I’m about to head home for Christmas and I’m flying out of DCA in Washington, DC. I love this airport because its close by and easy to get to by Metro. Since I am currently without a four-wheeled means of transport, the Metro is my friend, as is Reagan National Airport. I’m flying home to Cleveland, OH and have been checking the Federal Aviation Administration’s website to see if there are delays out of DCA and my connecting airport in Philadelphia. With the recent snow storm on the east coast there were some travel advisories and many holiday travelers experienced the awful mess that snow can produce when flying home this time of year. I decided to upload the most recent flight delay information by US Airport into Finder! and embed the map in my blog so you could check if your airport is experiencing delays. Since the snow has stopped it appears as though most airports are functioning at normal levels again, but it’s always wise to double check, especially if you are flying into Chicago or another midwest airport that typically gets nailed with a lot of bad weather around Christmas.

Happy Holidays and Safe Travels to Everyone!

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Popularity: 9% [?]

This summer, the FIFA Soccer World Cup will take place for the first time in an African country, South Africa. The Final Draw, the decider of which teams will be grouped together took place on December 4th. For many, this highly anticipated event officially kicks off the World Cup season. I am admittedly not much of a sports fan except for every four years when the geographer and traveler in me goes absolutely mad for the FIFA World Cup. Like many, I watch every game and savor the country to country battles over domination of their group and depending on where the games are taking place stay up late or wake up early to watch the elimination matches (remember 2002 in South Korea/Japan). The Would Cup statistics are perfect for making maps in Maker!. I have uploaded a bunch of different dataset in Finder! and have created some cool maps on World Cup 2010 as well as world cups of the past. This first map shows the world team rankings by points along with the groups chosen on December 4th. Each group contains one of the top rated teams. The other 3 teams in each group are randomly chosen but are kept as geographically separated as possible. Spain, also the European Cup champion, is #1 followed by Brazil and the Netherlands. Click on the map to see it in Maker! Although the next Women’s World Cup is not until 2011, I included a map of the women’s world team rankings by points. The USA is currently the #1 team followed by Germany and Brazil

Click on the map to see it in Maker!

As I mentioned, 2010 will be the first time the World Cup is hosted in an African Country. This next map shows the locations of past World Cups.

Click on the map to see it in Maker!

There have been 18 World Cup Games since 1930. From those games only six countries can call themselves the winners, with Brazil winning five times and Italy winning four including the most recent. Also, of the 193 countries that compete for FIFA only 75 countries have ever had the chance of playing in a Men’s World Cup Game. This next map shows the countries by the number of appearances made in a world cup game. The dots show the countries who have won by the number of wins.

Click on the map to see it in Maker!

Attending the games this summer in South Africa would be a once in a lifetime opportunity. If you are planing a trip for the games, knowing where the stadiums are located could be helpful in deciding on hotels and other details of your trip. This last map shows the locations of the World Cup 2010 stadiums in South Africa by their capacity.

Click on the map to see it in Maker! Enjoy the Maps…and the Games!! 176 days 16 hours 54 minutes and …..44 seconds to go! GOOOOAL!

Popularity: 11% [?]

A few weeks ago I did a blog on the country’s foreclosure rates. For that blog I made maps that showed those rates at the state level based on our regularly updated datasets from RealtyTrac in Finder!. Recently, we have added a dataset from HUD that estimates foreclosure rates at the county level. Unfortunately the data are from June of 2008 but it still paints a good picture of the spatial pattern of the housing crisis. In the previous blog I compared STATE foreclosure rates with COUNTY unemployment rates; which is like comparing apples and oranges. I wanted to go back and compare the two indicators at the same geographic level.

This first map shows the June 2008 Estimated Foreclosure Rates by county.

The second map shows June 2008 Unemployment Rates by county I wanted to classify the data for these maps using the equal interval option. That way, the extreme highs are more evident even though variety among the lower rates are not. The darker colors on each map show where the highest rates are. Lastly, I ran a correlation of the two using Maker!’s Correlation Tool to see if there was a clear relationship. The results show little relationship. See the graph below to better understand the results. While most of the counties (each county is represented by a dot on the graph) do fall within a certain range of the slope (the black line in the graph), there are some interesting outliers. The map created by Maker! to display the correlation results shows us where those outliers are. Alaska seems to contain the counties in orange that have extremely high unemployment rates with very low foreclosure rates. Meanwhile, the midwest seems to contain many of the counties in dark blue with high foreclosure rates and lower unemployment. Just because the correlation score is low does not mean that unemployment and foreclosures are not linked. Obviously, if a person loses their job and can no longer pay their mortgage, they may loose their home. However many people who loose their jobs do not own a home and would not effect the foreclosure rate. Further the housing crisis during 2008, when the data are from, was more a result of bad loans than an increase in unemployment. Its isnt until later that the bad economy would cause major job losses and therefore increase the foreclosure rates. Further, many people lost their homes not because they lost their jobs but because their mortgage payments were simply to big. This is especially true for the balloon morgages which increased dramatically over time. Also, there are many local factors that are unaccounted for effecting both unemployment and foreclosure rates in each county. Nonetheless, the pattern seen in the correlation graph is interesting and perhaps worth further investigation. I hope these maps were interesting. Please dig into this foreclosure dataset and perhaps even run your own correlation!

Popularity: 10% [?]

Thanksgiving is a time for giving thanks and for many it is also a time for giving. I thought I would show how GeoCommons can be used to promote giving back this holiday. One way many individuals and families give during Thanksgiving is by donating to or volunteering at a local food bank’s Thanksgiving feast. This year, these feasts are particularly important with so many suffering from the economic crisis.

Feeding America is a network of individuals, local food banks, national offices, and corporate and government partners who work together to try to solve America’s hunger crisis. With 205 food banks across the country, they were a good resource to put together a quick dataset and map. Below is a map showing all of the Feeding America food banks by the number of pounds of food distributed annually. The map can be used to find a food bank near you. Click on the map to see the interactive version in Maker! By clicking on the icon, you access all of the information on that food bank including the services it offers and its website. You can find out detailes on how to help for thanksgiving by calling or on the food bank’s website. Their website also has a neat map of their own which provides hunger and poverty statistics for each state.

Popularity: 10% [?]