We dont normally upload test/concept images but we thought we would give it a go with our render of Earth. Made for a quick introduction slide to lead into a talk on geotagging we are not sure it works – perhaps its a bit twee?
Anyhow if you have comments good or bad let us know, it was made midway through doing a paper and we thought it was ok eye candy for a future animation to use in KeyNote.
This months issue of Geographical includes a feature whereby Olivia Edward talks to the British urban geographers (including us) who are immersing themselves in virtual cities to gain a greater insight into the workings of our real-life conurbations.
The article is based around screenshots and interviews from ourselves as well as Mark Birkin from the University of Leeds.
We haven’t had chance to get hold of a copy yet but it should be available in all good newsagents, or online.
Proving that you don’t need huge resources, trucks or high end hardware the guys from CloudMade – Steve Coast and Nick Black along with long time OpenStreetMap contributor, Andy Robinson have been mapping the Isle of Man.
Using a GPS, three bikes and a car all of the roads, rivers, train-tracks and airports as well as a huge number of the car parks,restaurants, schools and other amenities of the Isle of Man have been mapped in little under a week.
Best of all the map is being made available via the OpenStreetMap project free of charge. The total cost of project was under £4000 although to be honest most of that is the cost of the laptops, a complete breakdown of equipment is below:
6 x GPS Units (£360)
3 x Digital Cameras (£450)
3 x Laptops (£2100)
10s x rechargeable batteries (£15)
100s x elastic bands (£2)
Its a different world compared to the large mapping companies, but if we wanted a map making we know who we would call – see http://www.cloudmade.com/ for full details.
You can take a sneak preview of the map before it makes its way onto OpenStreetMap.
The rise in knife attacks and the number of teenagers murdered has been sadly dominating the news for a while now in the UK. Data on such incidents is hard to come by as the police do not provide open access to incident locations, despite it perhaps being in the public interest.
As such it is left to the public at large to fill in the gaps – in the case of teen killings, MapMan has created a map of teenagers murdered in London since 2007. Created using Google MyMaps the list has been compiled via various websites (such as http://www.capitalradio.co.uk/article.asp?id=532062) with street names identified in related press articles and plotted on the map. Actual position within the street will not be accurate, but the street names themselves should be. Note the map relates to all murders, not just knife related incidents.
Using MapTube the map can be overlaid with other data sets, such as a map uploaded detailing assault using a knife or sharp objects extracted from all hospital admissions (2007). The map is based on data with a cause code of ICD-10 X99 (assault by sharp object) and excludes all codes that may indicate accidental injury (ICD10 – W25, W26), self inflicted (ICD10 – X78) and undetermined intent (ICD10 Y28).
Figures are directly age standardised per 100,000 population with CI’s – Actual counts were excluded in the map due to disclosure surrounding low numbers. By overlaying the two maps you begin to get a picture of the extent of knife crime and the number of murders in London.
Each link is clickable for more information. Such data should really be available via either the http://www.london.gov.uk/ or http://www.met.police.uk/ along with other locations of crime in the city. It may be alarming to see such incidents mapped but this is the city we live in and the public should have a right to view exact locations of crime in their neighbourhoods.
If you then use MapTube to add in Regeneration Areas within London a clear pattern between teenage murders and deprivation emerges:
You can view the map direct via MapTube. The map can also be viewed against other indicators such as ethnic population, barriers to housing or any of the other 47 maps relating to London. KML maps will be fully integrated into the site over the next few weeks.
The work also ties in with our near real-time geographic survey in association with BBC Look East on Anti Social Behavior (using the same system as our BBC Radio 4 Credit Crunch Map) we will have more on that in future posts.