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May 27
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Viewing the Credit Crunch Over Time: Motion Graph Mapping

By BBC, google docs, google maps, Mapping the Credit Crunch, Motion Graph

Maps represent a moment in time and when your creating a mood map of the United Kingdom. In relation to the countries on the impact of the Credit Crunch, 24 hours can be a long time, as we explore below.

Our work with BBC Radio 4’s PM show is yielding interesting results with the fuel prices coming out as the nations biggest concern in these times of tight credit. Yet look closer at the data and it becomes clear that the nations mood has shifted over the last few weeks.

To recap, listener’s are being asked to answer the following question:

What single factor is hurting you most about the credit crunch?

Please select one of the answers below:

Mortgage or Rent
Fuel
Food Prices
Holidays
Other
The Credit Crunch is not affecting me

We generated a new map every 30 minutes, providing an up to date view of the nations mood.

In addition to mapping the data it can also be analysed over time, the image below represents the percentage of answers on May 1st:
On May 1st the nations biggest concern was the price of food, yet by May 3rd fuel had taken over with food slipping back down in terms of overall percentage:
The nations mood over the last few weeks has been changing quite notably over time, perhaps in relations to the amount of media coverage anyone topic has received. Food prices were in the news earlier in the month and now fuel prices are hitting the headlines with the current blockage of London by lorry drivers.

At the present time fuel prices are again leading the poll, you can view the timeline using the interactive version embedded below. Annoyingly Google Docs does not save the viewing preferences when embedding motion graphs so to match our set up simply:

Click below to set both size and colour to view by percentage and move the time slider to gain a unique insight to the nations mood over time.

If you click each circle it will highlight each category in turn to match the images above:

The data poses the question if we as a nation are indeed worried about the credit crunch or is it the media inducing worry by the the amount of coverage given and shock headlines?

You can view the map at http://www.maptube.org with full details on the BBC’s iPM page.

May 23
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Mapping the Credit Crunch: Mapping the UK’s Mood with Radio 4

By Credit Crunch, google maps, mapping, Mapping the Credit Crunch, MapTube

Over the last few weeks Radio 4’s PM show has been carrying out a survey on the UK’s fears on the Credit Crunch. In association with our MapTube site at CASA listeners were asked for the first part of their postcode and to answer the following question:

What single factor is hurting you most about the credit crunch?

Please select one of the answers below:

Mortgage or Rent
Fuel
Food Prices
Holidays
Other
The Credit Crunch is not affecting me

We generated a new map every 30 minutes, providing an up to date view of the nations mood.


The results are fascinating, with over 22,000 responses 49% were most worried about fuel price with food running in second at 19%. The interesting part for us is to view these results both statistically and geographically as the results come in, to date the breakdown is as follows:


You can view the map at http://www.maptube.org with full details on the BBC’s iPM page – of note is the rural/urban split with urban areas being notably more worried about mortgage or rent payments compared to other areas of the UK.

May 22
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3D Agent Based Modelling in Second Life

By 3D Agents, Agent Based Modelling, Second Life


Second Life is a natural home to agent based modelling, while not as graphically impressive as high end solutions such as 3D Studio Max, it does allow real-time data analysis and tracking.

The movie below shows our first tentative steps in CASA to setting up a agent based model in the Second Life environment:

Our next step is to look at examples such as evacuation analysis and pedestiran movement in the cityscape, the movie below issustrates our earlier example in 3D Studio Max – we should be able to port this into Second Life:

If you would like to know more about agent based modelling take a look at http://gisagents.blogspot.com/

May 19
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Free Google Map Creator Software: MapTube from CASA

By Download Software, Google Map Creator, google maps, MapTube

MapTube, the new mapping site from our lab CASA at University College London to view, overlay, mix and match choropleth maps now includes a free creation tool.

Google Map Creator provides a quick and free way to convert .shp or formated .csv for viewing in Google Maps and MapTube – allowing datasets to be quickly and easily shared and visually compared against any other data on MapTube. In short it is perfect for local councils, government organizations, academics and general users who want to view and share their data in the easiest way possible.

Unlike the Google Maps API method for displaying points, lines and polygons, Google Map Creator renders the map information as a series of raster image tiles (256×256 pixels) accordingly to the level of zoom required. This protects the raw data, easing issues of copyright and data sharing while allowing any dataset to be mixed, matched and visualised with any other data on MapTube.

Before uploading to MapTube, maps need to be created from shapefiles using the Google Map Creator tool and placed on the web. Maptube takes a link to this location and creates a new map reference from the information found there.

Quickstart – How to Create a Map for MapTube

  • Create the map with the Google Map Creator and save the settings xml file.

  • Copy the tile directory and xml settings file to a web server.
  • Log in to MapTube and choose Add A New Map.
  • Copy the url of the settings xml file into the XML URL box and click ‘Test’.
  • Fill in the rest of the information on the page and click on ‘Submit’ to upload the map.

We will be featuring a MapTube Map of the Week – currently The Credit Crunch from our work with BBC Radio 4 – on Digital Urban and while its difficult to be unbiased about MapTube (as we are part of it) it is a notable change in the ability to view, share and visually analyse geographic data online….

To start making maps simply login to http://www.maptube.org

See http://www.maptube.org/help-createmap.aspx for full details and as ever any thoughts are welcome.

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