There’s more than one way to depict data on a map. At the last Esri user conference, Sarah Bell, Kenneth Field and John Nelson demonstrated different ways to map the results of the last U.K. parliamentary election, and how they changed from the previous election. The video of their presentation is attendee-only, but Ken and John have posted about how they each went about their tasks: here’s Ken’s post and here’s John’s; plus, as is his wont, John has posted a video.

Yesterday, U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Among other things, Walz is a former social studies teacher and early adopter of GIS as a teaching tool, and has nerded out on geography and GIS throughout his political career, both in the U.S. House of Representatives and as governor. Walz even spoke at the 2024 Esri User Conference in San Diego last month (as someone married to a high school teacher, I can say this: he totally talks like a high school teacher). See also this summary of the talk, and Walz’s map nerdery in general, in the Minnesota Reformer.

The 38th volume of the Esri Map Book (Esri, 5 Sep 2023) came out earlier this month. Like the NACIS Atlas of Design (previously),¹ it’s a showcase of maps presented at a conference—in this case, maps from the Map Gallery exhibition of Esri’s International User Conference. The Esri Map Book website has a gallery of maps presumably from this volume, and given the number of pages in the book (140) and the number of maps in the gallery (65), it may actually be complete (assuming a two-page spread per map). $30. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.

Peter Bellerby, of bespoke premium globemaker Bellerby & Co. fame, has written a book: The Globemakers: The Curious Story of an Ancient Craft (Bloomsbury) is out today in hardcover in the UK, and in North America on October 17; the ebook is available worldwide as of today. From the publisher: “The Globemakers brings us inside Bellerby’s gorgeous studio to learn how he and his team of cartographers and artists bring these stunning celestial, terrestrial, and planetary objects to life. Along the way he tells stories of his adventure and the luck along the way that shaped the company.” £25/$30. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.

“When you are a global Geographic Information Technology company with a globe in your logo, you don’t shy away from the opportunity to have a great big glorious 8.5-foot diameter illuminated rotating globe in your new office building. But what sort of globe cartography do you design? How should this gigantic model of our lovely home planet appear?” John Nelson and Sean Breyer explain the design and construction process behind Esri’s new globe—a custom Earthball manufactured by Orbis World Globes.

ArcGIS-based dashboards tracking the spread of the novel coronavirus are now reasonably common, but the first was produced by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering. As Nature Index reports in this behind-the-scenes look at the JHU coronavirus dashboard, the decision to launch was spur of the moment, but now the dashboard and its underlying data get more than a billion hits every single day, and it is now managed by a team that numbers nearly two dozen. [GIS Lounge]

Each weekly lesson in the Cartography. MOOC focuses on the creation of one exemplary map that draws together key cartographic ideas. Lessons consist of about two hours of content, including video discussions, guided and self-guided exercises using ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online, quizzes, interactions between students and instructors, and supplemental resources. Participants who engage with all the course content will receive a certificate of completion and a discount code to purchase Cartography., the book, should they wish to continue their learning.

Registration opens on 18 April and continues until 2 May. It is, as I mentioned, free; Esri expects more than 10,000 people to sign up.

Cartography., the book, is currently scheduled to come out in June.

The Washington Post maps rainfall and flooding levels in the Houston area.

The New York Times is collecting several maps on two web pages. The first page deals with subjects like rainfall, river level, current and historical hurricane tracks, damage reports, and cities and counties under evacuation orders. Maps on the second page look at Harvey’s impact on the Houston area.

Esri’s U.S. Flooding Public Information Map includes precipitation and flood warnings.

#Harvey in perspective. So much rain has fallen, we've had to update the color charts on our graphics in order to effectively map it. pic.twitter.com/Su7x2K1uuz

— National Weather Service (@NWS) August 28, 2017

Kenneth Field critiques the National Weather Service’s decision to add more colours to their precipitation maps (see above). “Simply adding colours to the end of an already poor colour scheme and then making the class representing the largest magnitude the very lightest colour is weak symbology. But then, they’ve already used all the colours of the rainbow so they’re out of options!”

Today Esri is proud to announce that we are making our own global collection of satellite imagery available to the OSM community directly through our existing World Imagery Service. This regularly updated resource provides one meter or better satellite and aerial photography in many parts of the world, 15m TerraColor imagery at small and mid-scales (~1:591M down to ~1:72k), 2.5m SPOT Imagery (~1:288k to ~1:72k), 1 meter or better NAIP in the US and many other curated sources, so we know it will make a welcome addition to OSM’s growing catalog of reference layers.

OSM editors have been able to trace maps from satellite imagery for years; other sources of such imagery have included Bing and Yahoo (back when Yahoo Maps was a thing). Different sources have different strengths, so this can only help the project. (Esri’s imagery makes no difference where I am, but that’s not a surprise.)

Esri’s Solar System Atlas collects maps of all the planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids and comets that have been visited by spacecraft in one location. (At least the ones with solid surfaces.) Now keep in mind that  maps of other objects in the solar system are generally spacecraft imagery stitched together into a mosaic and displayed on a map projection, and this is mostly what is presented here (plus some colourized topographic maps and a few geologic maps). Not many of the maps are labelled, which is a shame: bare imagery isn’t terribly useful. Also, the map tiles load slowly, and zooming out doesn’t always refresh them. But as a concept, I’m all for this. More from Esri’s Matt Artz. [via]

[A]s Google aimed its maps mostly at consumers, Esri was able to hold on to its revenue base among power users in business, government and other organizations. Google is great for directions or locating your home on Zillow. But if you are, say, the Bavarian police charged with securing the G7 Summit near Munich and need a detailed real-time dashboard that can pinpoint every delegation, police officer, emergency vehicle, first responder, protest site, road closure, mountain trail and access point to the summit’s venue, you’ll use Esri. Last year Google pulled the plug on a halfhearted push into enterprise maps and began moving its customers to Esri.

Notable that Esri has stayed private rather than raising capital through the stock market, which in the tech sector is just unbelievable. Its estimated value is $3 billion.