Tag Archives: worldmapper

World Water Day

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World Water Day 2011

Water is a basic requirement for all life, yet water resources are facing increasing demands from, and competition among, users. In 1992, the UN General Assembly designated 22 March of each year as the World Day for Water
(quoted from the WWD website).

Water is more than a chemical substance contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms. Water has become a reason for conflicts and a controversial commodity, and yet, it is inevitable for every human being on the planet. The range of issues that are important when looking at water is diverse, and all fields reveal the global inequalities in access to clean water. One of these issues is the commercialisation of water, which on a global scale finds its manifestation in the bottled water industry: Bottled water is one way of getting access to clean water if there is no reliable central water supply or local source of water.
Edward Stanley from University College London looked at the bottled water business for a Geography dissertation project, for which I created some worldmapper maps visualising his data from that research on ‘Commodification and Mass Consumption – The Case for Bottled Water‘.
The topics that we mapped focus on the countries of origin of the globally operating bottled water companies and the bottled water consumption in the world. The first map shows the total bottled water consumption including a world population cartogram as a reference. In addition, the countries are shaded by their per capita consumption of bottled water (a worldmapper-style version of this map is shown at the bottom of this page):

Map I: Global Bottled Water Consumption (total and per capita)Cartogram / Map of the Global Bottled Water Consumption (total and per capita)(click for larger view)

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The International Year of Forests 2011

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International Year of Forests 2011The United Nations General Assembly declared 2011 as the International Year of Forests (IYF) to raise awareness on sustainable management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests. The British Prime Minister Cameron experienced, how forests can become a very political issue, which shows how emotional people’s attitude towards their environment can sometimes become. The International Year of Forests, however, was never mentioned in the debate that went on during the proposed forest sell-off by the British government, which highlights one of the problems that sometimes these proposed International-Years-of-Something face: A lack of attention. On a global scale, 31% of the land area is covered by forests. Some of these areas are highly under threat by unsustainable forestry and environmental pollution. The IYF therefore is meant to emphasise “the need for sustainable management of all types of forests, including fragile forest ecosystems” (UN resolution on the IYF). Continue reading →

Broken Hearts

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Here are two maps that I created in collaboration with the Department of Cardiovascular Science at the University of Sheffield using data published by the British Heart Foundation (see http://www.heartstats.org/ for more statistics). The maps is coloured by age-standardised cardiovascular heart disease death rates per 100,000 people (split into male and female deaths). Both maps are shaded using the quintiles, thus differ in the absolute rate shown here. This reveals a picture of the prevailing health inequalities in the United Kingdom, with a quite striking North-South divide on the one hand, and an existing division within the Capital as well (East London being most affected in the South East of England). Both maps are drawn on an equal population cartogram giving each person the same amount of space on the map: Continue reading →

British Views of the World 2010

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2010 is over. An interesting year that has seen the advent of a big society in Britain, some exciting sports events (and with retaining the Ashes, even England made a last-minute win), a lot of snow, and many other things to remember (and to forget). This time of the year is review time. In map-ish terms, cartography and maps appear to become more and more popular again, not least because there are so many people out there taking on the new open data that keeps leaking (mostly on purpose, but sometimes by accident…). Therefore, a review of 2010 in maps is inevitable, and James Cheshire did so on his website which is well worth a look (even if that may be a little British-centric): 2010 mapped.
And here comes my final map for 2010: A look at the British view of the world in 2010. To understand how British people perceive the events on the globe, one can look at how frequently a country has been mentioned in major news stories. The following maps do exactly this by visualising the number of news items on the website of the British Newspaper The Guardian (data derived from their Data store). Speaking of the Guardian, their website also features a nice interactive review-creator where you can create a personalised interactive review of this year – try it out if you feel that all other of the plenty reviews out there covered the wrong stories.
Here is the first map that also takes the domestic news stories from the United Kingdom into consideration – for obvious reasons the UK dominates this version of the map:

2010 Review: A worldmap of Guardian news
(click for larger map)

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Cancun Climate Change Conference

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Climate change has hardly been on the agenda of global politics recently. It was the global downturn which keeps country leaders busy, and so prospects for the current climate change talks in Cancun (Mexico) to find a successive agreement for the Kyoto protocol appear quite poor. While the Copenhagen summit in 2009 was accompanied by large hope (and failed miserably), there are much lower expectations this year, although still some hope for a significant outcome.
It is interesting to look at the number of delegates which a country is able to send to the talks, as this reveals a lot about the interests of the nations that will succeed in the negotiations. The voices which will be heard are probably the voices of those who send the most delegates, riding roughshod over those nations which have fewer representatives. But the number of delegates may also reflect the importance that climate change has on the political agenda of a country.
During the next days the summit goes into its critical phase, with (perhaps) some world leaders appearing on stage to strengthen their voice – but will those voices from the most vulnerable countries be heard? This is the map of the number of delegates in this year’s climate change talks (data obtained from the UNFCC, the map has been cated in collaboration with UNfair play):

Cartogram / Map of delegates at the 2010 climate change conference in Cancun
(click for larger version)

And there is a lot to discuss in Cancun, not least because developments look bleak when looking at the latest figures on carbon emissions: A year ago on the occasion of the Copenhagen summit I published an updated map on the global carbon emissions. I also did a new map depiction modelling the carbon emissions onto a grid which gave a clearer picture of the geographical variation of these emissions. The figures back then were based on UN data for 2006, so that since than inevitably many inquiries came in asking for a more recent map.
Combining several data sources (mainly UNStats and IWR) and taking the just released Update on CO2 emissions (by Friedlingstein et al published in Nature Geoscience) we now updated our worldmapper base data to a consistent data set which allows us to draw a more recent picture of carbon emissions amid the economic recession. The map reflects the findings in the above mentioned paper: Despite the slowdown in global production, global emission rates continue to rise. The research also confirms a simultaneous development of carbon emissions and GDP, resulting in often only moderate reductions of emissions in most affluent countries and continued increases in many emerging economies. According to their estimates, 2010 may become the year with the highest anthropogenic carbon emissions in history – a new piece of history, just as the Kyoto Protocol. Did anyone say something about an economic crisis? What would the world look like without a crisis? Perhaps the next years will tell us…again. – Here is the updated map and below a short animation showing the slight changes from 2006-2009:

Carbon Emissions 2009:
Cartogram / Map of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emissions in 2009
(click for larger version)
Animation CO2-Emissions 2006-2009: Continue reading →