fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Getting Started with building Maps with React and Leaflet.
By: Peter Ayeni
Tags: Web Development, Maps, React, JavaScript, Beginners Guide

Getting Started

Understanding how Leaflet and React-Leaflet work together is of utmost importance. React-Leaflet provides us easy to use React components that bind to Leaflet. Understanding how Leaflet work is highly recommended so check out the Leaflet Documentation.

<!-- public/index.html --> <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://unpkg.com/leaflet@1.7.1/dist/leaflet.css" integrity="sha512-xodZBNTC5n17Xt2atTPuE1HxjVMSvLVW9ocqUKLsCC5CXdbqCmblAshOMAS6/keqq/sMZMZ19scR4PsZChSR7A==" crossorigin=""/> <!-- Make sure you put this AFTER Leaflet's CSS --> <script src="https://unpkg.com/leaflet@1.7.1/dist/leaflet.js" integrity="sha512-XQoYMqMTK8LvdxXYG3nZ448hOEQiglfqkJs1NOQV44cWnUrBc8PkAOcXy20w0vlaXaVUearIOBhiXZ5V3ynxwA==" crossorigin=""></script>

Place the above Leaflet CSS and JavaScript into the head section of your project index.html in the public folder. This will ensure will load all the Leaflet specifics CSS and JavavaScripts and make sure they are in pasted in that particular order, the CSS and the JS.

Clear out the code in the App.css and place the below CSS

<!-- App.css --> .main { height: 100vh; width: 100%; }

Here we define the `main` CSS class with a height of 100vh and width of 100%, this will make the map to take the whole browser viewport.

Creating our first Map, rendering a Marker and a Popup.

From the above code, you can see how React-Leaflet gave us an easy component to use that render the corresponding Leaflet element. We import MapContainer,TileLayer Marker and Popup from react-leaflet.

MapContainer

This is a parent container that renders Leaflet Map instance it takes props to set the initial behaviour of the map. center takes an array of Latitude and Longitude so the map centre at that position on the initial load, zoom this set the initial zoom to 13, scrollWheelZoom takes a boolean value it enables zooming with scroll wheel either it set to true or false, we also pass the .main class from App.css that set the height and width of the map. There are other props that MapCaontainer takes you can look up the React-Leaflet documentation.

TileLayer

This renders the map tiles, for this map we are using OpenStreetMap their other several map tile services we can use, OpenStreetMap is free to use.

Marker

Maker also takes a position which is an array of Longitude and Latitude that set the location of the Marker on the Map.

Popup

The Maker takes a Popup child component, so when the Marker is clicked the Popup is displayed.

And we have a fully functional map in React that you can use as a starting point for your next map project.
A Comparative Analysis of New York Streets, in Terms of Bicycle Infrastructure
By: Jason Ramel
Tags: NYC, Bicycles, Maps

Bicycles are widely considered to be a safe, cost-effective, and environmentally-friendly alternative to the use of other transportation means, both public and private. The use of bikes in cities around the world has contributed to reports of greater mobility and lower congestion. In New York City, almost 12% of streetscapes have already been altered to build a network of paths and lanes that accommodate an increasing share of bike users. In this article, I will analyze the concentration of collisions involving bikes in New York, compare results for streets with devoted bike lanes to those without, and highlight the streets in each borough with the highest concentration of crashes.

To mitigate the effect of varying street continuities, I introduce the crash-length ratio. Once calculated, the ratio can be interpreted as such: for every foot a bicycle advances on a street, the historical chance of a crash occurring increases by the stated value. This valuation method accounts for the differing layouts of New York’s many streets, avenues, roads, parkways, and alleys.

Methodology

Foundation: Filter the Collisions dataset for crashes involving bikes that occurred in 2020, then import to QGIS to create a point layer. Clip the NYC Street Centerline shapefile to Borough Boundaries, then reproject to EPSG:2263.

Aggregating the data: Create 20-foot buffer layer and dissolve by Street Name and Borough. Count crash points that fall within the buffer layer, convert the polygon to a line layer, then add segment lengths to fields using the “Add Geometry Attributes” tool. Create a field calculation to aggregate number of crashes per length of street (crash_leng). Create two new layers, one for streets with bike lanes and one for streets without.

To visualize Crashes per Street: Select features by bikelane field (“NULL” for no lane, “not NULL” for bike lanes), then display the layer on a Green-Yellow-Red graduated colorscale using crash_leng. Ensure that both scales follow the same intervals.

To visualize Top Crash Sites: Select the highest crash_leng values, grouping by borough. Extract vertices from line layer, and visualize as points.

Results
Using Tiled editor for Swift game development.
By: Vojta Struhár
Tags: Swift, Tiles, Maps, Game Development, iOS

The plan.

This is how we're going to get your tilemap into a Swift app.

Import csv files and tilemap into project

Slice tilemap image

Parse CSV files and assemble them into nodes

Import the files!

This is as easy as dragging and dropping them into your project.

Import CSV files into some sort of “Level” folder, where you keep all your files related to that specific level. Drop the tileset into your .xcassets. This is probably the easiest way to access it as an image from code.

Slice the tileset image. 🔪

Not only cannot SpriteKit do this itself, he won't let anyone else do it for him! The scene editor will not accept any tiles that haven't been manually imported to its Tileset.sks file.

That means we rely entirely on code to do this, since the scene editor is not cooperating. 😒

I created a method that will greatly help us with this:

This will slice up the tileset image into array of UIImage tiles for us. My tile size is 16x16, so I use it a little bit like this:

let tiles = UIImage(named: "tileset_name")!.slice(tileSize: 16)

If you wish to know more about how UIImage and CGImage work, check out this stackoverflow question about slicing UIImage.

Parse the CSV files and convert them into nodes.

As you can see, the following method takes a file name and a closure. The closure is for you to determine what and where the node should be.

The coordinates are for you to determine where the node should end up. The last tileIndex parameter is the number with which is the tile represented in the CSV file. If you remember our tiles array of tile images from earlier, the tileIndex corresponds to the index of the texture for the node.

Usage of the method might look something like this:

You can see I multiplied my coordinates by 16, because my tiles are 16x16px. This might be different for you.

This is why layers matter.

You will have to do this parsing for every layer you export. This might sound like a chore, but actually is pretty nifty. The closure you pass into the method gives you great freedom as of what do you want to do with the node. For example if you want to give SKPhysicsBody to every tile in certain layer, or create custom chest node for a layer that only contains chests.
‘Will You Lend Me Spare Conversation?’
By: Noah Levy
Tags: Map, Humor, Satire, Art, Fiction

“I need to be around real people”

Theodore was just a wealthy young professional living a big life in the Big Apple.

“I graduated with honors from Cornell and got recruited to work for Goldman Sachs when I was only nineteen,” mentioned Theodore. “For years I’ve been living it up in New York. So many restaurants, so many prostitutes, so much money.”

Theodore has not lost but has rather grown his net worth since the beginning of the pandemic. “I got promoted from mid-senior vice president to seventy-five-percent-senior vice president.”

While his pocketbook was growing, his heart was deflating. “I live in this small, luxurious apartment in Midtown Manhattan. I live alone because I work 16 hours a day. The only friends I have are from work, and I lost most of my other friends from being too busy. I realized that, other than money, I literally have nothing in my life.”

At first Theodore tried his best, like the rest of us, to cope with the pandemic. He experimented with happy hours over Zoom and prostitution on d-Zoom, the dark web’s version of Zoom. “None of those ways were giving me a meaningful life,” he added. “I need to be around real people.”

The problem was that none of Theodore’s friends from work were down to see him. They were strict about social distancing because they have families. “Who has a family and works for Goldman Sachs?” Theodore pondered.

Theodore was about to give up until one day an idea arrived: panhandle the streets for conversation.

“I was just that desperate, I had enough.”

Seeing that Theodore was obviously a Sachs yuppie, he shopped for products on Amazon to give him “the feel of a homeless man”. “I bought a year’s supply of Axe body spray to smell like a hobo and ripped jeans from Urban Outfitters to look like one.”

He then took a cardboard side from one of his many Prime boxes and wrote with Sharpie on it: “Will Feed Your Family For Conversation”.

Original photo by Zane Lee on Unsplash. Photo modified by the author.

It’s been five weeks since Theodore’s roamed the streets of Manhattan and so far he’s fed four families twenty bottles of Grey Goose.
Visualisasi Data Covid-19 Menggunakan Platform Peta Online
By: Muhammad Wahyu Ramadhan
Tags: Maps, GIS, Indonesia, Geospatial, Covid 19

Just an ordinary GIS enthusiast who is interested in topics related to marine and coastal spatial planning.
If Everyone Wore Axe Body Spray, We’ll Beat The Coronavirus
By: Noah Levy
Tags: Map, Humor, Satire, Art, Fiction

MAP NEWS

If Everyone Wore Axe Body Spray, We’ll Beat The Coronavirus

Say researchers at MIT

Middle schoolers photographed by Jeswin Thomas on Unsplash wearing gallons of Axe.

CAMBRIDGE, MA — Researchers all over the world have been focused on finding a vaccine for COVID-19. Although there’s progress on that front, most are skeptical on current measures taken for prevention: particularly the pitfalls of social distancing in federally-decentralized nations like America.

The academic and private science communities have focused most of their efforts on R&D for a coronavirus vaccine, with little room for improving current prevention methods. But not for this group of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“While high R&D funding for a vaccine is great, we still need a way to live securely while that R&D is happening. It will be a while until vaccines can logistically distribute to all Americans, so we’re developing better solutions for preventing the spread of COVID-19,” Dr. Epstein-Funded Career was quoted in an interview with MuddyUm.

What does that solution look like? Axe body spray for every American.

Photo by Keo Oran on Unsplash

Photo by Marie-Michèle Bouchard on Unsplash

“Axe body spray being disgusting is only part of what’s innovative in our approach to combating coronavirus,” commented the doctor. “It’s the psychology of wearing Axe body spray.”

In a comment that most of you are too stupid to understand, Dr. Career mentioned the traumas that Axe body spray manifests to those who wear it. “You get shamed by inhabitants of your environment for wearing such a shitty scent — you might as well not shower at all. That shame makes you feel bad about yourself, so you isolate yourself in your room and cry about it. Hence the social distancing part.”

Dr. Career and his Epstein-funded team believe that discouraging people from interacting with each other — by using Axe body spray — makes them feel insecure, which eradicates the motivation to socialize.

“Everyone is on board with the program sentimentally,” another reason that Dr. Career added in support of his proposal. “A 2019 study by the Pew Research Center found that 94% of Americans want to socially punish anyone who wears Axe body spray. Everyone agrees that you should feel disgustingly ashamed of yourself for drowning yourself in the scent of prepubescent locker rooms.”

President-elect Joe Biden expressed support for the research out of MIT. “Anyone who smells of Axe body spray makes me want to go away immediately, the way I feel when progressives ask me to be more sympathetic to human beings,” replied Biden.
What is Location Intelligence?
By: Steve Walker
Tags: Location, Maps, Analytics, Geospatial, Data

Location intelligence is the extra insight gained from knowing exactly where something happened in addition to what and when. COVID-19 is the best recent example whereby the knowledge that someone was infected is greatly enhanced by knowing where they were infected. That “where” component sheds light on why and how, whilst enabling a path to discovering others who may have been exposed to infection.

Almost a decade ago Mapcite was one of the first geospatial data analytics platforms that was purpose built for the web. In fact, Mapcite lays claim to being one of, if not the first, broad users of the phrase “location intelligence”. Of course, that phrase may have been occasionally used prior by the specialist GIS application developers and data scientists but hadn’t really been synonymous within the business user geospatial community.

Apart from the COVID-19 use case noted, there are many commercial and social use cases for location intelligence which in essence address one of three key areas:

Resource optimisation

Emergency services, transport, education, infrastructure planning, health services, marketing program management

2. Risk management

Catastrophic events eg storms, droughts, floods, earthquakes, bushfire, climate change

Terrorism eg predictive modelling, likely impact/consequences, response management

Emergency services personnel safety eg Police, Paramedics, Nurses

3. Customer engagement and insight

Social issues such as depression, alcoholism, domestic violence

Lifestyle habits, patterns, and trends

Personalised targeted marketing

It easy to deduce the importance of “where” when reading the brief descriptions of the above areas: this is location intelligence. However, there are many ways to extract the insight that is available from location intelligence. The following images show just a few examples of how location intelligence can be presented to a user.

Geofencing

Choropleth of Mesh Block of merchants in Sydney CBD.

Heat Map of insurance holdings exposure in central Sydney, Australia

Location pin data window

Defined areas based on a range of data attributes for resource allocation eg marketing budget, policing, emergency services

Each visualisation within Mapcite has a range of menu options for business users

Location intelligence has rapidly come of age for general business use with solutions such as Mapcite continuing to evolve.
How I used a graph database to visualize my city
By: Shyam Pratap Singh
Tags: Neo4j, Google Maps, Maps, Graph Database

and an equivalent graph network

Graph Structure, representing nodes and edges

In the above image, dots are representing nodes (Junction) and the path is representing edges (Road/Street) connecting two nodes.

So let's go behind the science of these maps and bring your city to the Neo4j database.

Neo4j is one of the widely used graph databases when it comes to geospatial data analysis. So spin up a neo4j instance.

Set up:

There is no typical data set which you can directly use in Neo4j, so first, we have to create data set that can be then imported on Neo4j and do further analysis. We will use OSM data for any analysis.

Plugins :

Install the plugin APOC and GDS Library

Install Neomap from Neo4j Developer Graph Apps Gallery

Neomap to visualize graph

Create a data set:

There is two way we can proceed further.

1: The easiest way is to create a .graphml file and import it into the graph database. It will automatically create a graph for you. There is not much customization available.

2: If you are looking for highly customized geospatial data. Here is OSM Mapper which maps the .osm file to an equivalent graph using Loader.

We will discuss step 1 in detail.

Step 1- Graph through .grphml file :

We will use OSMNX python package which is one of the best libraries to analyze geospatial data. I have used jupyter notebook to explore a bit about osmnx package.

pip install osmnx

Importing .graphml file into Neo4j

Now you have to manually place the .grpahml file into the neo4j import folder database.

Note: Path to import file is different in different os. Follow this link if need details about importing files in neo4j

Import folder in Neo4j database.

Run Query on Neo4j Browser:

//import graph ml

CALL apoc.import.graphml("riyadh.graphml", {}) // set node label

MATCH (n) SET n:Node //see graph with limit of 200 nodes, add limit because your graph may have 1000’s of nodes and visualising all at once, may hang your system MATCH (n) RETURN n LIMIT 200

Boom!! Your Graph.
Client Spotlight: Cedar Park Whole Foods Market
Tags: Digital Marketing, Google 360 Tour, Google, Maps, SEO

How many times have you gone shopping at the grocery store and had to walk aimlessly down the aisles because you didn’t know where something was?

It happens to all of us — but Cedar Park’s Whole Foods found a way around that!

Just in case you aren’t familiar: Whole Foods Market is the world’s largest natural-foods grocery chain, and it was founded right here in Austin, TX!

Cedar Park’s Whole Foods reached out to our team here at OpticTour to create a Google 360 Virtual Tour that guides customers around their store, allowing them to get a feel for the ambiance, the types of products they have, and where things are located.

Essentially, this virtual creation will function as a solid mapping tool for years to come, also serving to organically boost their ranking on Google, assist with SEO practices, and increase audience engagement and viewership!

Ready to take a trip to the store? You can head to this link to check it out. Don’t forget to bring your reusable bags!

If you want to have a little fun while you shop till you drop, we’ve gone ahead and compiled a little digital scavenger hunt for you.

And the prize?

The priceless understanding of all the wonderful, natural products that Whole Foods Cedar Park has to offer — and the fact that whenever you take a trip in person, you won’t have to turn around 500 times because you forgot to grab some organic oat milk.

Can You Find the Following?

Kevita kombucha The seafood section (unfortunately, you won’t be able to follow your nose for this one) Organic celery The chip aisle Your mom, who you swore was just here a second ago. (Seriously, where do they go?)

If you think a virtual tour would be a great addition to your marketing plan — or if you have any questions about digital marketing, videography, and more — we here at OpticTour would love to sit down and see what we can do to help you out! Whenever you’re ready, you can fill out this form to get in touch with us.
Shape of U
By: Kostya Cherepovskyi
Tags: Transportation, Wayfinding, Maps, Navigation, Prague

Transit system of Prague needs no introduction. Solid combo of subway and ground networks makes it arguably one of the best mass transit systems in the world, especially once you factor in the price. $25 unlimited monthly pass anyone?

Sure enough it’s all good in wayfinding department, too, one might think. Well, yes and no. There’s certainly sheer amount of artefacts. Two institutions that seemingly are not aware of each other’s existence keep producing inexplicably similar yet distinct maps. How would you like your trams: rare, medium-rare, medium-well or maybe well done? Are we in quantity over quality kind of situation? Let’s take a closer look.

I’d expect subway map to be a key as long as it’s dominating the traffic with over 600 million yearly passengers, although trams are catching up with 370 million. Perhaps that’s why most of subway maps in the city are also featuring tram network in some form.

Here’s two of them: the less detailed and slightly more detailed one:
A Slice of Wilderness
By: Fred Ermlich
Tags: Michael Chabon, Wilderness, Maps, Fred Ermlich, Childhood

Here is what Chabon says:

“The thing that strikes me now when I think about the Wilderness of Childhood is the incredible degree of freedom my parents gave me to adventure there. A very grave, very significant shift in our idea of childhood has occurred since then. The Wilderness of Childhood is gone; the days of adventure are past. The land ruled by children, to which a kid might exile himself for at least some portion of every day from the neighboring kingdom of adulthood, has in large part been taken over, co-opted, colonized, and finally absorbed by the neighbors.”

I have to modify Chabon’s analysis now. He wrote those words in July of 2009. In the 11 years that have passed since he wrote this piece, I’m afraid to say that even the kingdom of adulthood is now gone. Nobody is free anymore, there are no adventures and nobody could possibly even find a wilderness close to home, if at all. Because who would try?

That was why I started writing this story yesterday! I was thinking about my wildernesses, which I’ve retained my entire life. Anywhere on the landmass of planet Earth, even in a dense city, you are only minutes, or at worst a couple of hours, away from a wilderness.

I’m betting that my city-dwelling readers are wondering what I’m talking about.

I’m not sure it’s worth trying. But who knows, if even one reader wants to try out the method I use and teach, well here it is.

Wherever you are right now, stand up and walk outside.

Start walking. Any direction. What you’re looking for is any place you can’t see. That’s right. Something somewhere that you should be able to see but just can’t quite. (This is why you want to be an inquisitive child, or have one with you. This’ll require imagination!)

Now, right there, look closely. You have a highway going through, but you can’t cross it because of the chain link fence on both sides. You can see some green trees way over on the other side, but don’t know what’s there . . . SEE! You’re looking for something you can’t see. You’ve found it, or a possibility!

This was a real-life discovery I made when I was 17, living in Goleta, California. I lived on one side of the highway, the trees were on the other. I found a storm drain pipe that ran under the whole deal, dumping storm water into a creek on my side. I crawled through that pipe, it seemed a quarter mile long, and came out in a field of weeds and native plants with a thick band of huge eucalyptus trees to the left. There was a road further away, but no houses or buildings nearby.

It was a wilderness, not a mile from my home.
Excel Maps Add In Capability
By: Steve Walker
Tags: Maps, Analytics, Data Science, Data Visualization, Geospatial

The outbreak of COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of location, something which many businesses were already aware of but not quite addressing. The value of “where” is of utmost importance in understanding buyer behaviour, especially in the context of device mobility. Whilst many companies might exploit the core capability of an Excel add in for data analysis, there has been much less use of maps in Excel.

Geospatial data analytics has traditionally been addressed by domain experts often referred to as data scientists. However, the ability to put geospatial analytics in the hands of everyday business users who are making decisions “on the fly” would seem to be nirvana. Those users often use standard desktop applications such as Excel. The nirvana point is the immediate insight Mapcite’s geospatial data visualizations can provide that isn’t readily apparent from any other Excel add on for data analysis.

Take the example images below using the Mapcite Excel map add-in which can be downloaded free from the Microsoft App Store.

The first image shows the ability to take a list of stores and addresses in Excel and add them into a map just by clicking Add to Map.

The second image below shows the resultant map at the Australia-wide level. From this point you can begin using your Excel add in for data analysis by drilling down into the map or by using the tools available within the Mapcite map, all while remaining within Excel!

Finally, the image below shows the result of clicking the “Publish” button which produces a URL which is accessible by anyone to whom you send the link. They can then access a fully interactive map with all the Mapcite tools available, in this case the heat map capability for a specific region in NSW.

This is the new world of insight from an Excel add on for data analysis, with a focus on “where”. If this isn’t the best Excel addin, I would be very surprised.
Google Maps will now display several COVID-19 cases in an area
By: Dennis Rachel
Tags: Google, Coronavirus, Maps, Business, Covid 19

Google Maps will now display several COVID-19 cases in an area Dennis Rachel ·Nov 18, 2020

As the holiday season is getting close, many folks might be planning to travel someplace. However, because of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s important to take precautions and know the situation of the area you’re visiting.

To help you with that, Google Maps is rolling out new information related to COVID-19 in a particular area. The app will now display the total number of cases and deaths till now and a 7-day trend indicating if the numbers are going up or down. Plus, you’ll also get to access local guidelines, restrictions, and information related to testing centers.

This will help you make a decision if you want to cancel or postpone your trip. In August, the company rolled out a feature that lets you find hotels allowing free cancelation during the pandemic. Later in September, Google introduced a COVID-19 layer in Maps to assist people in finding containment zones.

Google Maps is also rolling out its crowdedness feature worldwide to indicate congestion on a public transport ride. This information is based on real-time input from app users onboard a train or a bus. It’ll help you avoid a particular ride and catch the next one to maintain social distancing.

Both features are rolling out to Android and iOS Maps users globally in the coming weeks.
How not to visualize Coronavirus data
By: András Hann
Tags: Data Visualization, Maps, Covid 19

How not to visualize Coronavirus data

The following map was published today on the official Coronavirus site of the Hungarian government.

Map showing “Affected municipalities and age distribution of infected people”. Source.

The map shows all municipalities in Hungary. As the note on the bottom explains, municipalities that had at least one (known) Coronavirus infection since March are shown in red, the ones with no infection yet are shown in green.

Putting aside the fact that the map has no information whatsoever regarding the “age distribution of infected people”, this is still a terrible map.

Using red and green as colors to show information is bad for accessibility: people with red-green color blindness cannot distinguish these colors. There is no good reason to use dots for each municipality (that even overlap each other) instead of a choropleth map, where the geographical area of each municipality would be colored based on some metric. This binary metric does not really offer any insight: what do we learn from the fact that there was at least one infected person in a town? Instead, the metric we should use is the number of cases per 100000 inhabitants as this would tell us how bad the situation really is in a given location.

Choropleth map of Hungary showing population density on the district level. CC-BY-SA 4.0 by Klarigi. The Hungarian government does not release detailed Coronavirus data, therefore I can only add an illustrative map here instead of one showing real data.

In addition to these problems, in my opinion, posting a static image instead of an interactive map on a government website in such a situation is inexcusable. One can use Leaflet or D3.js to create whatever interactive map they want, or, if they do not have that expertise in the team, they can just create interactive maps with free online tools, such as DataWrapper.de.

The Atlo team, a group of data journalists maintains a much better dashboard than this simple map by keeping track of the government’s daily announcements. However, since this is still just a few data points, the highest granularity available there is still on the county level. A government does not need a group of volunteers to do its job though. For example, the Dutch government has a detailed, interactive (and user friendly) Coronavirus dashboard that is updated daily.
Building a Data-Driven World Map
By: Nikita Rokotyan
Tags: Statistics, Maps, Machine Learning, Dimensionality Reduction, Data Visualization

The Summit chose DataVis for one of its special awards. On the one hand, it highlights the relevance of this area, on the other — it raises its status. Government Summit that usually deals with the most important global issues has driven attention to how to get the most out of working with data. The organizers invited David McCandless, a well-known data journalist and one of the best experts on data visualization, to curate the entire project from collecting applications to appointing the jury. It was a great honor for us that it is under his leadership the jury awarded our project.

Jury members: Stefanie Posavec — Dear Data, Alberto Cairo — the author of The Truthful Art and The Functional Art, Patrick Burgoyne — the editor of the Creative Review design magazine, Alexandra Mousavizadeh — the director of Legatum Prosperity Index, David McCandless — the founder of Information is Beautiful.

Award ceremony video

In the call for applications, David McCandless wittily remarked that now participants will have something to do on holidays. That’s exactly how it happened: we prepared the project during the New Year holidays. At the end of 2018, the organizers proposed three questions that in different ways develop the general topic — “How governments are improving citizens’ lives”.

The summit set the concept and provided datasets, participants created visualizations that told stories. One of the objectives was to present beautiful solutions to the highest guests of Dubai and maybe stimulate their interest.
Melihat Tingkat Kerapatan Mangrove Melalui Visualisasi Peta 3D
By: Muhammad Wahyu Ramadhan
Tags: GIS, Mangrove, Geospatial, Maps

Just an ordinary GIS enthusiast who is interested in topics related to marine and coastal spatial planning.
What’s Your Inciting Incident?
By: Todd Brison
Tags: Research, Maps, Business Development, Entrepreneur, Writing

What sparked the need or desire to take that first step?

What sparked the need or desire to take that first step?
Apple Maps improvements are now in Canada!
By: James Crawford
Tags: Apple Maps, Maps, Improvement, Navigation, Ios 14

At least I just noticed today when using Apple Maps while driving

Photo by CardMapr on Unsplash

While driving home from work today, I was following my plotted navigation as I usually forget to stop by on the way to do certain errands. Being able to use Apple Maps while my phone is locked has really saved me.

However, I noticed something different today…

First, it was able to detect the parking lots and side entrances to the main road at my workplace. With the path perfectly plotted from my parked car to said road. Once on the main road, my eyes were immediately drawn the more detailed map and red stop sign at the end of the street I was approaching.

Upon approaching my hometown exit ramp on the highway, not only did I noticed more red octagons but also traffic light icons. Traffic lights and in the right locations. Sure, this is no Tesla FSD software where it showed the lights changing… but it’s still neat.

Does this mean that Apple is actually working on autonomous cars? I wouldn’t completely throw this theory out the window as this has been a constant speculation for years, but it might be a while before this becomes a thing. What I see happening is Apple possibly duplicating what Tesla is doing from the software-side, but maybe selling the software to a car company or flat-out buying a car company.

It’s just interesting that this advanced Apple Maps has been out in the United States since February 2020 and these said features are now available to Canadians like myself. That or somehow this feature has been under my nose for months… even though I use Apple Maps regularly.
Tutorial: Create a Mapping App Using React-Leaflet
By: Betsy Groton
Tags: Leaflet, Leafletjs, Maps, React Leaflet, Tutorial

Inspired by Map It!

Photo by Andrew Stutesman on Unsplash

When I first set out to create Map It, an app that allows users to save and share locations on maps, I had a lot of trouble getting started. I knew I wanted Map It to display a map, allow a user to click and add a marker to the map, and find the user’s location (with permission, of course). I chose react-leaflet as my mapping library because it allows for custom icons, cute pop ups, and the documentation seemed thorough. However, I struggled to find code examples that fit my use case and the documentation was sometimes hard to follow. I created this tutorial to help other developers get started with their mapping apps. I hope you enjoy!
A walking tour of Oxford’s social enterprises
By: Oxford Hub
Tags: Social Enterprise, Oxford, Maps, Walking Tour

A walking tour of Oxford’s social enterprises

Oxford is a vibrant city — its diversity and enterprising spirit are enhanced by the presence of two world-class universities, and an ecosystem of institutions supporting purposeful businesses.

This week we are celebrating business as a force for good by showcasing some amazing enterprises that need your support more than ever! While Lockdown 2 means that it’s not the time for walking tours, some of these businesses provide essential services, and some of them have an online offer too. Check out the map for full details and read on to find out how you can support these businesses during a difficult time.

Buying your essentials from purposeful businesses

OxUnboxed at Oxford Hub continues to provide a range of goodies at the non-profit refill shop in Little Clarendon Street. The perfect opportunity to join the plastic-free November campaign, and do your day-to-day shopping while taking care of the planet.

Coffee and beer may also be on your list of essential goods to get through this lockdown. Check out the Tap Social shop or pop by for a coffee with social impact at Yellow Submarine.

Organising your Christmas shopping with social impact

The Shop at The Old Fire Station has an incredible online selection of feel-good gifts from indie makers.

Fairtrade at St Michael's is your one-stop fair trade shop in the heart of Oxford. They are offering a click-and-collect service to help you get ready for holiday gifts too!

Staying active, staying well
How to create and interactive map of Brazil using Plotly.Express-Geojson in Python
By: Nayane Maia
Tags: Brazil, Programming, Maps, Data Science, Python

Importing Brazil’s geographic information

It is very important to know that these shapes from Brazil in .json format are available through the IBGE platform. However, json format are limited and not so specific tools compared to geopandas. So, with this kind of format you are only able to create only simpler maps, which can be used in general presentations.

In this example we will use this database of Brazilian states. And we will open the database through a webscraping, like:



Brazil = json.load(response) # Javascrip object notation

with urlopen(‘ https://raw.githubusercontent.com/codeforamerica/click_that_hood/master/public/data/brazil-states.geojson' ) as response:Brazil = json.load(response) # Javascrip object notation Brazil

An important detail to note is in relation to the “features”, as this is where we will gather the information from the Brazil.json data with the information from our dataframe. The names of the states need to be written exactly the same, so let’s put the two files together, how:

state_id_map = {}

for feature in Brazil [‘features’]:

feature[‘id’] = feature[‘properties’][‘name’]

state_id_map[feature[‘properties’][‘sigla’]] = feature[‘id’]



Now that we have joined our file, we can now open the database.
Map Protocol Event in Kakaotalk 11-2nd Week
By: Map Protocol
Tags: Map, Marcopoloprotocol, Crosschain, Blockchain, Map Protocol

On November 11, Map Protocol Korea held an event. The event was to guess what is the name of the enlarged pictures. The prize is Starbucks Americano!

Q1

The Right answer for Q1 was …!!

Oh-Yes Cake!!

Q2

The answer for Q2 was … !!

Pepper!!!

Q3

The answer Q3 was..!!

Wasabi!!

And here are the winners~!

The community members participated really well so it was quite competitive to get reward. Congrats to the winners getting Starbuck Coffee~!
Tencent introduces the new industrial version of “WeMap” to the world
By: Tech In China
Tags: Data, Smart City Solutions, Smart City Platform, Maps, Tencent

This week, Tencent released the industry version of “WeMap” in Beijing.

WeMap provides help to governments and enterprises decision-makers by relying on Tencent’s real-time ubiquitous space-time perception capabilities, forming deep integration of multiple information sources through real-time accurate map data.

At the same time, Tencent has also released the WeMap Ecological Partner Program. Tencent will open the capabilities of its map digital infrastructure to build a new infrastructure ecosystem for co-creation, co-construction, and sharing with its partners.

In the urban emergency scenario, WeMap quickly provides statistics on the impact of major emergencies based on Internet big data calculation and analysis capabilities, conducts real-world simulations on the scene, and combines LBS capabilities to provide command and dispatch capabilities to improve the efficiency of urban emergency command.

In addition, Tencent’s WeMap will also be used in smart retail, smart cultural tourism, and other industries.

According to the newly released “Global Smart Cities Spending Guide” (IDC Worldwide Smart Cities Spending Guide, 2020V1), the growth rate of global smart city-related spending has slowed down due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is expected to recover and maintain a 15% growth trend speaking in the medium and long term.

IDC’s latest forecast shows that by 2020, the total investment in the global smart city market will reach $114.4 billion USD, showing an 11.1% year-on-year increase from 2019, although lower than the 18.9% expectation issued in December 2019.

However, IDC predicts that global smart city spending will gradually increase its growth rate starting in 2021 and achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.6% during the forecast period of 2020–2024.

Source: https://36kr.com/newsflashes/962211424603649
Redesigning my office transportation app: UI/UX Case Study
By: Srishti Vashishtha
Tags: Maps, Case Study, Uber, Information Architecture, Application

Once upon a time when we didn't know the meaning of QUARANTINE and didn't practice social distancing. Yes!! I am talking about the colorful pre corona days. When we used to go to the office 5 days a week thinking about how much fun it would be to do work from home more often. Although now it feels pathetic.

I think I should stop cribbing about Corona and get back to the point since I don't want to bore you guys…

Back to the problem… Since my office has a very good yearly turnover, and they really take care of their employees. So they provide us with conveyance from the office to our home and vice versa. And for that, they provided us with an app called the TRANSPORTAL APP ( you can check out on Google play) which allows us to book our cab beforehand for a particular time.

But the UI of the app was structured awfully and was really cluttered which definitely led to a bad experience while using the app.

Being a designer I always crave problems that I can solve to help larger groups of society and in this case, it was my office mates.

NOTE: Since the app doesn’t allow screenshots to be taken and the company policies🥺 which I happily signed up for, I can’t actually show you the exact app.

But don’t worry I will give you all the insights into the application and design that was required to actually make the app less frustrating and hassle-free.

Enough talking… let’s get started with the process.

Phase I — Validation

Though I knew my pain points while using the application but that was not enough to actually redesign the app from scratch. Also, it is not practically correct. So just to be sure about my idea of redesigning the app which I thought was full of frustration. I started talking to my colleagues who used the app to book the cab daily, understood their pain points and problems. Apart from this, I checked google play reviews of the Transportal App what else better place can be to hear from users about any application.
5 Book Recommendations from 5 Succesfull People
Tags: Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Book Recommendations, Success, Rich

Jeff Bezos - The Remains of The Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Bill Gates - Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffet on Practically Everything by Carol Louis

Charlie Munger - Fiasco: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader

Warren Buffet - The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

Mark Zuckerberg- The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun
Book review 1 : Range by David Epstein
By: Sneha Ramteke
Tags: Reading, Book, Range, Book Recommendations, Book Review

Chapter 1: The Cult of the Head Start

This chapter begins with a tale about the famous Polgar Sisters (reminds me of the Queen’s Gambit) and how an early head start made them grandmasters in the world of Chess. The chapter explains that early specializers succeed when there are same or repeating patterns or "kind" environment. But as soon as they are faced by a new challenge, they fail (in this case when Susan Polgar was tested for a random chess scenario, she could not solve it as that was beyond the pattern that she had learnt). In the real world, one is faced with such "wicked" environments where a tunnel vision of specializers doesn’t help.
5 Books I Can’t Stop Thinking About
By: Eliza Lita
Tags: Reading, Book Recommendations, Books, Literature, Fiction

It could be that 2020 has made me more mindful, or maybe I just had a great reading year, but seldom has it happened for the memories of so many books to recur in my mind.

This plays an essential part in choosing my top ten favourite books of the year, because the longer a book stays with me, the stronger its impact, and I often like to pause and think about what specific part of the book made it so important to me.

I made a note of every such book throughout the year, as well as why it’s so meaningful, and chose the best five to include in this list. These are not exactly my top five books of the year, but they are the most memorable, and I selected them by how often I have thought about them throughout the year.

(Please note that links mentioned in this article are affiliate links. If you are a UK or US resident, I will receive a small commission if you buy books via these links. Bookshop.org is a website that supports independent bookshops.)
5 BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
Tags: 2020, Book Recommendations, Books, Da Vinci Code, Dorian Gray

5 BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

The Picture of Dorian Gray

A novel by Oscar Wilde. It caused a lot reactions when it was published. Still, it is one of the most popular philosophical books.

A Clockwork Orange

Devastating, intense story. Anthony Burgess wrote it and Stanley Kubrick filmed it in 1971. Both of them are amazing piece of work. You won’t regret it. Finishing this one with a quote. “Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him.

Master Zacharius

We all know Jules Verne but most of us didn’t hear this little story of him. If you interested in the concept of time,this book is a good one for you.

The Da Vinci Code

Looking for more adventure? Here’s the perfect choice. Be ready to a journey with conspiracy theories and mysteries.

Hunger

Hunger has a dramatic story. Knut Hamsun wrote this novel mostly based upon his own life. Enjoy it!
My Top 10 Reads of 2020
By: Kavya Janani. U
Tags: Reading, Book Recommendations, Books, Books And Authors, Fiction

My Top 10 Reads of 2020

Photo by Aliis Sinisalu on Unsplash

The topmost reason I hate 2020 is that it took away my reading time from me. I read almost 30 books in 2019, just during my commute in the Metro. Those ten minutes of to and fro were the only time I got to devour books.

With the lockdown imposed from late March to early September, I lost six months of my reading time. Out of the 23 books, I read this year, 4 books were the only ones I finished during those lockdown months.

Luckily, Metro services resumed from the second week of September. But I started traveling in it only from October. By then, I had started reading a heartrending book and my commute time accelerated my reading. Read on for my top 10 recommendations.

(Please note: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase a book by clicking on the link, I would receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you. Thank you!)
Why I Wrote Marry Well Before I Got Married
By: H.K. Holland
Tags: Relationships, Books And Authors, Marriage, Book Recommendations, Relationships Love Dating

Who has never faced challenges in relationships? Nobody.

Truth is that at one point, we have all been confused, or disappointed, or given up on relationships.

That’s why I wrote the book. To solve my own problems. To really understand this issue of marriage.

Prior to writing the book, I had read a lot of good relationship books.

Marry Him by Lori Gotlieb

The Noticer by Andy Andrews

Single. Dating. Engaged. Married. by Ben Stuart

The book of Tobit (Believe me, I consider this book a relationship book)

I had also watched a couple of good movies. Yes, there is something we can learn from movies.

But sometimes, to really prove that you have understood something, you need to write a solution in your own words.

And that’s what I did. Every chapter in the book is there for a reason.

But then, another major important reason why I wrote it is because I didn’t have one person as my audience.

This is what I mean.

Look through any relationship book. You will find that most of them use spouses as their examples. Now, they are writing these relationship books because they think they are successful.

But really, no one cares whether you are successful with your spouse or not. What they care about in reading a book is the spouse they want to marry. Not yours. They are not going to marry your spouse.

And your spouse is completely different from the spouse they are about to get. And this is why a relationship book should be subjective.

I intentionally left out a lot of statistics. Think about it. When you are in a problem, do the statistics matter? I could be wrong, but what I really want when I am having a problem is a clear solution.

That’s why I wrote the book the way I wrote it. Short and clear chapters. I ignored the statistics though I knew them at the back of my mind as I wrote them. And I trusted my reader that a simple Google search wouldn’t hurt.

Recently, I was having a conversation with my first reader on WhatsApp. And I was glad that in helping myself, I also helped her. She sent me this message.

The book is available in paperback format as well. It just happens that Amazon is not shipping in her area at the moment because of the pandemic.

What makes this book different from the others?

It is purely seen from a biblical perspective. I took that approach for a reason. I wanted to know what the Bible has to say about relationships. And I diligently sought out those verses, wrote them down, and explained them, making them relevant in our generation.

And at one point, I realized I was no longer writing this book, but it was writing me.

I am glad I worked on that book.