Sunday, January 22, 2012

Google Maps of the Week


The German courts recently decided that Berlin Airport can operate flights between 5 am and midnight. Residents who live close to the airport say that this gives them just a 5 hour window in which it is possible to sleep.

German newspaper Taz this week created a very useful visualisation of air pollution caused by aircraft at Berlin Airport. Fluglärm-Karte BBI-Airport Berlin shows the number of decibels along the flight paths to and from the airport and in the immediate vicinity.


Google Maps that show the current weather and short-term forecasts are always useful. Combine the weather with real-time geo-tagged Tweets about the weather and you get a very interesting application.

Wettervolke is a nice Google Maps based application to view the current weather and local Twitter messages about the weather.

The current weather conditions are displayed on a Google Map using the standard weather map symbols. The current temperature is also displayed directly on the map. As well as the current weather conditions it is possible to view a forecast for the rest of the day and for tomorrow's weather.


WorldMap is a new open source mapping platform from Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis. One feature that makes WorldMap very useful is the thousands of data layers that the service provides. Users of WorldMap can also easily import and display their own data layers on a map.

WorldMap has already created over 700 mapping layers and users have created more than 500 maps. Therefore, as well as creating their own maps, users can search and view maps from the hundreds of maps already created.

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