With so much of talk about energy policies on the Presidential campaign trail, I decided to look into the nuclear option that both the candidates support to different degrees. Lo and behold I found a listing of nuclear power plants in Finder!. Now that we have all these nuclear power plants with promises of more to come - what’s next - hmmm, yes, we need to store the highly radioactive spent fuel somewhere.

Senator McCain’s most frequent example that the US Navy uses nuclear powered vessels safely all the time was somewhat debunked by news that emerged from the USS Houston - a globe-trotting nuclear powered submarine, that has been leaking radiation for the past several years. Listening to Senator McCain here on YouTube describe how we will have nuclear waste lying around in a puddle of water in our street corner reminded me of the Simpsons movie where Mr. Burns could roll down nuclear waste in a truck and dump it into the lake just outside Springfield.

Of course the next thing I wanted to check was where we dump the spent nuclear waste. I added this dataset to Finder! with all the spent fuel storage installations.
The map below indicates where these dumping grounds (a.k.a storage installations) are located.  It also shows the locations where nuclear power plants are located from the dataset I found in Finder!

Given the spatial concentration of most of the nuclear power plants as well as the current storage sites on the Eastern seaboard it is intriguing to note that millions of tax payer dollars have been spent into building a mega-storage facility in the Yucca mountain in Nevada. This facility is still not ready - long past its scheduled 1998 opening date. Once it does open, then comes the question of transporting all these highly radioactive wastes across the country. This article points to how Senator McCain says “no” to allow nuclear waste to be transported through Arizona - the state that got him elected, but supports building the Yucca mountain site in Nevada.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Sean mentioned in his blog about how pooling together of efforts by Andrew, Sean, Bill et. al, the Fortifacture/MapuCommons folks were able to bring to you in record time the near-real time pollution data from Beijing. As we were working on this, we realized that there is a huge difference in the perceptions between the host nation and most of the western world/media on what constitutes severe air quality problem. For eg. see below the two pics, both dated 5th August, 2008. One shows Beijing “Clear skies” while the other has haze/smog blanketing Beijing. Wonder whether they are talking about different places and different days!
Xinhua Photo

The photo taken on Aug. 5, 2008 shows the clear sky above the National Stadium, namely the Bird’s Nest, in Beijing, capital of China. (Xinhua Photo/Li Ziheng)

BBC Photo

5 August PM10 reading: 104 micrograms per cubic metre. The World Health Organisation guideline maximum is 50 micrograms per cubic metre, averaged over 24 hours.

Knowing that many countries in Asia, including India and China share the dubious distinction of having the most polluted cities in the world, the media’s obsession with hazy skies should come as no surprise and that much of the media coverage of Beijing Olympics has been about the quality of air. See for example, this split picture of Beijing skyline on a clear and a hazy day on the BBC’sBeijing Pollution: Facts and Figures.

BBC has, for last several weeks, a daily pic of Beijing skyline with a running commentary on the hazy conditions, on their Beijing Pollution Watch site. So we at FortiusOne/Mapufacture decided to generate a daily map of the official stats on PM10 published by Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau (BMEPB) and compare it with BBC’s Beijing Pollution Watch. PM10, the airborne particles consisting of dust from construction,landfill sites, vehicle exhaust, industrial sources etc. of size 10 microns or less, are the main culprit behind the hazy skies /bad air days in Beijing.

The map below is based on the air quality monitors spread across dozens of Beijing districts along with the locationsof Olympic events (red circles). The six slices of each pie-chart show share of PM10 at each location between 5th and 10th Aug, 2008.

th

The second map shows today’s readings of PM10 (purple colored proportional circles) for each of the air quality monitoring stations, along with a pie-chart that has share of the SO2, PM10 and NO2.

For comparison, see BBC’s pic of the same day below.

BBC: 10 August PM10 reading: 278 micrograms per cubic metre. We test for 10 minutes at midday from a seventh floor balcony in central Beijing..

While the official readings in nearly half dozen air quality monitoring stations nearby have readings near 90, it has apparently, not had an adverse effect on the athletes thus far in the games. As BBC offers daily pics of the smog, we will have daily updates on the air quality all through the Olympics. In the mean while you may explore on the Finder! the air quality data (SO2, NO2 and PM10) for the last six days i.e, 5th to 10th August, 2008, the road network, and the “>district polys as well as Olympic Athletic Venues,and Olympic village. Search using keyword “Olympics.” You are welcome to download, add, update and upload these data back to Finder!

Popularity: 20% [?]

The 2008 Summer Olympics are coming to Beijing, China on 8.8.08 and USA athletes are poised to place very well in the international competition. For the past four years athletes have been practicing for the games and now the time has come to represent the USA.

A dataset was created on Finder! that maps the hometowns of all the USA Summer Olympic athletes competing this summer.

“USA 2008 Summer Olympic Athlete Hometowns”

The map above shows points that represent individual athletes and their hometowns in the lower 48 states. From looking at the map you can see that there are a few “Olympic Athlete Hotspots.” Some include: Los Angeles area, San Francisco area, and Philadelphia area. 

You can also use this map to see if any of the athletes are from your own hometown. If any are, you can then cheer for your hometown athletes as they compete in Beijing.

There are also a few other datasets on Finder! that deal with the Olympic games. They include:

“All-Time Medal Count by Country, Global, 1900-2006”

“US Olympic Gold Medals Per State, USA”

“US Olympic Gold Medal Winners – Track and Field – by Hometown, USA”

All these datasets show us a unique way to look at sports data through the use of maps.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Sometimes it seems like there is a Starbucks on every corner, and sometimes it’s true! It looks as if they have finally reached their saturation point and are now closing 616 stores throughout the United States. This Finder! dataset shows the locations of the closures. We also uploaded a dataset that shows the almost 9,000 Starbucks locations around the Globe. With this point data, you can see that many of the locations being closed are very near to other Starbucks locations. Perhaps it makes sense to close stores that would cannibalize your own market however, there are many other ways of looking at the problem. We aggregated the data out to the Zip code and to urban areas. In case you were wondering, here is a sneak peak of the locations most impacted by the closures:

By Zipcode
1. 89108 Las Vegas, NV (5)
2. 63103 St. Louis, MO (4)
3. 77102 Houston, TX (4)
4. 92101 San Diego, CA (3)
5. 63102 St. Louis, MO (3)

By Urban Area
1. Dallas Fort-Worth Arlington (25)
2. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana (22)
3. New York-Newark (22)
4. Chicago (18)
5. Las Vegas (15)

Lastly, we decided to map out some of the Starbucks locations with a competitor to see if perhaps that played a role in the closure decisions. Below is a map from New York to Philadelphia showing Starbucks locations (transparent green dots) and Dunkin Donuts locations (transparent magenta dots). The black dots are Starbucks locations which are on the Closure list.

Popularity: 24% [?]

With the MLB All-Star Game winding up I decided to write about the annual midsummer classic and other All-Star games from other sports organizations. All-Star games are a chance for the world to see the best compete against the best. Since All-Star games represent the best of the best, I decided to map the locations of all the hometowns of every 2008 All-Star in every major sports organization. By doing this I was trying to locate an “athletic hotspot” that all major sports had in common. The four sports organizations I chose were the National Basketball Association (NBA), Major League Baseball (MLB), National Football League (NFL), and the National Hockey League (NHL).

• NBA All-Star Hometowns
• NFL Pro-Bowl Hometowns
• MLB All-Star Hometowns
• NHL All-Star Hometowns

After viewing all the datasets mapped a few conclusions can be made. The first is that there is not really one central location where all-stars from these four major sports organizations grow up. Instead, hotspots are usually more sport specific. For example, Several MLB All-Stars are from the Dominican Republic. There happen to be ten from the Dominican Republic but not a single All-Star from any other sport is from the Dominican Republic. So it is safe to say the Dominican Republic is a hot spot for baseball, but only baseball.

A few trends can be made when looking at All-Stars who grew up in the USA. I have also decided to leave out the NHL in this study due to the fact that only three NHL All-Stars are from the USA. When looking at where NFL, NHL, and NBA All-Stars grew up in the USA, you can see that there are arguably a few hot spots. The state of California is one. Roughly 13% of All-Stars come from the state in the three sports. You can also see that when looking at strongest regions in the country the South is clearly the strongest. When you look at the amount of All-Stars who grew up in a southern state (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, TX, VA) you see that roughly 41% of all All-Stars come from one of these southern states. This is interesting when these states only make up 24% of all the states in the USA. One last conclusion is the lack of All-Stars from certain regions in the USA. Weak spots include; New England States, Midwest, Mountain States.

The reasons for All-Stars coming out of certain areas are hard to find. It is possible that the nice year round weather of the Southern USA and California allow athletes to train outdoors for longer periods of time. It could also be that an active sports culture is much more prominent in certain regions. Or perhaps the reason is simply that there is just something in the water.

Popularity: 13% [?]