Category: Cartography

  • Rivers of Power  by Laurence C. Smith.

    Rivers of Power by Laurence C. Smith.

    I finished a great book and would like to share; Rivers of Power – How a Natural Force Raised Kingdoms, Destroyed Civilizations, and Shapes Our World. It explains the world from the physical geography of Rivers, covering among other things: For each River I’m using a stream-lit app on top of the pretty maps project.…

  • Spatial SQL

    Spatial SQL

    SQL is a standard language for interacting with DB’s and I don’t think we discuss it enough in the Spatial community. It’s a de facto language for interacting with DB’s which is platform agnostic. There are some great courses which I’ve dipped in and out of but the best is to just use the tools…

  • Building with GraphQL

    Building with GraphQL

    In order to create and maintain any kind of system you need to be able to perform operations on your data. GraphQL solves some very specific problems to do with how you perform CRUD operations. However it is pretty important to understand some of the limitations with restful routing before graphQL makes any sense at…

  • Projection Cards

    Projection Cards

    This was a fun little voluntary project organized by Danield Huffman from somethingaboutmaps.com to produce a series of project cards.I thought it would be a nice opportunity to share some of my working notes to see if my process makes sense and just to put it out there for others to use. Inspiration First of…

  • Building a Raster Mosaic from LINZ Tiles

    Building a Raster Mosaic from LINZ Tiles

    This is a quick note on cached tile services vs building a raster mosaic.

  • Representing Routes

    Representing Routes

    Calculating a collection route to optimally cover an area leaves you with two problems. Communication to the operators who need to be able to drive the route. Communication from the drivers who need to make changes.

  • Redirecting from Landfill to Recycling Services

    Redirecting from Landfill to Recycling Services

    redirecting landfill to recycling, a story told in maps!

  • Cheap to Environmentally Friendly

    Cheap to Environmentally Friendly

    Details of a recycling strategy, in maps!

  • GIS for Sales Reports

    GIS for Sales Reports

    GIS used for a social good and a commercial service.

  • Bus shelter after bus shelter damaged make change necessary

    Bus shelter after bus shelter damaged make change necessary

    cleaning up the city! mapping for some social good.

  • The Value of Building Footprints

    The Value of Building Footprints

    When mapping at a local scale we’re usually trying to show some sort of targeted data. This makes context important, but not so much that it takes away from the data your trying to show.

  • DEM effects

    DEM effects

    While working on a project I came across this effect. I was trying to render a height map, for both the country

  • Cleaning up the City – Graffiti

    Cleaning up the City – Graffiti

    For many people, a city’s success is judged aesthetically. Basically how pleasant an environment is it.

  • Trash Mapping with ArcPro

    Trash Mapping with ArcPro

    Looking over the invoices for council I found $##redacted (large sum of money, larger than I was ultimately aloud to publish on the infographic or my blog ) being spent on illegal dumping every year. That is an impressive sum of money for a small city. So I’m producing a map to show the annual cost and…

  • Why we should 3D print buildings

    Why we should 3D print buildings

    Maps have an amazing ability to focus a discussion. As a discussions becomes bigger less people can see the map and the conversation breaks down. This is actually a really big problem. 

  • Hexagon Reporting

    Hexagon Reporting

    We often find ourselves collecting and maintaining data. For GIS applications we use this data to answer questions about the world around us. Quite often the sheer quantity of data is overwhelming and the more we collect the harder it is to give a simple answer. This project is going to use Hexagon bins for…

  • Buckminster Fuller and the Dymaxion projection

    Buckminster Fuller and the Dymaxion projection

    Richard Buckminster Fuller was an american inventor credited with, among other things, the Dymaxion Mapping Projection or sometimes known as the Fuller projection. It was designed to represent the earth as an island, and to emphasis humanitarian efforts across the globe, or as Buckminster Fuller would have said, “on Spaceship Earth”. I am ultimately writing…

  • A Formula for Facility Mapping

    A Formula for Facility Mapping

    This is an introductory tutorial for making facility maps using GIS. I’ll be working with ArcGIS Pro, the recipe applies equally well for QGIS or ArcMap. 

  • Making Maps! ArcGIS Pro in under 5 minutes

    Making Maps! ArcGIS Pro in under 5 minutes

    3 Step Guide to Publishing Hard Copy Cartography in ArcGIS Pro Like almost every other GIS professional I’ve been producing hardcopy maps using the trusty workhorse of GIS, ArcMap for quite a while now; with the occasional foray on it’s slightly more hipster cousin QGIS. Over the last couple of years ESRI have been developing…