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An Exploratory Cartographic Visualisation of London through the Google Maps API

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Abstract

This paper begins by reviewing the ways in which the innovation of Google Maps has transformed our ability to reference and view geographically referenced data. We describe the ways in which the GMap Creator tool developed under the ESRC National Centre for e Social Science (NCeSS) programme enables users to ‘mashup’ thematic choropleth maps using the Google API. We illustrate the application of GMap Creator using the example of www.londonprofiler.org, which presents a repository of choropleth maps across a range of domains including health, education and other socioeconomic datasets against a backcloth of Google Maps data. Our conclusions address the ways in which Google Map mashups developed using GMap Creator facilitate online exploratory cartographic visualisation in a range of areas of policy concern.

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Notes

  1. GMap Creator is part of the GeoVUE Project at CASA, a project sponsored by the ESRC as a node in the National Centre for e-Social Science. GMap Creator is developed at CASA by Richard Milton.

  2. Percent volume contours were calculated with a free ArcGIS extension called Hawth’s Analysis Tools developed by Hawthorne Beyer and downloadable from the website http://www.spatialecology.com.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University College London, Pearson Building, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6B, UK

    Maurizio Gibin, Alex Singleton, Richard Milton, Pablo Mateos & Paul Longley

  2. Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London, Pearson Building, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6B, UK

    Maurizio Gibin, Alex Singleton, Richard Milton & Paul Longley

Authors
  1. Maurizio Gibin
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  2. Alex Singleton
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  3. Richard Milton
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  4. Pablo Mateos
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  5. Paul Longley
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Correspondence to Alex Singleton.

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Gibin, M., Singleton, A., Milton, R. et al. An Exploratory Cartographic Visualisation of London through the Google Maps API. Appl. Spatial Analysis 1, 85–97 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12061-008-9005-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12061-008-9005-5

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