We are continuing our coverage of the 2012 Olympic games in London, England, and we have an updated medalcount.csv file that can be used to map the distribution of medal counts around the globe. Download the medalcount.csv file. The medal counts are accurate up to 1:00pm on Wednesday, August 1. [Updated Final medal counts are available by downloading Final_Medal_count.csv] Once downloaded, save the file as a .csv. This dataset can be used to create choropleth maps and can be continually updated as the games progress. Download the World file from Geocommons and then import the data …

The 2012 summer Olympics in London, England are here, which is very exciting for many athletes and fans of sports from across the globe. This year's Olympics will host athletes from more than 200 countries and will consist of nearly 40 sports. The games will run from July 25 - August 12; for a schedule of the events take a look at the schedule on the official Olympics website. To celebrate the diversity of the event we decided to build a dataset that contains the countries participating in the Olympics along with the number of athletes from each location. The first …

The recent Supreme Court decision to uphold President Obama's health care plan has been received with mixed feelings across U.S. states. The goal of the health care plan is to ensure that all American's have an equal opportunity for health care insurance. A key aspect of the Obama health care plan was to expand Medicaid to cover those who were not covered by Medicare. This expansion was meant to fill the gap for people who couldn't afford insurance, but were determined to be poor enough to be exempt from the penalty for not holding insurance. The penalty for not …

Richard Florida is the well-known author of the book "The Creative Class" which describes the rise and the importance of a socio-economic class of individuals that Florida believes drives economic and social development. According to a Wikipedia, the creative class is made up of two separate groups of workers that make up about 30 percent of the U.S. workforce. The first of these groups is the Super-Creative Core: This group comprises about 12 percent of all U.S. jobs. It includes a wide range of occupations (e.g. science, engineering, education, computer programming, research), with arts, design, and media …

The Pacific Institute has recently released a set of GIS data on measures of Sea Level change on the West Coast. This is a topic that has been in the news recently as scientists are investigating changing sea levels along coasts around the world. We are always trying to point our customers to new sources of data that they can use in their own professional work, or for the purpose of exploring the world around them with publicly available data. To download the Pacific Institute data visit the GIS Data Downloads section. Notice when you go to the website there …

When creating maps that involve drawing new features such as points, lines, and polygons it is often the case that you may want to create several new features that are exactly the same. Essentially, you may want to create identical features without having to re-draw each one. Cartographica has multiple functions that allow you to perform this task. I will illustrate with an example using polygons. There is a pavilion structure in downtown Lexington, Ky that is used for various events, one being its hosting of the local Farmer's Market on specific days throughout the week. In Lexington, one of …

According to a recent article on Burrito Justice, during the Cold War the Russian government spent a lot of time and effort to create detailed maps of the many places in the world as potential targets for their military. The maps detail many different aspects such as elevation, water ways, and even streets that would be passable by tanks and other military vehicles. Now that the Cold War is over we can talk about the absurdity of it all and enjoy the hard work that the Russians put forth to make a series of really nice maps. The best location …

The recent troubles in Syria have escalated a little farther when Syrian Forces shot down an American made F-4 Phantom Jet flown by Turkey. Multiple news sources are reporting on this issue and there have been some inconsistencies about what actually happened. According to an article written in the Telegraph, the Turkish Foreign Minister has stated that the F-4 was shot down in international airspace after briefly entering Syrian airspace. The attack came without warning to the pilots of the jet. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has condemned the attack and has been quoted as saying that the attack was …

Usually, our blog posts are all about the business of using Cartographica for analysis or for some other professional application. But, I am here to tell you that Cartographica can be used for exploring, and for viewing some of the most interesting locations on the planet. In a recent CNN article titled "Where Planes go to Die" author Thom Patterson points out some of the best aerospace sights on the planet. In checking out some of Patterson's suggestions I realized that Cartographica really allows you to explore and view interesting places without needing to do much work. Cartographica can be …

The Center for Disease Control monitors various diseases within the United States. Often the CDC produces data for public use that can be used for scholarly and educational purposes. For this post I downloaded diabetes data from 2009 from this CDC website. The CDC are available for download in .xls format, so they need to be converted for use in Cartographica. After the data are downloaded, load the files into a spreadsheet program and save the file as a .csv. According to CDC data more than 25 million Americans have been diagnosed with diabetes and the rates of diabetes have …

The Appalachian Trail is a hiking trail in the Eastern United States that ranges from Springer Mountain, Georgia and Mount Katahdin, Maine. The trail is more than 2,000 miles long and it passes through more than 14 states. The trail includes numerous locations for viewing sights, camping, and lodging and typically takes several months to hike. The website TopoFusion has .gpx data that can be downloaded and imported into Cartographica to map the Appalachian Trail. The TopoFusion website says that the data are designed to be uploaded to GPS devices. gpx files can be imported by connecting your GPS …

In an article released last week it was reported that the Federal Aviation Administration has released the names and locations of Organizations approved for flying drones within the U.S. Drones have become infamous over the past several years due to their use for military purposes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and many other places. The use of the military technology for domestic purposes should not be unexpected as we have seen many military technologies cross-over for domestic purposes. Many argue that the use of such Military technology in local police agencies may be problematic and seen as an increase in …

Recent reports have indicated that North Korea is planning a nuclear weapons test in the near future. The possibility of this test has been confirmed by multiple governments including South Korea and the United States. According to this article by the Associated Press North Korea successfully performed two nuclear test in 2006 and 2009. The nuclear tests have come under scrutiny by the United States and other countries. The discovery of the nuclear test came through observations made by satellite imagery of the test site location. Take a look at this article's satellite imagery. Simultaneously, North Korea is also planning …

We have done a lot of posts about tornado activity in the past on this blog. This is largely due to the interesting data that are openly available as well as the awesome power that tornadoes contain, which naturally makes them interesting. The recent tornado activity in Indiana and Kentucky and then Monday's dramatic daytime tornado that ripped through through the Dallas area has again brought my attention back to tornadoes. Recently Core Logic produced an interesting study on tornado and hail damage throughout the United States. Get the article here The report looks at similar data that we have …

The recent foreclosure crisis has resulted in significant economic and social strain throughout the United States. One place hit very hard during the recession is Florida. Florida experienced high levels of foreclosures due to rapid home construction and predatory lending that occurred during the 2002-2005 run up to the recession. In this post I highlight a free source of foreclosure data produced by the Department of Housing and Urban Development through conjunction with the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Federal Reserve. The dataset provided by HUD allows you to download data down to the census tract level on home foreclosures …

Washington D.C. has an excellent catalog of GIS data that is made available to the public at DC GIS. The website provides data on all sorts of issues ranging from criminal activity to building permits. Also the website contains spatial files that can be used to create detailed and professional maps. For this post I collected data on 2011 crimes within the city. I will show how to import the data into Cartographica, how to geocode the crime incident data, how to search for specific types of crimes, and how to create Kernel Density Maps. The first step in …

In a recent article in the L.A. Times it was reported that the U.S. has decreased oil imports and has increased oil production. This article inspired me to search for data on oil production and consumption by country. Before we can create a map with this type of data we need a file that we can use to join data to. If you have seen previous posts you will see that we have used a basemap from Geocommons . I will be using this baseman again for this post. Download the file and then save it as World.shp …

Given the recent and tragic outbreak of tornadoes across the Midwest I thought it would be appropriate to do a blog on tornadoes. Before I continue I should mention how sorry we are at Cartographica that so many lives were lost and that so many homes were destroyed. Towns likes Henryville, Indiana and West Liberty, Kentucky were among the worst hit by the recent tornado outbreak. I found an interesting website on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's website. The website provides a lot of historical information about tornados in the United States. A particularly interesting fact from the website …

The U.S. Republican Presidential Primaries are still ongoing, but a number of states have already completed their elections. To find election results do a google search for 2012 primary results or click here. The first search results should be a table of data with the percent voting for each of the major candidates in each state. I wanted to create a few maps to show the results. I quickly created a .csv file by copy and pasting the table into my spreadsheet application. I saved the file as Election_2012.csv. I provide an image below of what the dataset …

I recently read an article on the Guardian about the changing distribution of carbon dioxide production by country. Carbon dioxide is among the most closely watched greenhouse gases that potentially leads to global warming. According to the Guardian article China has increased its production of CO2 by about 170% since 1984, which is more than the U.S. and Canada combined. Other important changes mentioned in the article are that England has dropped in its production and that India has moved above Russia to the third rank. The U.S. is second in CO2 production behind China. I …