Over 500 complaints of sexual onslaught bring forthwith been reported to the constabulary inward Cologne, all occurring during the city's New Year's Eve celebrations. This shocking release of attacks, the vast bulk carried out yesteryear immigrants of Algerian, Tunisian in addition to Moroccan origin, has caused a backlash against Angela Merkel's 'Open Door' policy on refugees (although alone 3 of the 58 men arrested in addition to thus far were truly refugees).
Die Welt has forthwith released a CartoDB map visualizing the sexual assaults in addition to other crimes which took house inward Cologne on New Year's Eve. Übergriffen von Köln uses CartoDB's Torque library to animate through the kind out of the evening, showing where the sexual assaults in addition to other crimes took house inward the city.
The animated map provides a basic temporal thought of the data. However the dots (representing the attacks) flash yesteryear truly rapidly on the map. This speed, coupled alongside the fact that the map offers no way to thought all the attacks at 1 time on the map agency that the map for sure doesn't render a clear spatial overview of where the attacks inward Cologne took place. You mightiness recollect that a spatial visualization was the indicate of using a map to visualize the information inward the commencement place.
The effect is that Die Welt's map of flashing dots seems to both sensationalize in addition to trivialize the sexual attacks at the same time. CartoDB's Torque library has come upward inward for a fair sum of criticism for what Andrew Hill dubbed burger cartography. This is a shame because the Torque library is such a powerful tool for adding a temporal analysis to fourth dimension stamped spatial data. Perhaps CartoDB should practice a few to a greater extent than Torque powered maps themselves to truly exhibit how a temporal analysis of spatial information tin last done good alongside the library.
In defence of Die Welt the article which accompanies the map does render a much amend analysis of both the times in addition to the locations of where the bulk of the attacks took house inward the city. It's merely a shame that a fiddling to a greater extent than analysis of the information wasn't introduce inward their mapped visualization.
