Maps and mapping: then and now.

Geographical discoveries, finding the shortest route to the supermarket, navigating through traffic jams, heat maps of a tornado intensity, mining, military attacks  - all of that is barely possible without maps.

When I was little, maps were used instead of tapestry in my parents and grandparents homes - from modern political and geographical maps to the the map of ancient Russia with its trade trails and neighboring folks. It is hard to believe, how limited out ability to precisely document geographical locations was until recent. For instance, a book with historical maps of Switzerland that one of my friends owns, starts with an upside-down map (the north-south direction is inverted) where distances correspond to some severely skewed metric. The first adequate map of the country was made by a (bored?) Swiss army soldier quite late in the country's history.

Today, on the contrary, through a digital device anyone has access to abundant spatial information. The GPS (Global Positioning System) assigns precise coordinates to any point on Earth. This allows us to store raster images coming from satellites, air-borne devices, infra-red cameras and, lately, drones to later retrieve the data.

A funny fact is that for many people a map has become a synonym of the google maps product. Furthermore, with a bit understanding of HTML and JavaScript (can be substituted with the accurate copy-paste ability) such a map can be incorporated in any webpage. Technical details follow in the next post.

Due to advances of modern technology we don't even notice how we start co-creating maps by feeding bits of our private information into geographical information systems. We overlay our pictures, trajectories, life events. And so we moved from the static world of paper based maps to the dynamic world of synergetical co-mapping.

Another personal remark: maps and mapping is not just something that I find entertaining, but it is interweaved with  my PhD project. Isn't it a great application of the spatial science: risk mapping of infectious diseases? It constitutes an immanent part of the understanding of the phenomena. During a pandemic such as, for instance, the ongoing spread of the Zika virus, the first question to be addressed is 'Where?'. Followed by 'How many?' and 'What is next?'. 

Therefore, not unexpectedly, once this blog was called to life, I felt an urge of amending it with a map. Right at the top. And geo-tag along with the blogging process the places I am writing about.

If you own a webpage that needs a google map to be incorporated, you may find the next post useful. And if you don't, let me know which information is missing.

To wrap-up, here is another map in case you are curious about history: BBC: World War, Western Front.