2 replies to this topic

[Felix]

Hello all,

Following a post on the Map Gallery section, I'm struggling to create a map out of some open-source data on flight routes.
http://www.cartotalk...?showtopic=7363

These datasets look very promising though:
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:
- The expected result: http://spatial-analy...ge:Airroute.png
- Description: http://spatial-analy...rroute.rdcnuoty
- Script: http://spatial-analy...etOpenFlights.R

The best case scenario would be to convert these lines into an ESRI shapefile and to color-code them according to altitude, destination and so on.

Any thoughts on how to play with these data? Your help will be hugely appreciated.

Very best,

Felix

[Hans van der Maarel]

In my opinion, it's not so much a platform (Mac/Win) issue as a software issue. In other words: what do you have at your disposal?

Thinking out loud here, this is what I would do.

• Join airports with routes so that every route has a start and an end point. This can be done in any database that can read the input csv data.
• Turn that into geometry features so that you have straight lines connecting the start and end of each route.
• Turn those lines into great circles
• Map'em!

I have to admit I would do steps 2 and 3 in FME on my Windows machine, but there might be Mac options as well.

[dsl]

Here is an example using the R statistical package to map flight routes. R should run on mac.

http://flowingdata.c...-great-circles/

Cheers,
David