I love Esri’s Story Maps. They provide a concise and clear way to visualize data. Like GIS, Story Maps are also a great form of storytelling. As your agency continues to produce volumes of data, you are challenged like never before to learn the best ways to extract meaning and value from information. That’s why I wanted to take a moment to share 5 of my favorite Story Maps.
Before we dive into the 5 Story Maps, here is a bit of context on what makes a Story Map. The Story Maps website (http://storymaps.esri.com/home/) says “[Story Maps] combine intelligent web maps with web applications and templates that incorporate text, multimedia, and interactive functions. Story maps inform, educate, entertain, and inspire people about a wide variety of topics.” With Story Maps, anyone can build, create, or modify a map to tell a compelling story. Below I have listed 5 of my favorite Story Maps.
I love National Parks, and this Story Map is one of my favorites. The map allows you to tour America’s national parks and view images through a live webcam.
Are you a history buff? Enjoy making a comparative analysis? This is a cool map to help you compare and contrast life in 1812 and 2013. The map says:
Within the spyglass is a world map drawn in the Mercator projection and published in 1812 by John Pinkerton. The map was engraved on two sheets and colored by hand. It was part of a “modern atlas, from the latest and best authorities, exhibiting the various divisions of the world, with its chief empires, kingdoms and states”. Zoom in to view detail including explorers’ routes. Lack of detail in Africa and Australia reflects the poor state of knowledge by Europeans of the time. The modern map was jointly produced by National Geographic and Esri; this version exists only in digital form. The 1812 map is from the collection of David Rumsey.
Which Cities Could Be Most Impacted by the Shutdown?
This map came out right around the time we were all preparing for the shutdown. It’s a helpful map to show the impact that the shutdown had, and spots outside of the beltway that were impacted. This map uses data from the Trulia website to show the top 10 metropolitan areas impacted by the shutdown.
Pro Football Hall of Fame Inductees
I love football (currently a disgruntled Giants fan), and this was an interesting map to see where grid-iron legends came from, and who knows, maybe one of them is your hometown hero.
Fifty Most Populous Refugee Camps
This is one extremely powerful map, as it shows the refugee camps administered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. These camps house nearly two million people.
Story Maps are fascinating ways to tell a story and to turn data into insights. Have you used data within your agency?
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When Esri was founded in 1969, it realized even then that geographic information system (GIS) technology could make a difference in society. GIS helps people to solve problems at local, regional, national, and global scales. Access maps and apps at ArcGIS.com. Be sure to check out all the GIS resources produced by Esri and GovLoop. |
These look really cool…can anyone create these? For free? Do you need an ESRI account of some type. Looking at their web site it appears that you just download and host the content on your own web site, but it’s unclear to me about needing some credentials for publish the storymap?
Cool stuff though…Sandy