Thanks to the electoral college, maps play an important role in presenting United States presidential election results. There are some fancy animated maps out there nowadays that are capable of presenting loads of continuously updated data on election results. I founds a nice roundup of election map screen shots on Kottke.org (note that they don't necessarily show the FINAL results). He has good comments on the aesthetics and functionality of the maps, plus links to the map website so you can check them out yourself. I definitely recommend reviewing Kottke's post.
With all the news stations trying to best each other for coolest, newest, most interesting technology (e.g. CNN's holograms), I found myself most excited about NBC / MSNBC's electoral college map on ice at Rockafeller Plaza. I thought it a creative way of keeping people milling about around the NBC News location. They colored in the US map with red or blue as election results were called by state. Gawker has a video of the ice map in action, with Tom Brokaw talking in the background.
Barak Obama was the clear and decisive winner of the 2008 presidential election. Personally, I'm delighted. I think that for this generation, he has instilled an unparalleled level of energy and excitement in many Americans, along with the hope of better, more peaceful, and more prosperous days under his administration. But anyways, back to the maps... I found this cartogram on Wikipedia, which portrays the electoral college map scaled according to the number of electoral votes allotted to each state. The traditional maps can be misleading to the eye, since the number of electoral votes are not related to a state's area - a comparison of similarly sized California (163,696 sq mi) and Montana (147,042 sq mi) in the cartogram provides a good example.
I just came across this video from a new Saturday Night Live Weekend Update skit from Thursday, October 23, 2008. They have a very funny segment involving one of those newfangled interactive maps that the cable news people have been playing with in recent months. It begins at about 5:30 left in the time line (about 20% into the video). Highlights include:
Shrinking the country so it can fit in your pocket
Turning Oregon into an island
Sending New Hampshire to Mexico
Making Michigan bounce
All in all, an entertaining cartographic experience!
The Washington Metrorail System (Metro) includes five rail lines that extend through the District of Columbia and outwards towards the surrounding metropolitan regions of Virginia and Maryland. Upon reviewing the station locations and rail lines in accurate geographic scale in the image, below, a few issues for optimal cartographic representation of the Metro map may be observed. The concentration of stations is much higher within the District than in the surrounding suburbs, creating dense clusters of points along some rail lines. In addition, several rail lines extend into the suburbs and beyond the Capital Beltway (I495), creating a much larger geographic region to portray on the map.
The target audience for a map of the Metro system includes regular subway riders such as local citizens and commuters, as well as occasional rider such as tourists and out of town visitors. In order to effectively portray Metro’s stations and rails for a wide range of potential riders, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) opted for a stylized, spatially inaccurate representation of the subway map (see image, below). The official Washington Metrorail System Map design was produced graphically rather than via a GIS, and is based upon geometric shapes rather than precise geographic depiction of locations. This stylized schematic diagram follows design principles used by Harry Beck in his 1933 rendition of the London Underground subway map, by showing relative positions of stations and rail lines within the system. Beck’s map was considered revolutionary because it transformed the London subway’s depiction from a roadmap design to a non-geographic linear diagram more focused on getting passengers from station to station in a simplified, easy to interpret manner.
In comparing the rail lines between the stylized and geographically correct scale maps, one can see that the paths and orientations in the stylized map generally correspond. Although the lines are not spatially accurate and scale is skewed, they give the user a sense for where a given line or station is situated within the Metro region. A stylistic component of the Metro map is that the rail lines are of equal width, mostly straight, and bend at either 90° or 45° angles, which is in keeping with the geometric design. This clean, simplified design combined with the choice of five bold rail line colors helps present an attractive and easily differentiated color scheme within the map.
Stations are represented by a white circle with a bold black ring, with transfer stations differentiated by having a larger circle symbol with two black rings. This is an effective symbology that makes it easy for the user to discern connection points and major stations within the system. In general, the stations are evenly distributed along the mapped rail lines, which mostly allows for uniform placement of station labels.
Labels are oriented either horizontally or at 45° angles, although the angled text orientation and placement relative to the line is not uniform throughout the map. For example, the six easternmost stations on the blue line are not uniformly oriented and are not placed on the same side of the rail line. This is clearly due to space constraints, but is not optimal in terms of cartographic design. In addition, some labels cross over other features in the map, which is a design issue avoided by cartographers when possible. For example, on the blue and orange lines, the Foggy Bottom-GMU station label crosses over the Potomac River, Theodore Roosevelt Island, and land within Arlington, VA. Another aspect of the station labels’ design is the use of symbols to indicate parking and connections to commuter rails. This provides valuable information to the user and is accomplished without making the map overly complex or crowded.
The legend, north arrow, title, and regulation symbols are clearly presented around the boundaries of the map (see Metro's downloadable PDF version of the map). The map’s background is uncomplicated in white and includes major water and park features, several significant landmarks within the District, and a stylized representation of municipal boundaries and the surrounding Capital Beltway. Because the background features are muted relative to the bold rail line colors and black and white station symbols, they do not overcrowd the map or interfere with its main purpose. However, it would be an improvement to the design if the blue and green background colors were lighter and more subdued so as to reduce potential confusion between, for example, the river features and the blue rail line. In addition, this would reduce the perceived visual clutter associated with station labels overlapping background features.
Overall, the simplified, stylized depiction of the Metro map has proven an effective rendering of the District’s subway system. Although there is a loss of spatial accuracy, the map does not significantly diverge from reality and the design is small enough to fit on standard paper sizes such as 8.5 x 11”. The geometric design and color scheme makes the map readable and uncomplicated relative to the amount of information it conveys. The typography is clear and generally uniform, and the embedding of symbols for parking and commuter rail connections within station labels prevents the need for a separate key or list with that information. Although the map could benefit from a few minor design modifications, it is a superior cartographic product for its intended audience and purpose.
As a side note, each Metro station has a large neighborhood map posted near the entrance/exit so that riders can get oriented to the local station area. A station list can be found here, and neighborhood maps can be found online via the Station Masters website.
Here's a little bit of education on an important event in the history of cartography. Prior to the age of computer technology and Global Positioning Systems (GPS), the discipline of cartography experienced a significant transformation in the eighteenth century with the establishment of a reliable and accurate method for determining longitude at sea.Over the centuries, cartography had slowly progressed towards precision mapping.As early as 200 BC, the Greek geographer Eratosthenes had estimated the circumference of the Earth and established the use of latitude and longitude grid lines to map known regions of the world.A system of geographic coordinates based upon latitude relative to the equator and longitude relative to an arbitrarily assigned prime meridian was established at some point thereafter by geographers such as Hipparchus and Ptolemy, and known regions were plotted accordingly.However, cartographic principles and efficient measurement tools were not well established, leading to relatively inaccurate maps.In the age of European explorations and charting of new lands, latitude eventually was determined with reasonable to high accuracy (using a quadrant, octant or sextant) for a given location by measuring the angle of the sun at its zenith and comparing this to a declination table for that day, or by a similar measurement using celestial observations such as the North Star, Polaris.The measurement of longitude, however, was a far greater challenge for the accurate determination of geographic location, particularly for ocean navigation purposes, and this had a profound impact on the precision of navigation and the accuracy of maps made by explorers.The development of an accurate, reliable, and field deployable method for determining longitude took many centuries, and it wasn’t until the mid to late 1700s that the problem was sufficiently resolved.
Before the advent of modern technology such as GPS, the calculation of longitude, or east-west positioning on the globe, depended on the comparison of time of day at a given place to that of a fixed reference point such as a prime meridian. Since the earth rotates a full 360 degrees each day, a direct relationship exist between time and longitude. For a given place, time of day could be determined by observing when the sun reached its zenith, which indicates 12:00 pm local time. However, the major issue in measuring longitude at a given place on earth lay in the inability to accurately, consistently, and remotely tell time for the prime meridian, which is needed for comparison to local time.
On land, longitudinal measurements could be collected over time by measuring the distance from a plotted location such as the prime meridian or by using various time keeping methods, but there was no way to effectively accomplish this on ocean voyages. In sight of land, mariners could estimate longitude based upon distance from known locations, but when out to sea they relied on charting geographic positions via dead reckoning. This process involved estimating position by recording headings, speed, and elapsed time from a known position, but it was not a precise or particularly effective measurement on long voyages. In addition, some mariners would opt for navigating to the latitude of their destination, and then charting a course down that latitude, eastward or westward, until they reached their destination. This method was not a direct route to the destination and was commonly affected by winds and currents pushing the ship off course. Innumerous mariners encountered difficulties in navigation without the proper measurement of longitude, and there are many stories of explorers missing their intended destinations or befalling disasters due to inaccurate calculations of longitude.
The lack of an effective means for determining geographic coordinates – specifically longitude – at sea was a significant problem for explorers and their host countries, as well as for cartographers striving to make accurate maps of newly discovered lands.Some European astronomers devised methods for observing celestial bodies and relating these to Earthly longitudes, and out of this came the lunar distance method for calculating distance at sea.The Royal Observatory was established in Greenwich, England in 1675 to foster astronomical studies such as the measurements of lunar distances for longitude observations, and this method was utilized by navigators from about 1767 to the late 1800s for determining time at the prime meridian in Greenwich.
Although the laborious lunar distance method was sufficiently employed for longitude calculations, the desire remained to establish a less complicated, quicker method for precisely determining longitude at sea. In 1714, the British Parliament responded to a series of maritime disasters caused by errors in charting positions at sea by offering an enormous prize via the Board of Longitude, with the express purpose of encourage scientists, mathematicians, and entrepreneurial craftsmen to devise an effective means for measuring longitude at sea. Awards had been offered in the past by Spain, Holland, and France as incentives towards effectively determining longitude, the British Board of Longitude proposed a significant series of monetary prizes for the “discovery of longitude” if it could be determined to between 30-60 nautical miles.Although many on the Board of Longitude felt that astronomers would ultimately “discover” longitude, it was a precision clock maker who eventually earned the prize, 50 years after it was established, with a chronometer.
As early as 1530, Gemma Frisius had proposed a method for using an accurate clock set to time at a known location, which could be compared to local time at a given place to determine east-west distance traveled, which in turn would allow for the calculation of longitude at the given place. However, over two centuries passed before an effective instrument was designed.Beyond clocks being large, finicky, and non-portable during this time period, major issues in marine timekeeping involved the jerky movements of the vessel, which could cause the clock to get out of sync, as well as pressure, humidity, and temperature fluctuations that cause pieces within the clock to expand or contract and likewise get out of sync.
The Englishman John Harrison, born in 1693, was initially trained a carpenter but eventually became the clockmaker who successfully designed a series of portable chronometers that could be used at sea for determining time.He built his first clock in 1715, but did not begin seeking the Board of Longitude’s prize until 1930.He acquired financing from non-Board sources and finished building his first maritime chronometer, known as the H1, in 1735. The Board approved sea trial for the 35 kilogram clock went well, but Harrison endeavored to continue improving the design.He received financing from the Board to build the H2 chronometer (completed in 1739), which had a variety of improved features but ended up being heavier than the H1.
In 1741, the Board awarded him additional funds to build a third chronometer (the H3), but this creation wasn’t as successful and Harrison decided to begin building the H4 in 1757.The H4 design has a diameter of 12 centimeters and is similar to that of a pocket watch, but without the requirement of manual winding. The H4 proved to be a superior chronometer, designed for portability, durability, and accurate measurements of time.Marine time trials were exceedingly successful in voyages conducted in 1761 and 1764, with an error of just one nautical mile during the first trial.However, due to various Board politics, Harrison was never awarded the proper prize for his highly accurate chronometer. It wasn’t until 1773 that he successfully petitioned King George III and received a monetary award for his accomplishments.
The development of Harrison’s marine chronometer, along with subsequent derivations and improvements made by other clockmakers and craftsmen, had a profound impact on cartography.By using the chronometer, the time at the prime meridian could be kept accurately and consistently throughout a long term sea voyage, which made possible the easy determination of longitude via comparisons with local time.This greatly improved the accuracy and precision of navigation, exploration, and mapping efforts and may be considered a significant milestone in the advancement of cartography.
REFERENCES
Gould, R. T. (1921). "The History of the Chronometer." The Geographical Journal57(4): 253-268.
This satellite image of Antarctica was compiled from the LANDSAT Image Mosaic of Antarctica, or LIMA. You can use an interactive viewer hosted by USGS to check out the new imagery and see it stretched over terrain data. The imagery is now in the public domain and available for download here.
If you want to get a little dizzy, check out this Flash based 3D flight simulation over Antarctica (it does have audio so check your speaker volume). It was created by a group called Electric Oyster, and appears to incorporate satellite imagery and elevation data. I think you can get similar results by zooming in on Antarctica in Google Earth, tilting the frame, and then moving around over the terrain, but apparently this is something different. Anyways, I thought it was an interesting diversion up until the dizzies take over.
A gazetteer that I have found to be really useful when searching for place names - both modern and historic - is GeoNames. They have over 6.5 million features in the database, and geographic information is pulled from data sources such as NGA, USGS Geographic Names, and Wikipedia. Database queries can be restricted by continent, country, and / or feature class, and you can do a fuzzy search if you aren't confident about the spelling of your place of interest. The query results return search records that provide links to view the features plotted in Google Maps. Check out Emily Bay off the south coast of Norfolk Island in the South Pacific Ocean, east of Australia to play around with the map..
Users can edit data in the GeoNames database, which can be a plus or minus depending on whether you trust that sort of wiki-type feature. Apparently they have controls over how much can be edited by different levels of users. Lat-long data is available in WGS84 decimal degrees, which makes it fairly easy to plot localities in various mapping programs.
We are avid mountain bikers and frequent several regional parks in the D.C. metro area. Yesterday we experienced heavy, prolonged rain from tropical storm Hanna (which actually caused a flood in our kitchen), but today's post-Hanna weather is delightful. Wanting to take advantage of the great weather but avoid mucking around in water logged trails (a mountain biking no-no), we sought out a paved bike path. We'd been wanting to try out one of the regional rails-to-trails paths, and decided to bike part of the W&OD Trail. The W&OD is a 45 mile long multi-user paved path running east-west from Purcellville to Arlington, Virginia. The trail / park is maintained by the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority and also looked after by the non-profit group Friends of the W&OD Trail (FOWOD) . We found some good route planning information on the FOWOD website, and also discovered a cool website called Washington Bike that provides member-created bike routes and trails viewable via Google Maps.
I have embedded the Washington Bike Google Map mashup of the W&OD Trail at the bottom of this post to share this cool site. We used this map to review satellite imagery and terrain features along the trail to help us decide where to start our ride. The bike ride itself was a success - we did about 20 miles in 90 minutes, dodging various pedestrians and keeping out of the way of tandem bicyclists and dog walkers. We chose to bike from Falls Church to the end of the trail in Arlington, then back to the car. We encountered a few less than scenic features along the way, but all in all it was nice to be mostly safe from motorists while biking on pavement. I think we'll try biking some other sections further westward this fall.
My spring semester has ended! That means I am retiring this blog as a vessel for posting Advanced Map Design homework assignments. However, I have enjoyed working on EmilyMaps and I intend to keep posting as time permits and when the creative spark hits me. I hope to continue learning how to use Adobe Flash as well as Illustrator and Photoshop for cartography and other interests. For example, maybe someday I'll do something interesting like this world map on an apple (see image), which was created by Kevin Van Aelst. He has a pretty cool gallery of images, many of which use food as a medium. Also check out his rendition of cellular mitosis on a series of Boston creme doughnuts. It's not a map but definitely a creative way to visualize a scientific concept!
This animated map is my final project submission for Advanced Map Design. This project is intended to illustrate a fairly complex concept via a simplified demonstration. Open the Flash movie in your browser to learn more about the concept and play around with the demonstration.
It took forever and a day to get everything designed and (mostly) working, and I must give big thanks to Dr. Hallden for all of the guidance she provided in the past couple of weeks. I have learned a lot in this course, but this project humbled me with respect to thinking I could do Flash all on my own! I see some tutorials in my future...
PS: there are a few things I plan to tweak when time permits, such as fixing the play / pause feature so that when you pause then press play, it resumes at the point where you paused the animation. I also will adjust the timeline so that you don't get automatically transported back to the Overview scene after a couple minutes of playing with the map. I may also do some roll-over pop-up effects on the boxes in the legend.
Hurricane Emily was the first Category 5 storm of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season and it broke a record as the strongest storm to form in the Atlantic basin before the month of August. Here is a good recap of the storm's progress.
Note: there are a few elements I would like to incorporate into this map if I have the extra time. They include a legend for the hurricane track's colored dots (they indicate the storm strength) and buttons for play and pause. I also wanted to add another MODIS image of the hurricane as it moved into the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe when I have more free time...
