Doing Business ~ Global Ease Rankings Map...

Visual Capitalist helps us understand which countries support entrepreneurship and business and which do not, much to the suffering of their peoples...

EARTH ~ All of Humanity on One Chart...

Visual Capitalist helps us visualize where people live? Roughly 1/5 in each of Eurasian-Americas, Africa, Rest-of-Asia, Tjina, and Hindia.  Or on EARTH for short...

Earth Temperature Anime ~ 150 Years Visual...

Interesting anime of Earth's surface annual average temperature distribution...

Tectonics in the Tropics ~ Ice Age Triggers!

Jennifer Chu of MIT News spotlights recent research indicating that Tectonics in the Tropics Trigger Earth’s Ice Ages...

"Over the last 540 million years, the Earth has weathered three major ice ages [each] preceded by tropical “arc-continent collisions” -- tectonic pileups that occurred near the Earth’s equator -- in which oceanic plates rode up over continental plates, exposing tens of thousands of kilometers of oceanic rock to a tropical environment.  [The] heat and humidity of the tropics likely triggered a chemical reaction between […] the rocks’ calcium and magnesium […] pulling the [CO2] out of the atmosphere and permanently sequestering it in the form of carbonates such as limestone [cooling] temperatures globally and ultimately [setting] off an ice age."

US Employment ~ Visualizing Changes over Time

Visual Capitalist shares US Employment History and changes afoot...

LA Timelapse Map ~ Infra, Nets, Pop, Econ, etc!

The Getty Research Institute shares timelapse maps of Los Angeles Instrastructure, Networks, Settlements, Population, Economy, and Conflicts!

Human Life Indicator (HLI) ~ Alt-Index to HDI...

WEForum shares the Human Life Indicator (HLI) proposed by Sergei Scherbov, Simone Ghislandi, and Warren Sanderson as an alternative measure of development solving several problems of the Human Development Index (HDI)...

"The HDI is like a country’s report card. In a single number, it tells policymakers and citizens how well a country is doing. The HDI has been wildly successful in changing the way people think about the development process. However, it still suffers from real flaws. First, it implicitly assumes trade-offs between its components. The HDI also struggles with the accuracy and meaningfulness of the underlying data. Finally, data on different domains may be highly correlated. The HLI looks at life expectancy at birth, but also takes the inequality in longevity into account. If two countries had the same life expectancy, the country with the higher rate of infant and child deaths would have a lower HLI."

Manhattan's Densities ~ Rise & Fall 1800-2010

Nice timelapse animation of Manhattan's Densities changing over two centuries based on data collected by Shlomo Angel and Patrick Lamson-Hall of the NYU Stern Urbanization Project!

World Economy 2017 ~ Visualizing Global GDP...

WEF spotlights Visual Capitalist infographic visualizing global GDP...

Technology Adoption ~ Percent in US vs Time...

Visual Capitalist shares The Rising Speed of Technological Adoption from Our World in Data...

Pyrotechnic Injuries ~ All Are Free to Be Stupid...

Vox spotlights research from the Journal of Surgical Research which reveals The people going to the hospital for fireworks injuries are exactly who you think...

"You’ll never guess when these hospitalizations spike. Here are all the hospitalizations from 2006 to 2010 sorted by month..."

"Teenage boys and young men hurt themselves with fireworks way more than everyone else. Men and boys, overall, accounted for 76 percent of all fireworks-related hospital admissions in the study..."

Global Exports ~ Physical Stuff Sold Internationally

HowMuch maps the Global Export Economy in One Map... 

"We got our numbers from the World Trade Organization [...] The WTO tracks the total value of physical goods each country sends across its borders. Remember, these numbers exclude services -- we are only focused on physical items. To create our map, we changed the size of the country depending on the value of exports, and we likewise added a shade of blue for easy reference. This approach highlights the outliers and identifies several key trends."

Minorities & Health ~ Nordenstedt on Metrics

Professor Helena Nordenstedt gives TEDxKTH talk with help of Gapminder visuals on Minorities & Global Health, a framework for better understanding how health and economics go together...

Earth's Ocean ~ Driver of Weather & Climate...

Global Urban Footprint ~ Hi-Rez Auto-mapping...

TR spots Global Urban Footprint Revealed in Unprecedented Resolution...

"What’s needed is a way of mapping urban areas from space at high resolution and in a way that is unaffected by cloud cover and without the ambiguities that traditional imaging introduces. [Now revealed is] a global map of urbanization that meets all these requirements. The result is a data set of the entire planet at a resolution of 12 meters that maps the global urban footprint with unprecedented accuracy and resolution. [...] Esch and co have created a global database of built-up areas based on synthetic aperture radar images from an Earth-orbiting mission called TanDEM-X. This consists of a pair of spacecraft that have been orbiting Earth in close formation -- just a few hundred meters apart -- since 2007. These spacecraft take radar images of the ground from slightly different angles, allowing researchers to create a 3-D map of the planet. In total, Esch and co have processed 470,000 pairs of images to create their map of the entire planet."

Bird Migration ~ Seasonal Flight in Americas!

Audubon spotlights a full season of bird migrations visualized!

"A new animation from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology tracks 118 species along their journeys across the Americas."

River Flows ~ Mississippi Watershed Anime

earth ~ Global Map of Wind Weather Ocean

earth ~ a global map of wind, weather, and ocean conditions!

"A visualization of global weather conditions forecast by supercomputers updated every three hours. Ocean surface current estimates updated every five days. Ocean surface temperatures and anomaly from daily average (1981-2011) updated daily. Ocean waves updated every three hours."

Ventusky ~ Remapping Wind Rain and Temps!

Lovely new Ventusky mapping of wind, rain, and temperature!

"Developed for you at our company, InMeteo [...] a Czech meteorological company based in Pilsen. At our company, we focus on weather prediction and meteorological data visualisation. [...] The name itself, Ventusky, is a combination of two words. The first is the Latin word, Ventus, means wind, and the second is the English word, Sky. The Ventusky application is freely accessible to anyone around the world, aimed at improving awareness about meteorological events in our atmosphere. Images from the application can be redistributed and thus help us achieve our goal."

Fall 2016 @ MIT ~ Ventures, Places, Futures!

I'm co-teaching a very cool folio of MIT class offerings this Fall 2016 and hope you'll either consider joining us or spreading the word about particularly relevant offerings to great students and colleagues who you think might appreciate them! These cluster into three big categories: Transformational Ventures, Creative Places, and Emergent Futures. Details below & online...  

• Development Ventures ~ Thu 10a-12n E14-633 ~ 15.375/EC.731/MAS.665 ~ http://developmentventures.org ~ Towards the entrepreneurial deployment of emerging market innovations solving problems faced by at least a Billion people worldwide in developing countries and underserved communities. First class: Thu 9/8  
• Revolutionary Ventures ~ Thu 2-4p E15-341 ~ 9.455/15.128/20.454/MAS.883 ~ http://revolutionaryventures.org ~ Exploring personal entrepreneurial strategies and envisioning and building transformative ideas and organizations to initiate and/or accelerate bold engineering revolutions. Email reven@media.mit.edu ASAP if interested. First class: Thu 9/8  
• Future Commerce (H1) ~ Tue 1-2:30p E14-633 ~ MAS.s71/15.s73 ~ http://mitfuturecommerce.org ~ New Media meets Markets & Finance. First class: Tue 9/13 (Half Semester offering)  
• Future Health (H2) ~ Tue 1-2:30p E14-633 ~ MAS.s72/15.s74 ~ http://mitfuturehealth.org ~ New Media meets Medicine & Wellness. First class: Tue 11/1 (Second Half of semester)  
• Understanding MIT ~ Tue 4-6p 9-450A ~ 11.s941 ~ http://understandingmit.org ~ Special seminar on the challenges of designing and building research universities and crafting conditions for a supportive, vibrant, and entrepreneurial learning community. First class: Tue 9/13  
• Model Cities ~ Wed 2-5p E15-359 ~ MAS.552/4.557 ~ http://mitmodelcities.org ~ Simulating & Visualizing Entrepreneurial, Innovative, & Creative Urban Hotspots. First class: Wed 9/7  
• SciFab 2050 ~ Tue 7-9p E15-359 ~ MAS.s60 ~ http://scifab2050.org/ ~ An informal seminar using Science Fiction, extrapolation, simulation, and imagination to envision what our world might be like in 2050. Email jpbonsen@alum.mit.edu if interested. First session: Tue 9/13