Bus stops around Tienen

The bus stops of the bus company "De Lijn" are now open data and can be used to put on a map. The popup shows the streetview thumbnail but also provides a link to the realtime expected buses to pass by.

Churches in Flanders - ArcGIS Online major update

ArcGIS Online just got a major update. Amongst the many new features, a very interesting one is the filter you can now apply (and view table). In the example below,I filtered the VIOE dataset for all objects which have the word "kerk=church" in their name. The result is a nice map of all churches which are considered national heritage in Flanders. More information on the new release can be found here.
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AppsForAntwerp Application

With the title MapsForAntwerp we participated in the AppsForAntwerp event using open data from the city of Antwerp. Below you can find the powerpoint presentation as well as the web apps that were made to show data on schools and education in Antwerp. The full standalone gallery can be found here.

Wind turbine opportunities in the Netherlands

The map below shows the wind turbine opportunities in the Neterlands with regard to nature, airports and existing wind turbines. Click on the legend to see more information and zoom in to visualize the existing wind turbines.
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Realtime view on the weather in Belgium

The map below shows the webcam images of the Royal Meteorological Institute (KMI). A click on the images shows the recent temperature evolution. Clicking on the graph brings you to the original page of the KMI for that particular meteo station. The larger map is an application where all KMI tweets are shown as well. Panning will automatically refresh the images.
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GIS is also used for facility management

The map below shows how ArcGIS Online can be used for Facility Management. Map services for facility management will normally use large scale visualisation. Links to internal infrastructure such as electricity cables are visible. The map below was made in the framework of the web mapping conference of SIGGIS through input from participants.
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University Campus detailed in Open Streetmap

The University Campus Arenberg at the University of Leuven (KULeuven) is now shown in detail on Open Streetmap with all campus buildings. Open streetmap regularly shows more detail than any other map, especially when students are involved.
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Second price on the Flemish Government Hackathon!

Last Friday our team won the second price on the hackathon of the Flemish Government. This was achieved by combining several open data sources in a webmap and publishing the web map adding specific functionality. After the hackathon, a combination of the winning application (http://www.mijnlucht.be) was realized showing air quality for government offices. The applications that were developed live on that day using only 4 hours working time are shown below:

Historic map gallery

The historic map gallery below uses a new feature of ArcGIS.com: embedding several maps from one group. It enables the user a direct click through to the map from a thumbnail. To realise this, click on the share butten from the group.

Thermography of city of Ghent (Belgium)

In March 2010, the city of Ghent was thermographed during the night in order to show heat loss of rooftops. The data are made available through a website but also as a service which is combined here with the large scale basemap made available by the Flemish Government. Another interesting fact about this map is that has been published by a private portal for ArcGIS from the Flemish Government, not on arcgis.com.

Leuven 1649, historic map with modern legend...

Reviving a historic map by digitizing the old legend as map pins. This map has numbers on locations of public buildings, places and religious buildings which refer to a legend at the right op the map. On this web map the legend was redigitized as map pins on the map. Certain locations were also completed with a wikipedia picture and link to get more information on the item. The University town of Leuven has changed a bit in 400 years. It is remarkable on the map that most of the gullies around the town are shown as dry. This was probably a realistic situation since only the areas where the river Dyle is flowing in and out of town are shown with water. If you want to compare the old map with the current situation, this application shows you a synchronized view on both maps.


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Titanic: no one can escape the publicity...

This map was made in the wake of the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. A complete web map application on the passengers can be opened here. The map below shows the icebergs, warnings and rescue ships 100 years ago.


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Tienen 1649 Atlas van Loon

This is probably the source of the two maps on the battle of Tienen described below. It is a beautifully detailed map which uses already some of our modern techniques to show different items on the map. Note the different roof colors which were used to indicate civilian houses or churches, chapels and public buildings.



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The battle of Tienen 1635

Another historic map which has been georeferenced roughly. The 3D map was made between 1635 and 1700 when the Northern Dutch and the French troops reconguered the city of Tienen in Flanders from the Spanish. Although the city was burned almost completely during the battle, many streets can still be found today. The number of churches and chapels has declined however. Annotations on the map also show the entry ports to the city. A similar drawing (different version) which as dated on 1651 can be found here. To be able to compare different maps, there are two tools on arcgis.com to enable this: a comparison web application or a slider map. Both are available: a comparison between the two historic maps and Bing maps and a slider map between the two historic maps.


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Antverpiae Civitatis Belgicae Toto Orbe 1557

This map was made using the Esri Portal for Organizations and shows what can be done with historic material in a geoportal. Even though the map was not georeferenced, it is possible to add annotations which can provide more information on items shown. This is a map of the city of Antwerp drawn in 1557.


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Historic Map: Tokyo 1680 (David Rumsey)

Is this a geographic map or is this artwork? Both can be shown on arcgis.com. This week I gave a lighting talk at the Esri 2012 Developer summit on use of Arcgis Online for Historic maps. This map of Edo (Tokyo) differs hugely from the present day metropolis, with the exception of the area in the center of the map around the Imperial Palace, which has remained largely unchanged for over 300 years. Many properties are identified and cultural features such as temples are delineated pictorially.



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Save the children Italy maps

My attention was drawn this morning at the Esri Partner Conference to a series of interesting maps made by "save the children Italy". The maps are also shown in a full public map gallery. Below you can find an example. To view all map items of the organization, click here.


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Occurrence of Schmallenberg Virus in the UK

Another nice map of Will White...Schmallenberg Virus (SBV) is a new emerging livestock disease that has been detected in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. It was first identified in the UK in late January. It is similar to some other animal disease pathogens, such as Akabane and Shamonda viruses, which are transmitted by vectors, such as midges, mosquitoes and ticks.

Infection information has been gathered from The Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (an executive agency of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). SBV infection data is presented at Local Authority level. At present the virus appears most prevalent in Sheep. This map includes sheep population data for England also taken from Defra. This data can be found here. More information can be found on the Defra Website.


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Large Scale Base map Flanders can now be combined with Bing maps

AGIV (Flemish Agency for Geographic Information) publishes the large scale infrastructure map for Flanders (Grootschalig Referentiebestand Vlaanderen) as a WMS service. The service is covering already a large part of Flanders and maps all infrastructure in great detail. It can be combined with other base maps in Web Mercator projection as shown below.


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The true geography of the London Underground

Will White (Esri UK) mapped the true geographic route of the London underground:
The London Underground map, first developed by Harry Beck in 1931, is world famous as being an iconic schematic diagram, however as many know it isn't geographically accurate. This map shows the real route of the Tube and its stations.
At closer zoom scales you can also turn on 5 minute average walk times (please note, these are off by default) around each underground station. This distance is based on an average walking speed of 5 km/hr. These were calculated by generating geodesic buffers using ArcGIS for Desktop.


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Music on the map

Royal harmonic orchestra are in Belgium traditional music organisations which are more than 100 years old. There are quite a few of them in my region, the Hageland region Between Leuven, Diest and St Truiden. These bands have often more than 70 musicians with drum, brass and woodwind instruments. The symbols on the map show locations of these orchestra with links to their website and music. The popup also shows their logo, often the official shields from the time of their foundation.


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A Map of map services

The map below uses the arcgis server rest interface capability to make centroid points of map services automatically in KML format. Each of the map pins below represents one of the map services of the European Environmental Agency. Clicking on the pins shows the detailes of the map services.


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Maps on the map: footprints of historic maps

This map shows footprints of historic maps in the former Southern and Northern Netherlands. I'm still completing the collection. All the footprints have links to an explanatory page, the map itself and a thumbnail. I will be adding more maps when time is available. Zoom in and click on the footprints, in a lot of cases there is more than one footprint on the same place, click on the small triangle in top right corner of the popup to browse through the different footprints.


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Artwork on a map

This experimental map was compiled by Allen Carroll (program manager, ArcGIS online content) to demonstrate the concept of "map-enabling" artwork in the collection of the National Gallery of Art. Many of the works of art in the Museum's collection portray a specific place or include location information in their titles. Locating works of art on a map gives enthusiasts a new way of searching and discovering works of art, and encourages thinking in fresh ways about the relationship between geography and creativity, location and inspiration. Clicking on icons causes a popup to appear; clicking in turn on the image within the popup accesses descriptive pages on the National Gallery's website.


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Exceptional Nature Reserve: Vinne (Zoutleeuw, Belgium)

Next to a lot of international maps, below a map of an exceptional nature reserve at a 10 kms from where I live: the Vinne Lake. It is the only natural lake in Flanders with a long history as can be seen on this old Ferraris map (1777). In 1841 the lake was dried with pumps to use the area for agriculture and later on for tree culture. In 2004 the pumps were stopped and the lake filled again. It is now an area with an extremely rich bird life and many interesting animals and plants. An adapted web app with logo can be found here. A few clicks on the map will show you the area...


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Global Wetlands UNEP-WMC

This map features a dataset that shows the global distribution of wetlands. It was produced alongside the publication 'Wetlands in Danger", Dugan, P ed. (1993).

The wetlands data is overlayed on the Light Gray Canvas Map for reference purposes. This basemap provides nice contrast with the wetlands layer. You can change the basemap to a topographic map or imagery basemap to see more detailed features on the landscape. Use the legend or click on a feature to see the type of wetland.

This map is based on the Global Wetlands (1993) item published by UNEP-WCMC.


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Horn of Africa - Telling a story with a map

This Map Story examines the ongoing drought and famine that threaten millions of people in Somalia and elsewhere in the Horn of Africa. Four maps, accessible via the tabs near the top of the page, explore aspects of the crisis, including refugee populations, predicted food shortages, the extent of the drought, and continuing relief efforts. New satellite images show rapidly growing refugee camps in Ethiopia. The map below is only part of the story, embedded in the story-telling template of arcgis.com it tells much more: check it out here:http://storymaps.esri.com/famine/ or with an integrated multimedia experience on this page: http://www.geostories.org/story/famine-in-the-horn-of-africa/ges879C1E16C94248687.


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Wanderkarte - Naturpark Oberer Bayerischer Wald

What makes this touristic map special? The nice topographic map? The walking routes? The fact that thousands of tourists including myself have walked in this wonderful area already? Try a different template of ArcGIS.com which was just published a few days ago and open this map, then click on a route and view the elevation profile as shown below. There are a few new templates including a GPX and a story telling template. Try it!


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RSS + Map = GeoRSS

The map below shows the combination of RSS news feeds on a map based on geonames. The feeds are clickable. Notice as well a new feature of the latest arcgis.com release: you can now change basemaps in the embedded map. The latest version is also localised so you can now choose your language and regional settings.


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World Globe Map 1812 (David Rumsey Collection)

This globe map is made from a flat map of the world on Mercator's projection. Explorers' routes are shown and the interiors of Africa and Australia are largely unknown at the time. More information can be found here.


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Twelve month time series from MODIS

This map features NASA’s Next Generation Blue Marble imagery in a set of 12 monthly composite images of the entire earth, using 500-meter-resolution imagery from the MODIS satellite. These monthly images reveal seasonal changes of the land surface: the green-up and dying-back of vegetation in temperate regions such as North America and Europe, dry and wet seasons in the tropics, and advancing and retreating Northern Hemisphere snow cover. The Blue Marble Next Generation imagery was produced by Reto Stöckli, NASA Earth Observatory (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center). Open the larger map to use the time slider (in this blog the map shows only the first image).


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River Scheldt at Terneuzen

Many vessels pass the river Scheldt to reach the harbour of Antwerp. This map shows part of this river with ship routes, buoys, resting places of seals and much more. It is based on an extensive mapping service from the Zeeland authority. The province of Zeeland makes a lot of geodata available for the public on this website. Watch the numerous ship wrecks mapped on this spot! If you click on the wrecks, you can get more information (click the middle of the symbol, not the body of the boat).


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John Snow's Cholera Map, London 1854

This map (published by Simon Liu from Esri UK) is based on John Snow's map of deaths caused by cholera during the summer of 1854 in Soho, London, showing that most deaths occurred near a contaminated water pump on Broad Street (now Broadwick Street). Death locations are represented by points, which are colour-coded based on which pump is the nearest. John Snow's original map is now in the public domain. Digitised location data was also used from the following source: http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/pubs/snow/snow.html



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Ferraris maps from 1770-1777

Between 1770 and 1777 Comte Joseph de Ferraris, General and Commander of the Artillery in the Austrian Netherlands, produced a chorographical map of these regions, which was put in print in 1780. After revolutionary France had occupied the Austrian Netherlands in 1794, Louis Capitaine, First Engineer of the map of the French Republic, issued a new engraving of Ferraris' work. The division of the map over the various sheets was rearranged in such a way that it formed a unity with the already existing map of France by Cassini, as to portray the southern Netherlands as an integral part of that country. The old Ferraris map sheets are shown below for a small part of Flanders, by clicking on the sheets, the picture has the URL tot the map viewer, showing the original detailed scanned maps as published by the Belgian National Geographic Institute and the Royal Library of Belgium. On the technical side: the images on this map are loading from a KMZ file. It might take a few seconds before these are shown(7 MB file).


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Light emission at night

This map presents a nighttime view of the Earth that provides an informational and educational view of our planet at night. The image was produced by mosaicking Defense Meteorlogical Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS) satellite images. This system was originally designed to view clouds by moonlight and to map the locations of permanent lights on the Earth's surface. These data are derived from 9 months of observations superimposed on a darkened land surface. ESRI georeferenced these data to a real-world coordinate system. The layer is suitable for display to a largest scale of 1:18,500,000. To access the source imagery used to publish this map service, you can use the Earth at Night Layer Package that is published by Esri.


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Esri just published a new World Relief map

The map only shows relief and hillshade, no other features. Bathymetry is not shown (use the ocean base map to show that). The map is only available at small scales at this moment, do not zoom in too far. The map was published on January 5th this year and might be interesting for geography lessons as a blind map.


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Costa Concordia Cruise Ship Disaster

The map below shows the recent track of the Costa Concordia which ran aground around the Isle of Giglio in Italy yesterday evening. Ship positions were taken from AIS, the ship tracking site which also has extensive information on the ship itself. Zoom to the disaster area to get more information including the harbour web cam with live images. Bookmarks available on the larger map. The arrows indicate the approximate direction of the vessel at that time based on the degrees transmitted to the AIS system. The last two recordings were transmitted with half an hour difference and 2.8 sea miles apart (at cruise speed this would mean app. 12 minutes). The recording at 20:37 shows a speed of 15,3 knots and a direction of 285 degrees, the very last recording shows a speed of 1.1 knot and cruising direction of 13 degrees, completely North and away from the Isle. From the AIS recordings it seems that the vessel got into problems between the two last recordings, turned around and headed for the port of Giglio which can be seen by zooming in on the last recordings. For a presentation of the full journey (Silverlight needed) click here.



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Residential Garbage Collection Routes

This map was made to show the routes of the residential garbage collector trucks. Do you know the routes in your area? Are the routes optimized? Is the workload on the different teams equally distributed? How much garbage is collected in each area? The analysis of garbage collection is more interesting than you would think!


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Crime analysis map (Chicago)

This dataset (published by Ross Capaccio) reflects reported incidents of crime (with the exception of murders where data exists for each victim) that occurred in the City of Chicago from 2010 to Present (YTD 2011) for the CPD Beat, Park, School and CTA Station crime by type analysis. For the Neighborhood time-series of total crimes, data is from 2001-2010, representing over 4.7 million incidents of reported crime.

Data is extracted from the Chicago Police Department's CLEAR (Citizen Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting) system.


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Dutch Population Statistics time enabled

This web map (published by Esri NL) shows the potential number of people present in the Netherlands, per grid (500x500 meter) and 4 different time frames.The grid maps used in this web map are based on the Populator®, an online data service which can be used to calculate the number of people in any given area. The grid size is merely an example, the model supports estimates per address and site. Time and data as shown in the web map, are an indication of the 4 time frames possible.

In all, the results can be obtained
· in 17 different types (e.g. homes, offices, hospitals and schools)
· on structural and occasional locations (addresses and sites)
· during 4 different time frames (week/weekend/day/night)
The Populator® is available through www.populator.nl, xml-webservices and customized solutions to serve specific application.


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City maps streetlight outages

This map displays the streetlights which are owned and maintained by the City of Rockville, Maryland. A small number of lights shown are privately owned. Lights shown in gold are operational while lights shown in red are undergoing maintenance. When zoomed in sufficiently close the pole number will appear on the light symbol. Additional information for each light can be found by clicking on the light symbol.

Zoom and pan to a streetlight interest, or enter an address to locate, then click on the streetlight symbol to see a pop-up showing the status of the light. These kinds of maps allow citizens also to report malfunctioning streetlights, even before they really become unoperational.


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Storm over Central Europe today

The new meteo map service based on NOAA data is showing an interesting pattern over Central Europe today. wind speed figures are visible if you zoom in.



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This was how it looked on Januari 5th:

Live Water Levels Flanders

The map below shows 4 water level gauge stations of the VMM. Clicking on the stations shows their live water level evolution in a graph, clicking on the graph links you to the original web page of the VMM (Vlaamse Milieu Maatschappij). Maps of the water level predictions are shown on the overstromingsvoorspeller site.



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Live Traffic Cameras Flanders

The Flemish Government publishes traffic density maps with the possibility of popups for traffic cameras. These images can also be visualised immediately on the map based on their location. I added the images for 4 different locations on the map (use bookmarks in the larger map to view them), visualisizing immediately the situation on the road based on the location, this gives a more intuitive impression of the situation than a page full of images. You can use this map on your Ipad to view the situation at the location where you are. I published two web apps based on this map, a simple app and a more complete app.


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The graph below gives an impression of the evolution of traffic jams during the day. The black line shows the current value.