Heat Maps on Google Maps with GeoIQ
Posted: October 17th, 2006 | 4 Comments »FortiusOne is about to release (with an API trial key) their GeoIQ API that works on top of the Google Maps API. GeoIQ should provide the geographic analysis facilities that Google Maps lacks. Their first idea has been to integrate their heat mapping API. In their blog, they provide an example of heat maps of traffic congestion based on the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
A comparison of the concentration of traffic delay in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The GeoIQ API creates a heat map based on an index that measures the amount of traffic delay on the roads and how closely that road delay is located to other delayed roads.
Update: the beta of GeoIQ is now available.
Relation to my thesis: “Democratization” of geographic analysis methods?
Very interesting blogpost which connected some idea fragments swirling around in my head. I have done a post http://ic-pod.typepad.com/design_at_the_edge/ on “Linking bits of knowledge-Creative Hotspots-Barcelona-@22 project”. It struck me that we have an almost instant feedback possibility to help steer the emergent behaviour of creative district initiatives across the globe!
[...] I found this approach extremely interesting. We can learn so many things from these social platforms like Flickr or del.icio.us, etc. We are just exploring the tip of the iceberg. For instance, I remember another post by Fabien on heatmaps on Google Maps. In the example the authors provided an heatmap of the traffic congestion. The same technique can be used for instance to see which tiles are downloaded more frequently from GMaps or Microsoft Live. These information can have a tremendous value for Urban Planners, but I still have to find a good example of how such information has been set into practice and solution. [...]
We also offer a no-programming required heatmap service diffent.com/heatmap
If you like you can also program it via JavaScript or PHP (examples provided) or any
code that can do an HTTP POST of variables to the site.
If you are interested in free heat maps (as seen on image above), give a try to http://en.tixik.com/tools/heatmaps where you can generate it for free in 5 minutes. And, without any need of a new server .)