Shipping Lanes Across the Globe

This interactive map shows how our "stuff" gets moved around the world by shipping containers. It may take a few seconds longer to load on a mobile device due to the complexity of the map. Be sure to check out the build up of ships at the Panama Canal, Suez Canal, Gibraltar, Singapore, and Malaysia. These trade routes are critical to global commerce and makes you think about what would happen if one was threatened or closed off. I blogged about a situation like this last year with the build up of ice on the Great Lakes of the United States. US and Canadian vessels had to clear lanes so that container ships could continue on with their goods.

Source: Kiln and the UCL Energy Institute (UCL EI)
Link: Ship Map

Building a Routing or Road Network from a Road Layer

Do you know where this is?

I route school buses using GIS for a school district in Utah. Over the last year I have been using public road data as a source for our routing network. The process of converting the road layer to a routing network took a couple weeks but has saved us from buying the data privately. Public data isn't perfect and I have had to fix numerous errors but I have sent those fixes to the source (AGRC) which will build a more accurate dataset for everyone. I wrote step by step instructions on how to create a routing or road network from AGRC road centerline data and it was recently published on a blog post on their website. If you have any questions please let me know!



Source: AGRC
Links: AGRC Blog Post, Instructions (PDF)