Happy New Year Samoa!

Samoa switched time zones by redrawing the international dateline. The change occurred at midnight on December 29, 2011, taking the Pacific island nation straight into December 31, 2011. Neighboring American Samoa will remain on the eastern side of the dateline, resulting in a time difference of a whole day between the two territories, which are a mere 50 kilometers apart. Click on the map to get time zones or on the red rectangle to get more information on the change in Samoa.


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Mapping HIV/Aids in the world

Having lived in Africa for 13 years, I have seriously experienced the influence of HIV/AIDS on populations in Central and Southern Africa. Aidsmap is mapping the statistics of the disease, results are published through a map service which I used to make this map. If you open the full map, you will be able to visualise many more statistics such as mortality rates and other health data. More information can be found on Aidsmap.



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European Commission LIFE projects

The map below is based on a regular map service of the EEA converted into a feature layer. LIFE is the EU’s financial instrument supporting environmental and nature conservation projects throughout the EU, as well as in some candidate, acceding and neighbouring countries. Since 1992, LIFE has co-financed some 3506 projects, contributing approximately €2.5 billion to the protection of the environment. More information can be found here. Clicking on the locations returns the project codes and complete overview. Note the custom layout popups!


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Belgian Beer Map

Belgium is a real beer country. Below you can see 164 locations of important breweries, home breweries and beer tasting pubs in Belgium. As a basemap I used the National Geographic Basemap. Clicking on the locations gives you more information as well as a link to the website if available. The locations were found at the Beer Mapping site.


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Cell phone towers around my house

Cell phone reception is terrible where I live, reason enough to check on the BIPT site where the cell phone antennas are placed around me. I mapped all antennas with a certain postal code based on their address and yes, there are not too many towers around me. Based on the BIPT code of the tower, you can find out whether it is shared among different operators. There are currently 8774 cell towers (approved or requested) in Belgium.


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Detailed Large Scale Map Flanders

The Detailed Large Scale Map of Flanders (GRB, Grootschalig Referentie Bestand) is showing a lot of details on the public domain, parcels and buildings. The basemap is an elevation map. More information can be found on http://www.agiv.be/gis/ganaar.aspx?gtid=1. The complete map for Flanders should be finalised in a few years. The status of the creation can be found here. The map is made based on a WMS service.

Bike nodes & Google Streetview thumbnails

This map shows the bike nodes of the bicycle networks of 4 different zones in Flanders with their node numbers. If you click on one of the nodes however you will also see the thumbnail of the google streetview image of that point (if available,otherwise it will be black), quite interesting!


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Tienen new ring road

The city of Tienen has planned a completely new ring road but the only plans one can find are low resolution drawings on topographic maps. I copied the map and added it to ArcGIS online which makes it much clearer what the effects could be. A link to the document of the Province was added to the road. A full web application for the large public was made available here.


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Wastewater & water distribution map

This map shows both water and wastewater in Little Rock. You can see the rich symbology of all the items in the map: sewers, gates, fire hydrants,... Data are from the Central Arkansas Water & Little Rock Wastewater Utilities.


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Walking Route GR-129 from Brugge tot Ronse

Walking routes are often available as KML or GPX. Both can be added to ArcGIS.com and even symbology is kept. The map below was made in 2 minutes. On the site http://www.lumaj.be/kmlbestanden/ one can find several walking routes, simply link tot the file and your map is made. You can either link to the downloaded file or link to the online file which automatically updates the map when the file is updated. Search for "Mont Noir" in the location search and you will find another interesting walking route with pictures associated. The larger walking route starts from my former home town Brugge, the most beautiful town in Western Europe, something I will try to prove in a different map...


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Air Quality Measurement Stations around Antwerp

The map below shows air quality measurement stations around the city and harbour of Antwerp. In the popup you can also see the current measurements as well as a picture of the station. The data are the most recent data available. Clicking on the graph gives you the full resolution data. The data are collected by the VMM (Vlaamse Milieu Maatschappij). Interpolated maps on air quality can be found here. The VMM also publishes Animated maps of air quality as shown below this map. The source of the data is www.irceline.be.


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National Geographic Map

Remember the good old school maps? This map is designed to be used as a general reference map for informational and educational purposes as well as a basemap by GIS professionals and other users for creating web maps and web mapping applications. The map was developed by National Geographic and Esri and reflects the distinctive National Geographic cartographic style in a multi-scale reference map of the world. The map was authored using data from a variety of leading data providers, including DeLorme, NAVTEQ, UNEP-WCMC, NASA, ESA, USGS, and others. This reference map includes administrative boundaries, cities, protected areas, highways, roads, railways, water features, buildings and landmarks, overlaid on shaded relief and land cover imagery for added context. The map includes global coverage down to ~1:144k scale and more detailed coverage for North America down to ~1:9k scale. Although small-scale boundaries, place names and map notes were provided and edited by National Geographic, boundaries and names shown do not necessarily reflect the map policy of the National Geographic Society, particularly at larger scales where content has not been thoroughly reviewed or edited by National Geographic.


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Live Weather Data Belgium

The maps below are showing real-time meteo data, partly from airport meteo stations and partly from the KNMI (rainfall data). Belgium will be in the eye of a storm in the coming days so it will be interesting to see the evolution below. Clicking on the dots will give you the temperature, wind and humidity values. Thanks to the extent values all maps can be visualised with the same extent. Have a bit of patience with the 3 maps on the right and bottom. Their map service is a bit slower than the rainfall map.
---------------------------------Rainfall------------------------------------------------------- Wind Speed and direction------------------------

--------------------------------Temperature---------------------------------------------------------Relative Humidity---------------------------

Bathymetry & whale sightings

Not too much time today for an impressive map but I wanted to share my Orca watching experience aboard a whale watching vessel in the De Fuca Street near Victoria on the border between Canada and the US. Very nice bathymetry and elevation map.


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Airplane track map

You can easily find both ship and airplane track services on internet. Since these are sometimes made available in KML format, they can be added to a map. For the map below I added the locations and tracks of airplanes approaching Los Angeles Airport (LAX). You can click on the airplanes to get flight information, elevation and speed. Check altitude and speed near the airport and further away. There is a delay of 15 minutes between the real position of the plane and the position on the map. Beware the airplane symbol on the map does not indicate the flight direction! If you would like to view a real airplane tracking application based on the Esri Flash viewer, check out the Heathrow aiport WebTrak application which also gives you information on noise.


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Global Tide Stations (Buoys)

This map presents the locations of global tide monitoring buoys. This map was developed as part of the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) Natural Hazards Support System (NHSS) which is available at http://nhss.cr.usgs.gov. Although this map was developed by the USGS, it contains data and information from a variety of public data sources, including non-USGS data. Therefore detailed information about each of these data providers, including specific data source, data currency and disclaimers, is provided at http://nhss.cr.usgs.gov/data.shtml.


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Flemish schools mapped based on address list

The map below is made with ArcGIS Explorer online using a simple basemap and dragging a tab delimited text file on it which can be found on the website of the department of education of Flanders. ArcGIS Explorer online accepts live geocoding through drag and drop of text files. If it does not recognize automatically the address fields (click on a school to check the needed fields), you can still map the fields with the required ones. It is also possible to link to text or csv files on the web. The data represented is a selection of secondary schools that offer Technical Education.


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Cartographic Portal of the Walloon Region

The Walloon region is making a lot of data available through services (both ArcIMS and WMS services, in some cases also ArcGIS Server Services). More information can be found on the RW website. Metadata on the PICC dataset shown below can be found here. The dataset is covering more than three quarters of the Walloon Region. The image below is from an area in Charleroi. Use the location search to get to other areas. The data are shown in Lambert 72 projection (non transformed). They can unfortunately not yet be combined with Web Mercator data due to the lack of transformation.


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Arctic Whale Survey

The map below shows results from an arctic whale survey carried out by Oceans North Canada
(Pew Environment Group). More information on the survey can be found here with a separate mapping application here. Interesting links: listen to Whale sounds and see pictures of the impressing Baffin Bay area.


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Map Art: Level III_IV Ecoregions

The most important reason why I am including this map is because it is so beautiful, a real work of art. But if you zoom in, you will also find a lot of detail on the ecoregions. Metadata on the map can be found here.


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Carte de France (Rumsey)

Bernie Szukalski transmitted this link today in his ArcGIS.com RSS feed. The Carte de France was one of the first national surveys completed on the same scale, 100 toises (a toise was equal to 6ft and the equivalent scale today would be 1:86,400), according to a specific plan. It was led by several generations of the Cassini family (not to be confused with the Italian globemaker Giovanni M. Cassini) starting in the 1740's and continuing through the French revolution and Napoleon's time, to 1815. Four generations of the Cassini family held the position of director of the Paris Observatory, and three of those worked on the Carte de France: Jacques Cassini (Cassini II, 1677-1756); Cesar-Francois Cassini (Cassini III, 1714-1784); and Jean Dominique Cassini (Cassini IV, 1748-1845). The 182 sheets that comprise the map are superb examples of cartographic engraving. The use of trigonometric surveying techniques gave the map a high degree of accuracy for its time. Below you see an area in what is now Flanders:


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NOAA Nautical Chart

Ever wondered what a map of the sea looks like? Below you find a part of the Nautical map of NOAA with separation zones and security zones. Metadata on the map can be found on http://geo.data.gov/geoportal/catalog/search/resource/details.page?uuid=%7B32EE1B54-0350-4436-9B6E-5F488A8C2EB9%7D. Try a location search on "Florida" to see a different part of the map. What is technically new with this map? If you open the larger map you will find that the original extent of the saved map is completely different. With the current version of ArcGIS.com, the default embedded sharing is taking over the current zoom extent of the map, not the original saved map. Much easier to embed exactly that part of the map you want to show!


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European Airport Traffic Map

The map below was made based on an EEA map service. I created a query layer enabling me to change the symbology (annual number of passengers) and add a pie chart (number of people disturbed by day and night flights between certain hours).


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Global Climate Observation System (GCOS)

I found this dataset on the Geo.Data.GOV geoportal. The Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) provides an operational framework for integrating, and enhancing as needed, observational systems of participating countries and organizations into a comprehensive system focused on the requirements for climate issues. GCOS builds upon, andworks in partnership with, other existing and developing observing systemssuch as the Global Ocean Observing System, the Global Terrestrial Observing System, and the Global Observing System and Global Atmospheric Watch of theWorld Meteorological Organization. It is co-sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the InternationalCouncil for Science (ICSU). GCOS addresses the total climate system including physical, chemical and biological properties, and atmospheric,oceanic, hydrologic, cryospheric and terrestrial processes. I added a link to a Bing Birds Eye View image for each station. Zoom out on that image if you have a blurred view, it means the available resolution for Bing is not high at that spot.


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Soil Water Balance Time enabled

This map shows clearly the new embedding possibilities of the last portal for ArcGIS version: embedded legend, description and location search. It is a map published by the EEA which can also be found on the Eye on Earth website, an implementation of the portal for ArcGIS for Organizations. The portal is still in a preview mode but you can already observe the way ArcGIS.com can be implemented within an organization. Eye on Earth was realized through a Public Private Partnership.


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New ArcGIS.com version released yesterday!

Yesterday, a new version of ArcGIS.com was released. More details can be found here or on the blog site. Quite a few very interesting enhancements with regard to KML support, spatial searches and secured layers. Check it out! One of the interesting new enhancements is the new embedding options: map extents are automatically generated, legends and descriptions can be shown. I added a legend and a location search on yesterday's map.

Supermarket access: sharing your geographic analysis

The supermarket access map below is an example of how the result of geographic analysis can be shared in the portal for ArcGIS. The green dots represent populations in poverty who live within one mile of a supermarket. The red dots represent populations in poverty who live beyond a one mile walk to a supermarket, but may live within a 10 minute drive...assuming they have access to a car. The grey dots represent the total population in a given area.


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