Welcome to Spatial Awareness, a regular editorial focused on the maps and the spatial community. Each
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| July 28 · Issue #7 · View online |
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Welcome to Spatial Awareness, a regular editorial focused on the maps and the spatial community. Each issue I’ll highlight the most interesting and inspiring things that I’ve found — cool demos, new tools, tutorials, beautiful maps, interviews, behind-the-scenes and more.
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I’d like to thank you all for the feedback last week — the Apollo-themed issue seemed to go down really well. As a result I’m going to see if there’s a way for me to collate related content and do more themed issues in the future. Have an idea for a theme? I’d love to hear it! On a related note, I ran a poll on the frequency of these issues and the results were very clear. On the whole it seems that you’re happy with the length of the issues but the majority of you felt that moving to a bi-weekly schedule would be better. Interestingly, most comments were focused on moving to bi-weekly to ensure I don’t burn out, rather than not wanting issues weekly. Thank you for the concern. 😊 I’m going to sit down and have a think about how I want to approach things now that we’re 7(!) issues in. Researching and writing these issues take a lot of time and I’ll probably need to change something to keep them coming in the future while allowing me to keep some semblance of normal life. The obvious choices are moving to a bi-weekly schedule, or reducing the length of each issue, and the effort involved. Another potential option is to look into using something like Patreon to help cover costs and allow me to do some things that have been on the back-burner, though I’m as yet unsure on whether anyone would actually bother with that. Would you pay a small amount each month to help keep this newsletter going and get some special benefits in return? I’d love to hear if so, or cast your vote on this poll! For now, sit back and join me on this periodic journey through the world of maps. And remember, you can unsubscribe at any point if you’re not finding this useful. One last thing — you can reply directly to me via this email if you have content suggestions, questions, or just want to say hi. Lots of you have done this so far. Don’t be shy! 👋
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How Planet's satellites map the Earth in a single day
Ever wondered how satellite imagery is captured on a daily basis? This visualisation by Nadieh Bremer shows how Planet map the Earth in a single day using 600,000 images captured from their fleet of satellites. Outstanding work! 👌 I’d also recommend reading the companion page that details the make-up of the satellite constellations and what each type of satellite can do. |
Mont Blanc massif
More Blender-based shading this issue with this beautiful map of the Mont Blanc massif by Santi Hernández Puig. Not sure it’s ever possible to get bored of these maps. Lovely stuff. |
Building Footprint Comparison
Back in 2018 Bing released a dataset containing 125 million building footprints across the US, generated using machine learning. This interactive map by Azavea highlights just how many of those footprints aren’t currently contained within OpenStreetMap. |
Have you made an interesting map recently? I’d like to highlight more maps from the subscriber community. Don’t be shy! Either reply to this email or contact me on Twitter. |
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Did you know that every Sentinel 2 image is actually a short video?
If you’re familiar with Earth observation then you may already know that Sentinel 2 imagery consists of data from various spectral bands. What I hadn’t realised myself is that the data for each of those bands is collected at slightly different times, which means that you can create a video-like effect by viewing them one after another.
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Geospatial podcasts you should be listening to
If you want to treat your ears to something nice then look no further than this roundup of spatial podcasts. I’ve already featured a couple of them in this newsletter, and the rest look great too. We’re spoilt for choice!
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GeoJSON Path Finder — offline routing in the browser
Routing in Web maps can be both complicated and time-consuming, or expensive if you need to set up your own server or make a lot of API requests. One alternative option is to use GeoJSON Path Finder, which performs simple routing calculations within the browser, completely offline. Very cool.
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The new ArcGIS StoryMaps has arrived
I’ve featured a selection of story maps in previous issues — they’re a great way to use maps and spatial visualisation alongside text to help communicate a story. Think of them as fancy blog posts. What I haven’t featured yet is that Esri recently released the new version of their StoryMaps functionality, and it looks pretty amazing.
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Introducing Mapbox developer forums on Stack Overflow
If you’re anything like me then you probably spend a lot of time on Stack Overflow while hunting down answers to your burning programming questions. Mapbox have taken this on board and are now using Stack Overflow as an official support channel.
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Explore the history of the BART map
In this podcast Bart Wright delves into the history of the BART transit map (his name being Bart is a coincidence) and his involvement in designing the map over the past two decades.
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How to draw an airport
I’m obsessed with aviation maps so I was excited to see this Observable notebook by Brett Camper on how to draw an airport. He achieves this by using Tilezen vector tiles for the data and D3 for outputting the maps. |
You thought OpenStreetMap data uses the WGS84 datum? No it doesn't!
This insightful post by StephaneP attempts to shine some light on the complex world of coordinate accuracy. In short — due to the movement of tectonic plates — WGS84 coordinates can’t be accurate unless you know the time that the coordinates were captured. He also considers the impact this has for OpenStreetMap and what could be done to improve coordinate accuracy on the platform.
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The Antarctic Iceberg Tracking Database
Obscure datasets are usually the most interesting, just like this dataset that tracks the positions of icebergs since 1992. No doubt there are all sorts of interesting visualisations and insight that can be produced from this data.
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Collection of digital elevation models
Open access to elevation data is becoming much more common these days. If you’re curious about getting started with elevation data, or just want more to play with, then you’ll enjoy this collection of DEM datasets from around the world (and Mars!).
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Esri 2019 User Conference Plenary
If you missed the Esri UC Plenary then good news, they’ve put all the videos online as a playlist for you to watch at your leisure. I missed the live event so I’ll be digging through these videos myself over the coming weeks.
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European Space Talks
Space Talks is a series of events occurring across Europe up until the end of October. The events are a chance for space professionals and enthusiasts to talk about their passion and share what they’ve been working on.
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Spatial jobs at NPR for Elections 2020
NPR are looking to fill three contract roles related to maps and spatial data for their coverage of the US Elections 2020.
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Jobs at UK Hydrographic Office
The UK Hydrographic Office are looking to fill a variety of spatial roles, ranging from development to data science.
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Data Scientist at Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey are looking for a Data Scientist to join them and help with automation and analysis.
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Paul Naylor (@cartocraftsman)
I featured one of Paul‘s maps in a previous issue — the Ordnance Survey map of the Apollo 11 moon landing. A lovely piece of work that even Buzz Aldrin was seen enjoying this past week! He’s also active on Twitter, sharing work that’s going on at Ordnance Survey, as well as work from other people in the industry. |
Who inspires you from the community? I can only highlight the people that I’m aware of, so get in touch if you have someone you admire in the community who deserves some recognition. You can reply to this email or contact me on Twitter. |
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EthicalGEO
EthicalGEO is an initiative aimed to engage people within the spatial industry and get them thinking about the ethical challenges posed by spatial technology and the way that it’s being used to shape society.
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Geovation Scotland accelerator is open for applicants
If you’re from the UK then you may have heard of the Geovation accelerator in London, or perhaps have been to an event hosted or organised in connection with Geovation. They’ve recently announced their new accelerator based in Edinburgh, in collaboration with Registers of Scotland and Ordnance Survey.
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I’ve set up a Slack chat for the Spatial Awareness community to talk maps and help shape future issues of the newsletter. Please join if you’d like to be part of that community and have a direct channel of communication with me. We’ve already got a large group of people signed up with a wide variety of expertise. You can join here — I’m looking forward to seeing you! |
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So what do you think about this issue? What did you like? What didn’t you like? If you liked it then please click on the thumbs up button below as it helps me work out general sentiment. Plus the feedback helps give me energy to keep this going. Don’t forget to reply to this email if you have any feedback, suggestions for content or just want to say hi. You can also reach me on Twitter, where I’m usually posting all sorts of interesting spatial-related stuff. See you in the next one. 👋
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