Visualising geodata – bringing maps to life
Britain's postcodes by Jim Holden - click to enlarge.
We often talk about the ‘power’ of geography, the ability inherent within a map to make sense of the world around us and to bring disparate sources of information together to reveal a hidden truth.
Some are serious, helping to pick up a hole in flood defences or patterns in fraudulent insurance claims. Or, like this example from San Francisco, they can map crime in such a comprehensive way that it’s possible to isolate a particular crime, whether it be burglary, arson or murder, down to an individual street on a single day at a specific time.
A map brings that information to life in way far better than any spreadsheet or database could.
Then there are the visualisation that are just plain pretty. The other week, Jim Holden (@Ouchy) got in touch with us on Twitter to share the visualisation he’d made using OS Open Data – seen here on the right.
Each point of light represents a single postcode in its geographic context – impressive stuff.
Perhaps my favourite visualisation from the past couple of years has been built by the masters at Ito World, who have elevated the manipulation of data to an art form.
The below visualisation is a year of edits to OpenStreetMap during 2008. It is simply beautiful and testament to the incredible hard work of the OpenStreetMap community.
If you’ve got a favourite geo-visualisation, whether it’s serious or something just for fun, we’d love to see it.
OSM 2008: A Year of Edits from ItoWorld on Vimeo.
UPDATE – Light pollution data
Light pollution & post codes
As suggested by Tim, we’ve had a go at overlaying light pollution data on the post code map.
It’s not very scientific, but as you’ll see there is pretty much exact correlation, and as Steven says, you can expect that to be the same for population density too – makes sense when you think about it.
And, I’m told by a friend who works for an energy company in Aberdeen, that the pattern of lights in the North Sea are oil rigs!
GI explained, Using GI and maps
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geo, geography, ito, maps, post codes, visualisation, visualisations
Themocracy
Idle thought, wonder what a light pollution image of the UK would look like next to it. Very similar i think.
Great shout Tim – this study by the Campaign to Protect Rural England seems to back you up. Take a look at the pdf ‘Light Pollution Map: England and the UK’ about half way down this page: http://www.cpre.org.uk/library/results/light-pollution
It’s a few years old, but it’s still very interesting to compare it to the post code map.
Also shows quite neatly why the Peak District National Park has such huge pressure on it – look at all those postcodes within easy day trip reach!
I think you will find that both light pollution and the postcode map correlate with population density
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ordnance Survey, Jim Dixon. Jim Dixon said: Spot the Peak District on this new post code light pollution map from #OrdnanceSurvey: http://bit.ly/g0cYfY [...]
[...] was recently drawn to the Ordinance Survey’s blog where they had tweeted on image they had received which visualised the postcodes of Great Britain is a rather artistic [...]
[...] diferentes indicadores. Existen mapas de distribución de códigos postales, como los de la Ordnance Survey, pero estos son divisiones que no están en función de la densidad de población o relacionados [...]