Pinlight

Pinlight is a new one on me. 

Thanks to Cameron from Pinlight for getting in touch. Pinlight gives everyone the same five street-level photos each day. Pin the map, score by distance, and you can paste a Wordle-style score card. 

It’s free to play this daily game, and no account is required. Similar to Mapcrunch.

Urban growth visualisation

Brendan Conway has been at it again.

Using his Navigatio GIS platform and Claude coding he has created a new data visualisation app which allows you to see how cities have grown over time.

Choose your city from the drop down top left.

An Eclipse Atlas

Outstanding work from Alexandre Bogachev. Via LinkedIn.

An atlas of eclipses with visualisations of their track and progress and what you would have seen...

Can you map music?

That's the question asked by GIS consultant Madeleine Ratcliffe, who works for ESRI.

On a recent LinkedIn post she described the inspiration for an ESRI StoryMap she has created.

I first heard Smetana's Vltava (or The Moldau) while driving with my mum. We're both flautists, and she knows the piece well. As we listened she explained how it traces the course of the Vltava River through Czechia. It begins where two mountain streams meet, represented by two intertwining flutes. From there, the music carries you downstream past hunters in the forest, a village wedding, moonlit dancing by the water, the dramatic St. John's Rapids, and finally to Vyšehrad Castle in Prague. 

She gave a running commentary as we listened, and it completely changed how I thought about music. I hadn't realised it could tell such a vivid geographical story.

When I joined Esri UK two years ago, I couldn't shake the idea of bringing this piece to life on a map.

Using an ArcGIS StoryMap, I've traced the journey of Vltava along the river itself. As you explore, you can listen to each section of the music, discover the historical and cultural context behind it, and see how the landscape, geography and composition are all woven together.

Thanks to Brendan Conway for the tipoff to Madeleine's work.

QuickGIS

Andy Funnell has done a great job of collating a whole range of GIS tools into one place "for busy teachers" - and others.

It's called QuickGIS and is a Wordpress site that he has put together for the benefit of everyone.

Maps are shown in a series of categories.

A quick browse reveals some useful ones for teachers of all key stages. The 'Environment and Resources' tab for example takes you to various viewers and maps to explore ecosystems.

This ecoregions map is new to me, for example.

ESRI Water Layers - via Joseph Kerski

Joseph Kerski shared a useful set of data layers on water.

It is called the World Water Map.

Details of the data and the initiative that led to its creation can be read about here.

Each year we extract 4,000 cubic kilometers of water, eight times more than a century ago. We consume it in kitchens and bathrooms, factories and power plants; we use it to irrigate our crops. Growing populations and aspirations drive a growing demand for water.

The result is a water gap in an increasing number of places. Humans are using more water than the water cycle can provide, and so we deplete shallow aquifers, and may need to tap into deep ones that will not be renewed in our lifetime. In the process we threaten not only our own health, peace, and well-being, but also the health of ecosystems and wildlife.

Scroll down the page to reveal more detail on our water use and the water gaps that are opening up in some places.
There's also a quote from Alex Tait.

Joseph shares how you might make use of this resource to explore water security.

Jerry's map - now available as an interactive map

I've blogged about the remarkable work of Jerry Gretzinger before - but not for 14 years.

Back in 2011, I became aware of Jerry's work to create a massive map based on imagination. Dan Raven Ellison sent me a link to a Vimeo film.

Over 60 years ago, in 1963, Jerry drew a map of his fictional city Wybourne on a piece of A4 paper. 

When it was complete, he continued on more pieces of paper, sticking them all together to create a whole new world. When the map got really big, Jerry started to revise it, using aprocess involving a pack of cards to decidewhat amends should be made. In 1983 he put it in the attic and stopped making it, until it was discovered by his son.

In 2011, I was able to contact Jerry and he provided me with some answers to some questions which ended up in GA Magazine - that section is shown to the right here from the Spring 2012 issue. Inspired by the map, I purchased a piece of the map on eBay. Jerry was selling off pieces back then to fund the map's development.

They returned in 2014 and now you can buy some pieces of his generative art.

Earlier today, I saw that Keir Clarke on the wonderful Google Maps Mania blog had shared a new rendering of Jerry's map as an interactive map.

Jerry's Map consists of more than 4,000 individual 8-by-10-inch panels arranged in a giant circular formation. Together they form a sprawling imaginary world that sits somewhere between a city plan, an abstract artwork, and a living organism.

It's been made with Leaflet. Pan and zoom....

Watch the video of Jerry here.

Explore the map. You're in for a treat...

World Cup 2026 GIS resources

I've been sharing World Cup stories as we get ready for the tournament that starts later today. There are mixed fortunes for the hosts and those who want to go and pay extortionate amounts to view matches... they're being shown on the telly you know...

Here are some GIS and data-related resources.

Brendan Conway has shared some GIS Maps ahead of the tournament which may be of interest to people.

First up.

The #WorldCup2026 is geographically the most extensive ever:
- More participants than ever before (48 countries)
- The distances are vast: 5000km (3000mi) north to south; west to east
- Three international 'regions' for the venues across 4 time zones
How can we use #GIS #filters to show the extent of the tournament?
Here's a webmap with #Bookmarks + #PopUps to step the presentation:
- Stadium locations, images, time zones and links to further details
Use from the front or as follow-up; homework; retrieval practice

Webmap created using #Geo Mapper2D

Check out Geo Mapper by the way...

Secondly...

An above average array of issues around the #WorldCup2026...
- How can we compare the track record and development of each country?
- How many flags and anthems do you recognise?
- What about the teams in England and Scotland's groups?
- How can we use #GIS #filters to manage big data?
Here's a webmap with #Bookmarks + #PopUps to step the presentation:
- 2026 FIFA ranking, HDI rank flags and🔊🎵most anthems🎵🔊
- All national FAs shown; 48 qualifiers; desire lines show #FootballMiles
Use from the front or as follow-up; homework; retrieval practice

Check out the webmap made with Geo Mapper.

Andy Funnell meanwhile posted this over on LinkedIn.

The FIFA World Cup will soon be upon us, which means I'm back to loading up the GIS maps from the CIES Football Observatory to fuel geographical debates in the classroom.

Click the tabs....

A fantastic way to explore themes such as migration, globalisation, demographics, culture and identity:

⚽ Demography Maps
Which national team has the tallest players on average?
Which squads are the youngest?
Are there regional patterns in player profiles?

⚽ Migration Atlas
Why do so many Brazilian footballers migrate to Portugal?
Which countries are the biggest exporters of football talent?
What historical, cultural and linguistic links help explain these patterns?

I looked at the diaspora from Iceland... some interesting figures..

Brendan Conway to finish with this post... there will be plenty more World Cup related posts over the next month or so... like it or not...

Another demography link here.

This is from the International Longevity Centre UK. I'd not heard of this before but will be investigating their resources and a future post will be appearing.

The page from this link is a complete stats-fest, with bubble charts and all sorts of tables on the longevity and age of players, managers etc.

Plenty more to come over the weeks ahead...

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...