to me like a fire work, Good work..

[Michael Markieta]

Hi Felix!

First, great map and you stole my idea! Ha, working with this kind of data is quite fun. I can imagine why you wanted to create the map in the first place.
Secondly, I am working with the openflights.org/data.html data. Some tips below:

1. Download both aiports and routes files
2. Change the extension to .csv and open the files with OOo or your favourite spreadsheet editor.
3. Create a workbook with two sheets, paste airlines.csv into sheet 1, and routes.csv into sheet 2.
4. Clean up the data... all you need from the airlines is 3-letter and 4-letter codes + long and lats, like wise for the routes we only need the 3-letter or 4-letter codes for origin and destination airports
5. Create appropriate field names for the column in row 1 in the routes sheet (sheet2), eg. Orig_Lat, Orig_Long, Dest_Lat, Dest_Long
6. Using VLOOKUP (or was it HLOOKUP?) to query lat/long values. eg,(for OOo) =VLOOKUP($A2;airports.$D$2:$G$6630;3;0), which in words means: match the value in cell A2 by looking in array D2:G6630; when found, obtain cell value in column 3 (with respect to column 1 = D; ie. row 3 = F) and use unsorted values.
7. Manipulate the formula to get lat/longs for every Orig and Dest airport.

FULL TUTORIAL HERE: http://www.spatialan...-flight-routes/

Now you should have xy coordinate pairs for 58000+ routes that you can map using your favourite software. I have been experimenting with ArcMap on PC using the "XY to Line" tool.

Cheers! Hope to share my map with all of you soon!

Michael Markieta
Research Assistant - Department of Geography @ Ryerson University
B.A. Candidate - Geographic Analysis
Ryerson University
Toronto, ON, Canada

Hi everyone,

I submit to your kind attention a map I created depicting today's global transportation system, for educational purposes only and, quite frankly, for the sheer fun of it.

Air networks of 18,756 flights are from ICAO statistics provided by Andy Tatem of Oxford University.
Global paved and unpaved roads come from ESRI's Digital Chart of the World.
Shipping lanes data were taken from NOAA's SEAS BBXX database, between 14.10.2004 and 15.10.2005.
Urban areas are from www.naturalearthdata.com -- thank you so much for this amazing site.

Comments and critics welcomed!

Regards,
G.

It Looks to me like a fire work, Good work..

[StuartDS]

An absoultely brillant map! What I particular like about it is its recoginition and distinction between shipping and airline routes - as a former student of human geography, we were saturated with talk of world cities, where the emphasis was always on the 'hubs' of global commerce, with one of the main proxies always been airplane routes.

You're map shows a much more detailed picture, showing certain cities as having equal importance as 'hubs' of trade. For instance, as a South African, Johannesburg is always lauded as being Africa's world city (as evidenced by airflights) - however your map shows the clear constrast with shipping routes, highlighting the importance of Cape Town as a 'trade' hub. Could therfore be used as a strong motivation in my particular context to motivate for the role of Cape Town in SA's economy, and I would not be suprised if you could find many other examples on the map of similar constrasts. (At a glance, Singapore, Australia, Japan all seem to have similar discrepancies between settlements.)

Well done!!

[louisjaffe]

I would love to see a poster-size version of this map. - LJ

[P.Raposo]

Hi Felix,

Beautiful piece of work sir - I really like the darkness and the colours chosen for the thematic data. I respectfully disagree with a previous comment, and think the legend looked better center and below, as it was in your first version; placing your stylized legend rather squarely in people's attention (while, of course, not stealing any power from the map) seems a way to put some "punch" to the message quickly for the reader. I like the fact that your legend box is translucent - it prevented the legend from obscuring routes across the southern Atlantic when it was there (still does the same over the Pacific now).

Also, have you considered using a different projection? The plate carree that the map is in now works nicely in the sense that lines that disappear over the left or right sides of the map reappear on the opposite side at the same "height" on the map, but that would be true of most any projection where you keep lines of latitude "horizontal". You might get some really pleasing, different diaspora arcs if you used a projection that was a little more equal-area. Perhaps something like a Winkel-Tripel, which would give you a lenticular, oval-like shape, and that again could make for some further interesting options for legend placement (e.g., your four thematic classes arcing around the bottom edge of the map, in the page's "whitespace" like a constellation).

At any rate, love the colour palette, nice work.
P

[Thad]

Nice work.

Would be interesting to see some take on travel time using the various transportation methods shown. Some way to map reach in 12 hour increments by land/sea/air/train.