Vladymi, an architect from Ukraine, got in contact to let us know that as a result of some of our blog posts he has decided to move almost entirely to game engines for visualisation.
His current ‘engine’ of choice is the CryEngine2:
The world of data is changing, vast amounts of free and open data are enabling innovative visualisations. Our new Bike-o-Meter could be seen as a case in point, it provides at a glance a view of how bicycle rental schemes in cities around the world are performing. It even allows you to view the percentage of hire bikes that would need to be redistributed to balance each scheme and here may lie the problem – it allows under performing cities to be clearly identified using their own data.
Sadly a number of cities, run by a common provider, have requested that we no longer use their data, stating use protection under the harmonised sui generis database right, as provided under Directive 96/9/EC: Chapter III Article 7 (1) and (2).
Below is how the Bike-o-Meter used to look:
We are of course happy to accept the request and as a result Paris/Dublin/Brussels/Valencia/Seville/ Vienna and Toyama are now sitting with empty dials. This is disappointing to say the least, we would be happy to add these cities back in but as ever with data its down to the providers…
Got a view? #bikeometer on Twitter.
The world of data is changing, vast amounts of free and open data are enabling innovative visualisations. Our new Bike-o-Meter could be seen as a case in point, it provides at a glance a view of how bicycle rental schemes in cities around the world are performing. It even allows you to view the percentage of hire bikes that would need to be redistributed to balance each scheme and here may lie the problem – it allows under performing cities to be clearly identified using their own data.
Sadly a number of cities, run by a common provider, have requested that we no longer use their data, stating use protection under the harmonised sui generis database right, as provided under Directive 96/9/EC: Chapter III Article 7 (1) and (2).
Below is how the Bike-o-Meter used to look:
We are of course happy to accept the request and as a result Paris/Dublin/Brussels/Valencia/Seville/ Vienna and Toyama are now sitting with empty dials. This is disappointing to say the least, we would be happy to add these cities back in but as ever with data its down to the providers…
Got a view? #bikeometer on Twitter.
Our now ‘resident in the British Library Tweet-o-Meter’ has been adapted to display Bike Hire in cities around the world – welcome to the latest out of the CASA, University College London : Bike-O-Meter. On a single screen, you can view via Google-powered gauges, how busy (in percent of use) the bike share schemes around the world are right now.
Most dials will move every two minutes, a few (the Velib ones) update every 10 or 20 minutes.
At the time of writing, the bike share schemes of the Spanish cities, particularly Barcelona, Girona and Valencia, are the ones being most actively used. Spanish rush-hours at lunchtimes seem generally to be as big as the morning/evening ones! Biking home for the siesta?
There is a second mode in Bike-o-Meter, accessed here, detailing how unbalanced the schemes are – high values indicate that a lot of the bikes are concentrated in one part of the city, and there’s a lot of empty docking stations in another part. The metric is the percentage of bikes that would need to be moved to balance out the docking stations across the city.
Thanks go to Ollie for the original Boris Bikes maps along with Steve Gray, also of CASA and Tweet-o-Meter/SurveyMapper fame for putting it together.
We will have more news on the Tweet-o-Meter as part of the Growing Knowledge Exhibition at the British Library soon….
