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 …

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 …

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 …