Visualising Geographic Data - Population by Lights

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Visualising geographic information above and beyond the normal export from your favorite GIS package is often left as a mere after thought. We are just starting to look into using Adobe After Effects to liven up a slightly dry dataset - UK Population represented as a point per 200 people.

Its early days and we were unsure to publish this one or not but that's what a blog is all about so below is our first go at After Effects using lights to get across a picture of Britain's population:


Visualising Data: UK Population One Light per 200 People from digitalurban on Vimeo.

Add in some camera tracking, smooth out the moment, provide some labels beyond the standard iMovie fare and we might be onto something... (?) - The movie is best viewed fullscreen.

The slightly misjudged music is by a rather good unsigned band - Lemonade Joe.

Britain from Above: BBC 1 Sunday a New Geographic Information Rich view of the Nation

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Britain from Above is 'An epic journey revealing the secrets, patterns and hidden rhythms of our lives from a striking new perspective. Britain looks very different from the skies. From a bird's eye view of the nation, its workings, cities, landscapes and peoples are revealed and re-discovered in new and extraordinary ways. The series uses cutting edge technology allows you to see through cloud cover, navigate the landscape and witness familiar sights as never seen before.

The trailer is embedded below:

The Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (home of digital urban) assisted in organising and refining vast hordes of information such as the 2001 Census, the intricate network of railways and even the GPS traces of 400 London taxis.

It was really interesting to see the data we collated used in the film, its a 'not to be missed' show, August 10 on BBC One at 9pm and BBC Two at 10pm.