In recent weeks there has been talk about the increasing risk of Iran's nuclear program promoting potential for Israeli preemptive attacks. I wanted to use this post for dual purposes. First, I had a general curiosity about the location of Iranian nuclear facilities so I thought I would try to find a reliable source of information to create a few maps highlighting the locations of these facilities. The best source that I found in my short period of research was from a document created by the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress. In the report written by Hussein …

There was a large earthquake today near East Prairie, Missouri that was measured as a magnitude 4.0. According to the USGS the quake was felt by people in at least nine surrounding states.The earthquake was located near the New Madrid Fault line. The Center for Earthquake Research and Information (CERI) located in Memphis, Tennessee works continuously to provide information about the seismic activity in the area surrounding the New Madrid Fault line. Their website provides a lot of information about the science behind detecting and analyzing earthquake activity. Additionally, their website provides free maps and data to explore …

A colleague pointed me to an interesting website for the International Telecommunications Union. The ITU is an organization that collects and disseminates telecommunications data. Their website provides information on various topics and also includes access to graphics and free data. On the right side of their main page there is a list of datasets about communication systems by country for years 2000-2010. This is a very nice set of data because the data are time-series, and because the data appear to have few missing values. For this post I downloaded the dataset "Percentage of Individuals using the Internet". After the …

For this post I found data on Statistics Canada, which is a governmental website that provides access to data on various topics within Canada. The website includes spatial data for creating maps and variable data for creating tables. To start you need to get a spatial file. I decided to get data for Provincial regions within Canada. To download the Provincial Regions shapefile to the Provincial Region Page and click on the link "ger_000b11a…." After you download the shapefile import it into Cartographica by choosing File > Import Vector Data. To download basic population data on Canadian provinces and territories go …

The World Bank is an international organization headquartered in Washington D.C. that organizes and funds efforts to reduce poverty and promote development around the world. It is a large organization that is made up of more than 9,000 employees with over 100 offices throughout the world. The World Bank not only provides funding, but they also provide access to large amounts of data with the purpose of promoting policy analysis and development. The data available from the World Bank is vast, and covers more than 200 countries with thousands of variables and indicators to choose from. Here is …

Recently there have been several earthquakes around the world. In Negros-Cebu region, Philippines there was a 6.7 magnitude earthquake that resulted many injuries and deaths. The earthquake activity peaked my interest to explore what was happening around the world in terms of seismic activity. To find data on recent earthquake activity I went to the U.S. governments data portal Data.gov, which is a clearinghouse for thousands of maps and datasets. I found data on earthquakes for the past 7 days. The link to this data is here. When you go to the webpage you will see that …

Oil prices are a continuing concern of people all over the world. There are a lot of variables that enter into the price of oil, including where the supplies are relative to the demand and how much is controlled by a single party. Oil fields vary in size and in the amount of oil that they contain.I was curious about spatial distribution of oil fields and how much oil the fields contained. To visualize the issue I found data from the USGS. The shapefiles that you can download show the locations of many of the worlds known oil fields …

I recently came across an article on The Guardian that looks at gun crime in the United States. The article includes several maps and it also includes downloadable gun crime data for U.S. states. In this post I show how to import the downloaded data into Cartographica to replicate the maps produced in the article. To download the data click on "Get the Data" within the article and then download the data in .csv format. The data set contains the total number of murders, total firearm murders in 2010 and 2009, total handgun murders, and the rates of firearm …

I am always very interested in what's going on in Korea. The border disputes that have occurred there over the past several years have made tensions in the area very high. Despite my interest in what's going on I don't know a lot about the specifics of the situation. In this post I use Cartographica to explore the area a little more. One of the biggest issues I am interested in is the artillery fire associated with an island called Baengnyeong Island. A Huffington Post article describes the most recent situation developing there. The article says that the South Korean …

This post describes the process for collecting data using the new U.S. Census American Fact Finder website (Fact Finder2). The new website allows you to select data from almost all U.S. Census Bureau surveys. These include the Decennial U.S. Census and American Community Survey among many others. The new data collection process requires you to use a series of steps for collecting what you want. These steps are logical as you move from general to specific selections. To start, you first determine the dataset and year that you would like to use. Then you choose the geographic …

This post shows an image downloaded from Digital Globe that depicts the wreckage site of the Costa Concordia cruise ship. The ship wreck occurred off of the coast of Italy and is still currently being handled by officials there. There has been much media attention given to ship's captain who mysteriously abandoned ship before many of the passengers. He was taken into custody by Italian officials. For this post, I georeferenced the Digital Globe image using Cartographica so that we can create more informative maps and new data layers. The first step in using an image like the one downloaded …

CNN has released an interesting map that will be continually updated throughout the election year. The map shows CNN predictions for how they believe states will perform during the 2012 presidential election. The heading says that the map will be updated as new information becomes available. Probably the most interesting aspect of the map are the locations of the battleground states. Battleground states are those places that will have tough competition between the candidates. Also, another interesting feature of the map is that the total number of electoral votes is also included. This allows you to see which battleground states …

Microsoft has recently gained a patent for a GPS app that uses sources of data to alert users that they are approaching an unsafe area. The app links to GPS and smartphone devices to sources of crime data that alerts users if they are approaching an unsafe area.There currently is limited information about exactly what types of data the app will use and if it will account for other factors that may influence crime in specific areas. The complete functionality of the app has not yet been made available, but already the implications of the app are taking criticism …

The highly anticipated Republican Presidential Primary is being held today in New Hampshire. The New Hampshire Primary is a particularly important election because it is the first non-caucus election held for the run up to the Republican presidential nomination and the subsequent Presidential election. The election receives a lot of media attention and is used as a tool for analyzing and estimating the performance of elections held in other states. To honor the New Hampshire primary I have put together a data set with data collected from several sources. The dataset includes data from the American Fact Finder website, which …

MapDawg is a free internet site that provides numerous links to both international and domestic spatial data. Depending on where you are interested in studying it can often be difficult to find sources of reliable data. This site provides links to both governmental and private sources of spatial data that are generally ready to use with your GIS. The website alphabetically organizes the data by place starting with worldwide and international locations. Data are given from multiple continents, countries, and from all of the states within the U.S. The data found on these websites are compatible with Cartographica so …

Google has released an interactive map tracking the results of yesterday's Iowa Caucus. The map provides interesting information about the results for each county within Iowa. The map highlights the results for each candidate that participated in the highly publicized vote that kicks off the run-up to Republican Presidential nomination. According to the results, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum gained the highest percentage of votes at 25% each. The two candidates were only separated by 8 votes (Romney was the winner). Ron Paul also had a good showing gaining 21% of the vote, however he gained zero delegate votes. Click …

I recently found a website for Nordpil who have made available a data set of major urban centers world wide. The data set contains population data for all of the world's major cities. I created a Kernel Density Map using Cartographica to show where the highest densities of urban areas are located. I discuss the process in this post. Cartographica makes it easy to quickly explore GIS data. If you need the data for professional purposes then Cartographica allows you to make sharp looking maps in only a matter of minutes, while also allowing you to visualize your data. I …

In a recent article by Time a state lawmaker from California has suggested that California split into two separate states. While the article mentions that this is not the first time this type of shake up in the state has been suggested (Its been suggested 220 times!) the proposal seems to be getting more coverage this time around. I found the idea of splitting interesting and I wondered how the two states would differ in terms of social and political issues. For this post I am going to see which of the two new states would have more economic problems …

Rates are useful when we need to compare geographic units that have unequal distributions of population. For example, if we wanted to compare car ownership for two California counties, say, Los Angeles County and Fresno County we would want to take into account the populations of each county. If we did not take into account the population then we might conclude that people in Los Angeles are more likely to own cars than people in Fresno. However, it is possible that this is not the case. It may be that the density of car ownership is much higher in Fresno …

Cartographica is great for exploring data and for providing a quick way to evaluate geopolitical problems. The South China Sea dispute is an ongoing feud between the countries that have land bordering the South China Sea. In this post I show how to quickly add data and to create new layers that can be used to evaluate problems. This post is fairly practical. I read an article about the South China Sea dispute and found the issue to be quite interesting. However, I know little about the area and thought that a little analysis of my own might help me …