Where the lava flows: Volcano update from Iceland

Featured

Posted on by

On 19 March 2021 a volcanic eruption started in the Geldingadalir valley at the Fagradalsfjall mountain on the Reykjanes peninsula, South-West Iceland. The volcano is situated approximately 30 km from the country’s capital city, Reykjavík. The main period of the eruption lasted from March to September 2021. A second eruption started on 3 August 2022 in Meradalir valley at the Northern end of the first eruption and lasted just over two weeks. In the most recent developments, a new fissure opened further North next to Litli-Hrútur on 10 July 2023 (ongoing at the time of writing) and keeps changing and transforming the landscape in surrounding areas as a result.

Meradalir Volcanic Eruption in Iceland, photo taken on July, 12 2023 by Fredrik Holm

Continue reading →

Arctic Circles: Geopolitics and Climate Change in the North

Featured

Posted on by

The Arctic Circle Assembly is the largest annual international gathering on the Arctic, attended by more than 2000 participants from over 60 countries. The Assembly is held every October in Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center, Reykjavík, Iceland. With the event on the doorstep, a closer look at who has stakes in this region that has received a growing interest in recent years. The following map shows all nations that have territorial claims in the Arctic, the region that is defined as the area that lies North of the Arctic Circle at about 66°34’N:

Political Map of the Arctic Region
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

Bundestagswahl 2021: Map Views of the German Federal Election

Featured

Posted on by

Germans went to the polls to elect a new parliament and along with it a new government and a new chancellor. Since outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel did not stand for re-election after 16 years in office, this election marked a turning point in German politics. Without her standing as ‘Spitzenkandidat’, the election campaign turned into a heated fight for voter support with three parties having led the polls at times in the run-up to the election (CDU/CSU, SPD and the Greens). The final result saw the Social Democrats (SPD) winning the race after having trailed in the polls for a long time. They started catching up a few weeks ahead of the election and ended up securing 25.7 percent of the votes in the list vote (Zweitstimme) that determines the proportional distribution of seats (5.2% more than in 2017, resulting in 206 seats of the 735 seat strong parliament).
Having lost 7.9 percent points, CDU came second with 18.9 percent of the list vote (151 seats). The Green party (Grüne) came third with their best-ever result in a federal election, winning 14.8 percent of the list vote (up 5.8%, 118 seats), yet far lower than the mid-20s they polled in earlier in the year. FDP remained at a stable 11.5 percent (up 0.7%, 92 seats). The extreme right ‘Alternative for Germany‘ (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) re-entered federal parliament (Bundestag) but with a smaller vote share of 10.3% (down 2.3%, 83 seats). CSU, the Bavarian sister-party of CDU won 5.2 percent (down 1%, 45 seats) Die Linke went down to 4.9% of the list votes but remains in parliament through the number of directly elected seats from the constituency vote (39 seats). Danish minority party SSW reached 0.1 percent in the list vote but gained one seat through special rules for parties representing minorities. Other parties not represented in parliament accounted for 7.2 percent of the valid votes.
Coalition talks are ongoing so that it is not clear yet, which parties are going to form the next government and who will become the 9th Federal Chancellor since 1949. This gives time to ponder over all the political changes that happened across the country – what better way to do so than through a series of maps, such as the 18 maps shown in this blog that dissect over 22,000 data points in cartographic form. Let’s start with an overview: The following pair of maps shows on the left the winning parties of the constituency vote (Erststimme) which directly elects a constituency into parliament and on the right the strongest party in the list vote (Zweitstimme) which determines the proportional representation for each party in the new parliament. These results are shown in large as gridded population cartograms which are proportional to the respective population there, accompanied by a small ‘conventional’ land area map:

Equal population projection map of the First and list vote Results in the 2021 German General Election / Bevölkerungsrastertransformationskarte der Ergebnisse der Bundestagswahl 2021
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

US Presidential Election 2020

Featured

Posted on by

This cartogram shows the distribution of votes for the two main candidates in the 2020 US Presidential election. Shown in diverging colours is each respective candidate who received the largest share of votes in each county. The cartogram itself shows an equal-population projection (gridded population cartogram) where each grid cell in the map is resized according to the total number of people living there. The main cartogram is accompanied by a ‘conventional’ reference map that also shows the states of Alaska and Hawaii (using state-level results for these two states):

US Presidential Election 2020 Cartogram
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

Re-Enlightening Views of the World

Featured

Posted on by

A time where ‘real world’ conferences are a memory of the past is a good opportunity to look at the wealth of material that has been put online instead. Here is one of my talks that has recently been put online. It’s a four-minute ‘Lightning talk’ given at last year’s Anniversary Annual Conference of the Global Young Academy. Lightning Talks are giving a brief overview of a topic aimed at a broader audience, and here I am – obviously – talking about mapping and cartograms: Continue reading →

The 2019 UK General Election

Featured

Posted on by

If the 2016 vote for Brexit was described as a political earthquake in the United Kingdom, then the 2019 General Election is the equivalent to the tsunami that followed this seismic event and swept over some of the deepest Labour heartlands in England. Political commentators spoke of a demolishment of the Labour party’s ‘red wall’ as the results came in (although the ‘wall’ that may have once stood had already started to crumble in previous elections). Approaching the outcome of the General Election from a visual perspective puts such metaphors into a visual representation. The following map shows the outcome of this year’s general election – the fourth (and definitely final) of this decade – in three different cartographic visualisations:

Map views of the 2019 UK General Election
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

Smoke and mirrors: Smoking Prevalence and Tobacco Advertising Policies

Featured

Posted on by

Cigarette smoking and other uses of tobacco are major contributors to preventable illness and death. A 2008 World Health Organization (WHO) report estimated that around 70 per cent of the adult male population in Russia was smoking. Another WHO study estimated that prevalence of smoking amongst women is about one fifth of that amongst men. Prevalence levels of daily smokers are generally lower.

Map of Smoking Prevalence and Tobacco Advertising Policies
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

Inequalities of Gender: Education, work, and politics

Featured

Posted on by

Political InsightThis contribution for Political Insight (June 2019, Volume 10, Issue 2) maps gender inequality around the world and argues that the political sphere is often the most resistant to change. Unequal treatment based on gender is deeply embedded in many countries. Gender studies emerged as an important part of academic research in the 1980s. The issue of gender inequality also emerged on the global political agenda, albeit slowly. Gender-related measures became part of the Human Development Index (HDI) by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Mapping Gender Inequality
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

Bees in trouble? Honeybee Shortages in Europe

Featured

Posted on by

Recent research shows that increasing shortages in honeybees threaten pollination of crops in Europe. Although according to a study covering 41 European countries the overall number of honeybee stocks has increased by 7 per cent between 2005 and 2010 (to an estimated 13.4 million colonies with 7 billion honeybees), 15 countries have also experienced declines ranging from 4 per cent in Slovenia to 47 per cent in Switzerland. At the same time have changes in agricultural practices led to considerable changes in the need for pollination. Increases in pollinated crop areas are contributed to the growth of areas for producing biofuel crops (oilseed rape, sunflower and soybean), as have the use of pesticides led to a decline in the number of bees.

Maps of Honeybee Shortages in Europe
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

Earth Overshoot Day: Humanity’s Footprints

Featured

Posted on by

This year July, 29th is Earth Overshoot Day: “Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources (fish and forests, for instance) and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. We maintain this deficit by liquidating stocks of resources and accumulating waste, primarily carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
Earth’s ability to sustain humanity’s existence is linked to the planet’s productivity and its biological capacity. In the wider sense, this does not only refer to the resources that humans consume, but also nature’s capability to absorb and regenerate the waste that we produce. With a still growing population as well as an increasing use of natural resources, biocapacity is under constant pressure. On a sustainable planet, all of humanity would only use the resources and produces waste at a level that does not deplete nature.

Ecological Footprint Map
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

The growth and decline of urban agglomerations in Germany

Featured

Posted on by

Approximately half the population of Germany lives in the 30 major urban German agglomerations, such as Berlin, Hamburg, Munich (München), and Cologne (Köln) but also in smaller cities including Münster, Freiburg, Leipzig, and Dresden. These urban regions (Stadtregionen) are also major analytical units of the Federal institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) within the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning that advises the Federal Government in the fields of spatial planning, urban development, housing and building. Therefore, these regions that cover approximately 32 per cent of the built-up area used for settlement or transport infrastructure are of particular interest in understanding urban dynamics in Germany in a regional and national context (Baumgart et al, 2016).

Cartogram Series the growth and decline of urban agglomerations in Germany
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

Fortress Europe?

Featured

Posted on by

Political Insight“The right to asylum shall be guaranteed with due respect for the rules of the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 and the Protocol of 31 January 1967 relating to the status of refugees and in accordance with the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.” Article 18 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights outlines the European Union’s legal framework for its asylum policies that have come under intense scrutiny and political pressure since the height of the significant number of refugees trying to literally reach the shores of the continent from conflict zones in Africa and the Middle East. While refugee numbers went down again to pre-2015 levels and below due to considerable political interventions, the political debate has not disappeared and continues to heavily influence European politics including major shifts towards the right end of the political spectrum in many member states. In an article for the “In Focus” section of Political Insight (September 2018, Volume 9, Issue 3) I looked at recent developments in Europe’s “refugee crisis”. Continue reading →

The Diamond Dimensions

Featured

Posted on by

Due to its distinct geologic conditions for their formations, the occurrence of diamonds is confined to around 35 countries in the world. While countries such as Australia, India, or Canada focus more on mining industrial diamonds, African countries such as Botswana and South Africa are better known for their production of gem diamonds. Diamond mining activities in many African countries are often also linked to conflicts and controversial human rights conditions.
According to data collected by the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), which covers an about 99.8 per cent of global diamond production, 134 million carats of diamonds worth US$ 12.4 billion were produced in 2016. This most recent figure is slightly up from the average annual production since the start of the financial crisis in 2008.

Cartogram of Diamond Production/Mining in the World
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

Danger Zones: Mapping Europe’s Earthquakes

Featured

Posted on by

A deeper understanding and better communication of earthquake risk has been a major challenge in geosciences for a long time. The Global Earthquake Model initiative aims to become the world’s most complete source of earthquake risk resources and works towards a globally accepted standard for risk assessment. As part of this collaborative initiative, the EU-funded SHARE (‘Seismic Hazard Harmonization in Europe’) project helped in generating the first consistent regional seismic hazard model for Europe (including Turkey). The model, published in 2013, overcomes the limitation of national borders and includes a thorough quantification of the uncertainties.
Seismic hazard data collected for this model consisted of records from more than 30,000 earthquakes with a magnitude of 3.5 and above on the Richter scale which occurred since the year 1000, as shown in the smaller map in this feature. To fully consider that hazards do not only reflect the mere occurrence of major seismic events, but also the damage they create, the model also factors in the earthquakes’ damaging effects. Moderate earthquakes in very densely populated regions can have a major impact. The vulnerability of populations depends on a multitude of factors that go beyond the actual earthquake’s magnitude.

Cartogram of Seismic Zones in Europe
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

Worldmapper: The Relaunch

Featured

Posted on by

There is a new map in town! Earlier this month during the 125th Anniversary Conference of the Geographical Association in Sheffield (UK) we relaunched the new Worldmapper.org online platform which has been several years in the making. It is not only a fully redesigned website, but also redefines what we want Worldmapper to become over a decade after it has first been released: An atlas for the 21st century that is mapping our place in the world using cartograms.
At the very heart of it Worldmapper is still a collection of world maps where countries are resized according to a broad range of global issues. But with the new website we will increasingly use more diverse cartogram techniques, such as gridded cartograms, as well as start including maps at different scales such as country-level mappings seen on this blog in many ways. Worldmapper will therefore be the most comprehensive repository for cartogram-style mappings that are unique visualisations showing the world as you’ve never seen it before. Check it out at: Worldmapper.org Continue reading →

Higher Education Students and Graduates in Europe

Featured

Posted on by

Promoting equity in education and training is consistent with the European welfare state model, with part of the Europe 2020 Strategy aiming to significantly reduce numbers of early leavers from education and increase numbers of graduates with a university degree. The following maps give an insight into the social and spatial disparities in higher education across Europe’s countries and regions. They are all gridded population cartograms where each area is proportional to the number of people living there.
This is a map of students as a percentage of the total population aged 20–24. The reported share can often be higher than 100%, where there are more students who study and live in a city in term time than the numbers of 20- to 24-year-olds that the city officially houses. Also many students are counted who are aged 18, 19 or over 24:

Higher Education in Europe: Map of Students
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

The World in 2018

Featured

Posted on by

7.6 billion people producing an estimated global GDP of 131 trillion dollars (measured in purchasing power parity), that is the world in 2018. In its latest forecast, the International Monetary Fund predicts predicts a continuing global economic growth of 3.9%, while according to the United Nations Population Division an extra 83 million people will populate this planet (1.9% growth). The following two cartograms show, how the distribution of wealth and people looks this year by resizing each country according to the total number of people (top)/GDP output (bottom):

Mapping the world in 2018: Cartograms of global GDP and population
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

Changing Political Landscapes of Germany 2017

Featured

Posted on by

Germany's Vote / Deutschland hat gewählt
The following cartogram series provides a detailed look into the changed political landscapes in Germany following this year’s general election. While the previous maps gave an insight into the strongest party in each constituency, these maps give a clearer picture of the vote share distribution that also determines the constitution of parliament which follows a system of proportional representation. Continue reading →

Unequal Elite: World University Rankings 2016/17

Featured

Posted on by

Education and money undoubtedly go hand in hand. A closer look at the metrics that go into the creation of higher education rankings such as the Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings (THE WUR) proofs just the point that without adequate resources and funding global success can hardly be achieved. The following map which was created by analysing data of the 2016/17 World University Ranking data with regards to its spatial distribution of the most successful universities in this ranking. The map is a gridded cartogram which is reshaped to show national wealth, measured by gross domestic product. The land area in each country has been resized to reflect economic output. North America and Western Europe bugle to dominate this world map, while the entire continent of Africa virtually disappears. On this new world map, all the universities in the THE World University Rankings are plotted, with the larger, red dots representing world’s top 50 universities and the smaller circles representing the lower ranks:

Gridded cartogram projection of the THE World University Rankings 2016/17 showing GDP
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

Britain elects: The changes

Featured

Posted on by

“Nothing has changed” was the infamous quote made by Theresa May during this year’s UK election campaign over a policy u-turn. This marked the beginning of a reverse of the Conservative support in the polls which eventually led to the changes that changed the political geography of the United Kingdom significantly when compared to the just as surprising result of the 2015 election. The following map uses the same approach as the previous map series showing the winning party in each constituency, but adds further detail to the picture by also highlighting how seats have changed between the last and this election:

Gridded Population Map and cartogram series of the UK General Election 2017
(click for larger and labelled version)

Continue reading →

The regional geography of poverty, austerity and inequality in Europe

Featured

Posted on by

Europe is currently suffering a deep political and economic crisis following years of turmoil and austerity measures that have disproportionately and brutally hit the most disadvantaged regions and citizens across most of the continent. At the same time, there has been a revival of nationalisms and divisions in this part of the world that, a decade ago, seemed to be united in diversity and moving towards ever-closer union. Concentrated poverty near to riches and profound spatial inequality have long been persistent features of all European countries, with disparities often being most stark within the most affluent cities and regions, such as London. In other parts of Europe levels of inequality and poverty have been reducing and are often much lower. However, the severe economic crisis and austerity measures have led, in many cases, to an enhancement of existing disparities. The following eight maps show how the regional geography has changed in the light of these developments:

GDP
Analysing the regional geography of poverty, austerity and inequality in Europe: Mapping GDP
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

(Un)Happy Nations

Featured

Posted on by

March, 20th is the United Nations’ International Day of Happiness, recognising ‘the importance of happiness in the lives of people around the world’. Bhutan is credited as the first country to have implemented the concept of ‘Gross National Happiness’ as an official measure for the state of a nation, introduced in 1972. After the global financial crash in 2008, ideas about giving the ‘spiritual, physical, social and environmental health of [people] and natural environment’ more prominence over mere economic development are reflected more and more in international efforts towards a sustainable future.
The Happy Planet Index (HPI), developed by the New Economics Foundation, takes a rather radical approach on this issue. It aims to measure well-being and happiness by taking a universal and long-term approach to understanding, how efficiently people in a country are using their environmental resources to live long and happy lives.
This cartogram maps the results of the 2016 Happy Planet Index from the perspective of people. The gridded population cartogram shows the world resized according to the number of people living in each area, combined with the national HPI score:

Cartogram Map of the Happy Planet Index
(click for larger version including additional detail)

Continue reading →

US Presidential Election 2016

Featured

Posted on by

The electorate of the United States of America has come to a decision about who is to become their next president. But not quite the whole electorate went to the polls: Turnout was at a long-term low with about 55% of voting age citizen having cast their ballot in the 2016 presidential election. Long gone are the days in which up to around 80% of the electorate went to the polls: This was last seen in the 19th century.
62,979,636 votes (46.1%) were cast for Donald Trump, while Hillary Clinton received 65,844,610 votes (48.2%). Other candidates put together reached 7,804,213 votes (5.7%). The following cartogram shows the distribution of votes for the two main candidates. Shown in diverging colours is each respective candidate who received the largest share of votes in each county. The cartogram itself shows an equal-population projection (gridded population cartogram) where each grid cell in the map is resized according to the total number of people living there. The main cartogram is accompanied by a second cartogram showing the distribution of votes that went to neither of the two candidates, and a ‘conventional’ reference map that also shows the states of Alaska and Hawaii:

Gridded Population Cartogram of the US Presidential Election 2016
(click for larger and labelled version)

Continue reading →

The EU Referendum

Featured

Posted on by

EU Referendum 2016 Cartogram
(click for larger version)

The decision has been made: 17,410,742 people of the United Kingdom’s 65 million population voted for leaving the European Union. These are about 26.8% of the UK’s resident population, or 37.4% of the electorate in this EU referendum. It also equals 51.9% of the valid votes cast, as stated in the official figures from the electoral commission. Continue reading →

World Population Cube

Featured

Posted on by

World Population CubeLast November’s theme of the Super Science Saturday at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History was Planet Earth. As part of the activities I contributed a map cube which I created a few years ago.
Cubic globes are not a new idea. They put a nice twist to showing just a simple map, and more importantly, they allow for some activity which get the kids involved just as much as adults. A cube is much less work than creating a spheric version of Earth, and (as said by Carlos Furuti on his online cube globe collection) the cube is an ideal introduction to folding one’s own pseudoglobes.
At last November’s Super Science Saturday I displayed some of my work and offered a ‘Map Cube Activity’ where children (and adults) could cut, fold and glue their own globes. My version of a map cube does not display a normal world map, but a gridded population cartogram (hence the name ‘World Population Cube’). You can create your own cube by using the following template: Continue reading →

Mapping the Anthropocene

Featured

Posted on by

The effects of humans on the global environment are perceived to be so significant by some scientists that they argue the onset of industrialisation (in the eighteenth century) has been a major driving force in environmental change on a par with the forces of nature. It is this rapid impact that has led some geologists to unofficially name (but not, as yet, officially recognise) this recent period of the earth’s history (from around 1760-onwards) as the Anthropocene (roughly translating as the era – or epoch – shaped considerably through the actions of humanity).

The Human Planet: Gridded Population Cartogram
Gridded population cartogram displaying the topography of the world in relation to the population distribution (click here for larger version)

Continue reading →

Earthquake risk zones: A people’s perspective

Featured

Posted on by

In a paper for the Journal of Maps published in 2014 I have analysed and visualised data documenting earthquakes that have occurred since 2150 BC. The following map was part of the material supplementing the publication showing the results of the analysis shown on an equal population projection. The gridded cartogram gives every person on the planet an equal amount of space while highlighting the most densely populated spaces in relation to the earthquake risk (calculated via the intensity of earthquakes recorded since 2150 BC). Also shown are the world’s megacities (over 5 million population). The map shows the large populations that make even Nepal (with its almost 28 million people) much more visible than it would be on a conventional map, highlighting why this event turns out to be quite disastrous. The map also shows what the USGS statement above mentions that Nepal is amongst the areas in the region which are far less subject to major earthquakes (as indicated by the yellow to blue shading in the map there):

Map of earthquake risk zones on an equal-population projection
(click for larger version)
Download as poster (PDF, 62MB)

Continue reading →

Water worlds: Ocean Chlorophyll levels

Featured

Posted on by

The ocean is the last frontier that has not been discovered by cartogram techniques before. As such, it was an inevitable step in my PhD research some years ago to test the creation of a gridded ocean cartogram, a cartogram that is limited to the extent of the world’s oceans (also linking nicely to my past research on coastal ecosystems).
Chlorophyll concentrations in the world’s oceans are important indicators for the presence of algae and other plant-like organisms that carry out photosynthesis. As such, phytoplankton (which contains the chlorophyll) is an essential element of the food chain in the seas as it provides the food for numerous animals. Variations and changes in the chlorophyll levels are also relevant for the study of the ecology of the sea. Changing chlorophyll levels can indicate changing sea temperatures and other conditions in the oceans that cover about 72 percent of the planet’s surface.

Gridded cartogram visualisation of Ocean Chlorophyll concentrations
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

In Focus: Wealth on the British Isles

Featured

Posted on by

Political InsightThe debate about the relevance and impact of the super-rich on society has gained greater currency as evidence continues to grow that the widening gap between the poor and the rich has a negative impact on societies as a whole. In otherwise affluent countries where the richest one per cent owns the most, child poverty is common, school attainment is lower and medium household incomes are depressed. Along with reduced average living standards, housing is of poorer quality, and health suffers as anxiety rises.
In an article for the “In Focus” section of Political Insight (December 2014, Volume 5, Issue 3) Danny Dorling and I looked beyond the economic, social, educational and medical implications, focussing on the geographical lessons to learn when wealth concentrates. Where the richest of the rich live, work and where they keep their assets is even more imbalanced than the wider and growing underlying inequalities between rich and poor. In societies where the rich have less they tend to be more spread out across a country, but when the wealth of those at the top rises greatly there is a tendency to congregate – with London a prime example.

Continue reading →

Demographies of China

Featured

Posted on by

This week I joined the Department of Asian Studies at Palacký University Olomouc (Czech Republic) as a visiting lecturer by invitation of the CHINET project. In my lecture about New Geographies of China I built on the work I have presented earlier this year at the Conference on the Socio-Economic Transition of China at the same place, teaching the students not only how China’s position is in the global context of demographic, social and economic change, but also how we can visualise this in novel ways. The following three maps are an extract from my presentation that gave an overview of this lecture.
The maps show the distribution of the different age groups in the country divided into children (age 0 to 14), working age (age 15 to 64) and elderly (above age 64) as they are counted in the official Chinese Census released by the National Bureau of Statistics. As the most recent Census figures have not been released at the same level of detail, the following three maps show the state of 2000. Here is an animated version of the three maps showing all three groups one after another (the individual maps are displayed below):

Animation of demographic groups in China projected on a gridded population cartogram
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

In Focus: The real size of Offshore Financial Centres

Featured

Posted on by

Political InsightIn an article for the “In Focus” section of Political Insight (December 2013, Volume 4, Issue 3) Jan Fichtner of the University of Frankfurt a.M. and I analysed the size of the foreign assets in the world’s largest offshore financial centres. All ‘offshore financial centres’ (OFCs) have one characteristic feature in common; they offer very low tax rates and lax regulations to non-residents with the aim to attract foreign financial assets. OFCs essentially undercut ‘onshore’ jurisdictions at their expense. The main beneficiaries are high-net-worth individuals and large multinational corporations that have the capital and expertise required to utilise OFCs. Beyond its geographical connotation the phenomenon of ‘offshore’ represents a withdrawal of public regulation and control, primarily over finance. Some important OFCs are in fact located ‘onshore’, e.g. Delaware in the USA and the City of London in the UK. However, historically many OFCs have literally developed ‘off-shore’, mostly on small islands.
OFCs as defined by Zoromé (2007) are jurisdictions that provide financial services to non-residents on a scale that is excessive compared to the size and the financing of their domestic economies. The graphic shows combined data on securities (Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey by the IMF) and on deposits/loans (Locational Banking Statistics by the BIS) at the end of 2011. Capturing the two by far most important components of financial centres allows a reasonable approximation of the real size of OFCs while avoiding double counting. The larger the size of the circles on the map, the more foreign financial assets have been attracted to the particular jurisdiction. The vast majority of the almost US$70 trillion foreign financial assets are concentrated in North America, Europe and Japan. Areas with assets below $US50bn are not shown for their relative insignificance in the global context.

Offshore Financial Centres

Continue reading →

The Human Planet: A modern Mappa Mundi

Featured

Posted on by

“A mappa mundi […] is any medieval European map of the world. […] To modern eyes, mappae mundi can look superficially primitive and inaccurate. However, mappae mundi were never meant to be used as navigational charts and they make no pretence of showing the relative areas of land and water. Rather, mappae mundi were schematic and were meant to illustrate different principles. The simplest mappae mundi were diagrams meant to preserve and illustrate classical learning easily. The zonal maps should be viewed as a kind of teaching aid—easily reproduced and designed to reinforce the idea of the Earth’s sphericity and climate zones” (cited from Wikipedia).
What would a mappa mundi of our times look like? A modern equivalent of such a map would have to focus on those spaces of our planet that we have a less vivid imagination of than the physical shape of the world that in medieval times was a much less familiar view than it is today. The following gridded population cartogram generated over the whole surface of Earth could be such a contemporary depiction of the world. It divides the world into equal spaces of population realigning the map view to show the human planet in a similar way as mappae mundi showed the world centuries ago:

Equal population projection map of the Earth's land and water surface
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →

Global Spaces of Food Production

Featured

Posted on by

Global Spaces of Food Production
In the year 2000 there were approximately 15 million square km of cropland and 28 million square km of pasture which are represented in the two main maps. These are equal to 12% respectively 22% of the ice-free land surface. This is according to estimates of a study on the geographic distribution of global agricultural lands by Ramankutty et al (published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 2008) who used a methodology of combining agricultural inventory data and satellite-derived land cover data to come to these figures (data can be accessed via Columbia University’s SEDAC). Continue reading →

A brief look at map projections

Featured

Posted on by

Each and every map represents a distorted view of reality. Therefore, cartograms are not as unusual as they might appear at a first glance. Map projections are a central aspect of the Worldmapper project because the maps (respectively cartograms) featured in the project are basically not different from some sort of re-projection of the world, albeit in a different way than conventional projections used in cartography. Rather than trying to solve the conflicts of distortion when drawing a three dimensional surface on to a two dimensional area (be it a screen or a paper map), the worldmapper cartograms distort our image of the world on purpose and show each country in proportion to a specific topic. This is reason enough to reflect a little bit on what map projections are and in what way they create a distorted view of the world.

Worldmapper map using different projections

Continue reading →

COVID-19 deaths in England and Wales

Posted on by

According to the UK Office for National Statistics, “there were 90,232 deaths occurring in England and Wales [between 1 March and 17 April 2020] that were registered by 18 April; 20,283 of these deaths involved the coronavirus (COVID-19).” The following map plots this data which has been made available at small area statistics on May, 1st, showing the COVID-19-related deaths as a share of all cause deaths in each area of the two nations. The left map shows a conventional map for reference, while the cartogram on the right is proportional to each areas respective population, so that more populated urban areas appear larger than sparsely populated rural areas:

Map of COVID-19 deaths in England and Wales
(click for larger version)

Continue reading →