Mapping the Afghan War Diary

Jan 242013
 

The Afghan War Diary, made avail­able by the Wik­ileaks group, is the dis­clo­sure of inter­nal US Mil­i­tary logs. Wik­ileaks has been known to release data that con­tains lat­i­tu­di­nal and lon­gi­tu­di­nal infor­ma­tion use­ful for spa­tial analy­sis. I’ve taken the lib­erty to map the some-76,000 mil­i­tary logs.

The mil­i­tary logs are a col­lec­tion of top secret clas­si­fied cor­re­spon­dences that detail var­i­ous mil­i­tary encoun­ters and sit­u­a­tional reports. Some of the most pop­u­lar head­ings in the log are: ene­mies killed/wounded in action, friend­lies killed/wounded in action and report­ing unit (squad/other).

Con­tinue reading »

Free and Open GIS data resources

Sep 192011
 

Open, free and pub­lic. Three terms, which when appear­ing before the word “GIS” make geo­g­ra­phers feel all warm and fuzzy (I think?). Geospa­tial data can be very costly, but free alter­na­tives may be suit­able, if not as use­ful, as their expen­sive coun­ter­parts. There­fore, its worth­while know­ing what data is avail­able for pub­lic con­sump­tion. I have com­piled a list of the open GIS data resources that I fre­quently make use of in my per­sonal projects. Hope­fully they become as use­ful to you, as they are to me. Con­tinue reading »

Exploring Germany through Cartograms

Aug 282011
 

My inten­tions for this blog are to spur intel­li­gent and thought pro­vok­ing dis­cus­sions and to pro­vide some insight and/or help to those who may want to delve into var­i­ous spa­tial analy­ses and car­to­graphic trends/methodologies. Car­tograms are def­i­nitely one of the most trend­ing top­ics in dis­cus­sions on how to alter­na­tively geo­vi­su­al­ize spa­tial phe­nom­ena. The idea roots back more than half a decade and has evolved from a ‘pen­cil and graph paper’ skill to a geo­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion sys­tem (GIS) tool{box}. We can add… Con­tinue reading »