Earth NullSchool - now available as an app

Earth NullSchool is probably in the top five websites I've used in my teaching over the years, alongside sites like Digimap for Schools and Google Earth.

It is now available as an app for iOS and Android.

It works perfectly in landscape or portrait format on your device, and has all the same features as the desktop / web browser version.

Bob Lang's 30 Days of Mapping

During November, Bob Lang shared a map a day and there were some very useful resources. He has now produced a map which shares details of all the resources that he created.

Thanks very much Bob! These are great.

  

OS Map Tile Explorer - from Alasdair Rae

A little Christmas gift from Alasdair Rae.

A little map creation, where you can click on the OS 100km map tiles that you have visited. I've been to most of them apart from a few extremes...

How many have you visited?

Cal Heat Score

Via Dr. Dawn Wright

Another ESRI mapping resource which would be of value.

A project in California maps the districts which are likely to be affected by extreme heat.

It is called CalHeatScore.

Obviously at the moment, there are no real causes for concern, but that will not be the case as we move through 2026.

The page looks like the one here:

A first-of-its-kind system that ranks heat risk on a scale from 0 to 4 at the ZIP code level.

ZIP codes are the US equivalent of post codes.

The online tool, built in ArcGIS Experience Builder, includes a map that divides the state into ZIP codes and shades each one a color ranging from light gray (low risk) to deep red (severe risk), depending on forecasted heat impacts for the current week. A tab displays cooling centers, such as libraries and community centers where people can access air conditioning and hydration. The tool also provides information on why each area has its heat ranking, along with profiles of the population’s age ranges, race and ethnicity breakdowns, access to health insurance, number of outdoor workers, and more.

California has a lot of micro-climates.

During extreme heat events, more people get sick, and some die. Yet, according to Wieland, public awareness of extreme heat’s dangers—and what to do when it strikes—remains low.

“A lot of people just think, ‘I’m going to tough it out. I’ve felt heat like this in the past, so I’m just going to continue with all my planned activities for the day,’” he said. “But that can have really dangerous and sometimes deadly consequences.”

Dance of the Continents

Via Jason Sawle on LinkedIn.

An impressive StoryMap exploring the choreography of the continents. Embedding not enabled.

Here's the story of its creation.

Global Building Atlas

A project by the University of Munich has aimed at producing a map showing all the world's buildings.

There are estimated to be 2.75 billion buildings.

The researchers have created the first high-resolution 3D map of Earth’s 2.75 billion buildings, producing a dataset 30 times finer than previous global maps. Called the GlobalBuildingAtlas, it was funded by the ERC Starting Grant and built using 2019 satellite imagery.

Each structure is modelled at a three-by-three meter resolution, allowing estimates of height, volume, and density.

The researchers created the project to serve a socioeconomic and environmental purpose. For instance, such a comprehensive, bird’s-eye-view map offers detailed information about the “footprint” of urbanisation and poverty around the world,

Storyscape

Check out the year's end issue of this ESRI mapping newsletter with lots of StoryMap related news...

Data after Dark

Via Professor James Cheshire on LinkedIn.

Today we've published DATA AFTER DARK: a huge piece of work that shines a much needed light on the geography and lived experiences of London's 1.3 million night workers. 

Check it out!

https://dataafterdark.org/

There's too many findings for one post, so for now I want to thank all the night workers who responded to our surveys and who spoke to our researchers and to thank the wider team and supporters of this milestone project.

The research looks like being really useful, and perhaps the night needs to have a greater presence in the geographies that we teach - particularly at this time of year when many of us who are teaching leave home in the dark and arrive home in the dark.

The site includes a very nicely presented research report on night-time working and the night-time economy, as well as centring the voices of night-time workers.

Download the research report here (PDF download)

From the website:

Although night workers make up a little over a quarter of London’s total workers, they are noticeably under-represented in traditional sources of data. Data gathering efforts, and the policy insights that flow from them, still presume the regular “9 to 5” working day, but this is increasingly unrepresentative of people's lived experiences and is not fit for purpose for the millions who work when many of us are enjoying a night out or sleeping.

Data After Dark represents the most comprehensive studies of London’s night workers completed to date, spanning three detailed pieces of work:

• Voices of Night Workers: in-depth, documented, night worker-led discussions
• Didobi Night Worker Report: an extensive survey of workers and their employers
• Mapping Night Work: the innovative spatial analysis of large datasets

Data After Dark was initiated by the UCL Social Data Institute with collaborators from the UCL Urban Laboratory, The Bartlett School of Architecture, the Geographic Data Service and Didobi Limited.

The research was supported by the Mayor of London. It received support, advice and funding from UCL Innovation & Enterprise.

Glacier Melt Visualisation

This nice interactive infographic visualises the ice loss from Switzerland's glaciers.

It is one of several from the VisQuill site, developed by Dr. Benjamin Niedermann.

Going where the car doesn't...

This is an interesting story on the mapping of Britain away from the roads.

Here's the story of Dr. Uy Hoang:

Dr. Uy Hoang, 51, decided to act after realizing he couldn’t see his local town path online and now he is single-handedly mapping Britain's waterways as a hobby.

He has taken a staggering 300,000 snaps and uploaded them to the online mapping service - making him the most prolific contributor in Britain and ninth in the world, he says.

Starting in 2015, he has spent the last 10 years covering the nation's rivers and canals - walking an estimated 1,600 miles.

Uy, from London, says he’s covered at least 75% of the nation's canal network so far.

New ESRI GIS support materials

Jason Sawle shared this on World GIS Day.

Part of a forthcoming set of resources for students and teachers to explore the world.

Sharing the blog on Substack

I've been sharing my blogs over on my Substack Newsletter. This comes out weekly and provides an update on blog posts, projects, news, books, images and events linked to geography.

Subscribe here.

Digital assessment - some trials

This is coming soon...

Katie Hall has shared some of her recent work exploring digital assessment options.

She has been working with Qualifications Wales to look at a possible model for doing this.

Nathan Evans from Qualifications Wales has written a blog post about progress to date.

This includes some videos of the tasks that learners were asked to do.

And then you can have a go yourself at doing the activity here.

250 000 page views

Well it's taken a while to get here... this blog is one of my older ones... thanks for your interest and for reading.

Maps on Vinyl

Coming to the UK later this month is a book by Damien Saunder.

It is called Maps on Vinyl.

Description from the author/publisher.

Visit the website and scroll down to see lots of examples.

Presenting 415 album covers – beautifully reproduced, expertly laid out and accompanied by deeply researched text – Maps on Vinyl will especially appeal to map enthusiasts, vinyl junkies, music fans, graphic designers and artists.

The book is the brainchild of renowned Australian cartographer Damien Saunder, whose expertise has been utilised by Apple, National Geographic, Earth (the world’s largest atlas) and even Roger Federer. A keen crate-digger, he has amassed possibly the world’s most extensive private collection of records featuring maps on their covers, resulting in this one-of-a-kind book. 


Records by artists including Madonna, Oasis, Coldplay, Grateful Dead, Bob Marley, XTC, MC5, Queen, New Order, James Brown, Brian Eno and Weezer are featured, with cover art created by many giants of the design world, including Peter Saville, Curtis McNair, Richard Gray, Alton Kelly, Stanley Mouse, Neville Garrick, Roger Dean and Pedro Bell.

The records headlined span music from 1939 to today, and the book is divided into eight chapters highlighting different aspects of the collection – ‘C(art)ography’, ‘We Built This City’, ‘On the Road’, ‘African Beats’, ‘Astroworlds’, ‘Ocean Whispers’, ‘Maps with Attitude’ and ‘Music from Here’.

Maps on Vinyl is a beautiful artefact, but it’s also an important historical and cultural document, revealing how maps have been used in album cover design to reinforce a lyrical story, share a political view, express concern for the state of the world or creatively identify the origins of the music and the people who make it.

There's a Guardian piece about the author here.

It provides more details about the book.

The selection criteria for the book was strict: no landscape paintings; no satellite photography. “A map had to be an abstraction of a geographic form – real or fictitious – and show spatial relationships. That distinction helped narrow the collection.”

While maps are often celebrated for their beauty, they can also contain layers of meaning, says Saunder. “Even the most basic shapes of countries can draw out a lot of feelings – positive and negative.”

It also provides a few examples of maps that were included...

Such as this cover from Talking Heads.

All proceeds from the sale of the book are going to Support Act, an organisation helping musicians deal with the emotional, physical and financial challenges rife in the industry.

I shall certainly be getting a copy of this.