Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Mapping Pedestrian Accidents


With thus many groovy mapping visualization tools on the marketplace it is tempting to exactly select handgrip of some geo-located information in addition to throw it onto a map. You tin sack thus pose out it online in addition to outcry out to the world, 'Hey expect at this cool map'.

Twitter did that this calendar week amongst their Torque powered map News of  Ferguson Spreads Across Twitter. The map has worked rattling good every bit an promotion for Twitter (I've seen the map referenced inwards a number of the most pop websites this calendar week in addition to it has also continuously popped upwards inwards my Twitter stream). However I'm struggling to piece of job out what this map tells us, except that the events inwards Ferguson accept been mentioned a lot on social media.1

Not all of the pop tidings websites are guilty of this scatter-gun approach to information mapping. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 number of tidings outlets, similar The New York Times, The Guardian in addition to The Global Mail, accept actually upped their game over the final few years in addition to are creating some groovy mapped visualizations that help to explicate the stories hidden behind the data.

With the availability of slow to hold out narrative mapping tools, similar Esri Story Maps, CartoDB's Odyssey.js in addition to Knight Lab's Story Map, nosotros are also seeing many to a greater extent than independent map developers creating actually interesting maps which essay to expect at the narratives in addition to stories behind their mapped data.

However y'all don't accept to hold out these narrative mapping platforms to practise interesting maps. For example, I actually similar this map from the Boston Globe exploring Massachusetts Pedestrian Crashes.

I've seen a lot of similar maps over the years of auto crashes, pedestrian accidents, wheel crashes etc. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 lot of cities directly accept this information available every bit open-data in addition to it is a fairly slow labor to only throw that information on a map in addition to pose out it to the world.

What I specially similar nearly this map is how the Boston Globe has gone to the problem to explore some of the hot-spots inwards the data. If y'all select the 'see hot-spots' link the map zooms to a hot-spot, creates a boundary roughly the location in addition to a map inset attempts to explicate some of the issues roughly why this location mightiness endure from an abnormally high number of pedestrian crashes.

TL;DR:  - I similar this Boston Globe map

1 For a to a greater extent than detailed critique of Twitter's Ferguson map run across this Floating Sheep article.

No comments:

Post a Comment