Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with maps and data

Looking for a nystagmus/artcar tracker

tacit_urn — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:14:55 -0800

Help me find online map based tracking tools I'm looking for software that will help me graph both time and physical location. For example, I want to keep track of every time and every place I get nystagmus. Evenings, when I'm at sea-level? Sundays near crowds?

I also envision the same tool being used by a group of friends to pinpoint when and where they spot a certain art car in town.

Maybe something like google maps, with colored pinpoints for time. If anyone has example data of this variety that is graphed in a meaningful way, I'd like a link to that as well.

What can you see in satellite photos?

k. — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:33:01 -0800

Satellite photos: what interesting features can be seen or measured in them (or other aerial photos), and where can I get a supply of images? Examples I have already seen, from some crude Google-searching:
Roads
Buildings
Degree of development (urban/suburban/rural)
Oil spills (apparently these are usually hard to see)
Blooms of algae (cyanobacteria) in the Baltic Sea
Damage to buildings from earthquakes

More would be appreciated--the more specific, the better. These will be used in a computer vision system, so I'd especially like to know where I can find a supply of images containing whatever feature I'm looking for (including the above)--easy for buildings or roads, but hard for rare events like oil spills. Natural disasters seem interesting, if there are pictures available.

I would also consider some other kind of non-photographic data as well, if it could be combined with maps or photos. Don't worry whether you think it's suitable; any idea you have will help!

Where is my "Oh shit" dashboard?

jlowen — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:43:34 -0800

How do I understand floodplain maps? Just how high does the river near my house need to get before my house floods? This is just out of curiosity, I am in absolute no immediate threat of this happening. (As far as I know)

I live on Lawrence, Kansas just a couple hundred feed from the Kansas River. My house is protected by a levee and is listed by a FEMA flood plain map as being in a "Zone X" which I interpret to mean a 500 year flood plain.

Here is the flood map of my neighborhood. I live on Ash Street - In case the map link does not work, here is the same street on Google Maps) Here is the closest USGS river measurement station.

Every spring I watch the river get high and wonder "Just how high does it need to get before my house floods?" Can anyone point me to the data indicator I could watch and at what level I should start worrying?

Help me find a pseudo-cartogram of the world's largest cities.

brownbat — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 22:58:53 -0800

Help me re-find a cartogram-like picture of the 100 largest cities by population. A few months ago I saw a chart of the world's largest cities (maybe the cutoff was all cities with over 1 million people, maybe it was the 100 largest). The picture was a large rectangle and the cities were rectangles as well. Tokyo was in the upper-left with a bajillion people (35 million ish), then the next 5 or so cities had in the 20 millions.

There may have been color coding to indicate what country of the world they were in.

I might have seen a story about this chart on Lifehacker, the Freakonomics blog, or maybe just reddit. Can't remember, and I'm apparently not Googling for the right keywords.

Generating shaded maps of India with state-level data series.

matthewr — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:31:29 -0800

What's the easiest way of generating a map similar to this? I have several state-level data series I want to display on maps of India. I assume this blank map of India in SVG format is a good starting-point. Now, what program(s) do I use to link areas on the map to my data series and hence automatically shade states by a variable x?

My data looks like:
[state code] state x [jm] jam 1.93386 [hp] him 1.74945 [pj] pun 1.90247 [uc] utt 2.13038 ... 33 more states ...

I have Windows, Stata, Excel and zero budget.

What about London should I map?

viewofdelft — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:23:05 -0800

What about London should I map? I'm in an Advanced GIS class for which I need to produce a final cartographic project. The project must begin in ArcGIS but from there I'm free to use anything else (Illustrator, Flash, Google Earth, etc). In the spirit of John Snow, I'd like to make my upcoming trip to London a force for academic good.

I have a GPS unit, a DSLR camera, a student's budget, and a winning personality. What should I map? I'm open to all suggestions as long as they meet the following criteria:

1) The map should present complex and interesting information. I'm not too worried about this one because questions soliciting suggestions on this site often generate very interesting answers.

2) The project/map should be focused. I'll be in London for only a week and I'd like to make the data collection effort into a sort of overarching theme for my visit. That means I should probably confine my map to one neighborhood or area (I'm staying in Soho, but don't let that restrict you).

3) The data can come from any (accessible) source. I'd like to have a little fun gathering the data, but if your suggestions for a map can just as easily be constructed with data from other sources, I'd be happy to hear them. I live in the United States, so any return trips are out of the question this semester.

Thanks in advance. If I choose to go with one of the suggestions, I'll keep you updated.

How do I find the population within a defined radius of a certain point?

brain_drain — Mon, 21 May 2007 19:58:06 -0800

I'm looking for a tool (preferably free) that will provide population data for the area within a defined radius of a point on a map. Ideally, it would be a website that allows you to click on a map, set a "center," and choose a radius from the center (say 10, 20, 100 miles). It would then provide information on the population within the chosen radius. At a minimum I need information on population size, but other demographic data would be helpful as well.

If there's no such site (or it's expensive), next-best would be a tool that at least provides this information for major metropolitan areas.

Where do they get all those wonderful data?

jxpx777 — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 16:07:16 -0800

WhereTheHellDoTheyGetAllThatData Filter: When someone wants to start a site that requires huge amounts of data like IMDB or Pandora or Last.FM, where do they get the data? I can't really see that they take the time to find all the data sources and compile and link it all together into a database format. There has to be some place where they get the data. Another example is a mapping site like Mapquest or Google Maps. I know Google has more money than God or whatever, but where does such a huge amount of data come from?

Then, the side note, is how the hell do they go about processing it or relating it all together to produce a product like Pandora?

I am interested in this partly from a pure curiosity standpoint and partly from an IfIEverWantedToDoSomethingSimilar standpoint.

Different cell phone standards around the world

cloudscratcher — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 12:55:56 -0800

Cell phone standards around the world. Specifically, a map that shows which ones are where, that would be great... Cell phone dialects, as it were, insofar as there are any. Some kind of visual representation of the many different cell phone standards around the world.

(also, a good primer on the different standards would be great... I've already found a lot of *bad* ones)

in particular, anything that showed the differences between US, European and Asian markets.

Have been running through google for a while... hope that someone here has some insight (or higher google powers)

Thx!