The Novel Year's Even Out Attacks Inward Cologne
Over 500 complaints of sexual ready on convey immediately been reported to the constabulary inwards Cologne, all occurring during the city's New Year's Eve celebrations. This shocking give away of attacks, the vast bulk carried out past times immigrants of Algerian, Tunisian together with Moroccan origin, has caused a backlash against Angela Merkel's 'Open Door' policy on refugees (although entirely 3 of the 58 men arrested together with thus far were genuinely refugees).
Die Welt has immediately released a CartoDB map visualizing the sexual assaults together with other crimes which took house inwards Cologne on New Year's Eve. Übergriffen von Köln uses CartoDB's Torque library to animate through the degree of the evening, showing where the sexual assaults together with other crimes took house inwards the city.
The animated map provides a basic temporal sentiment of the data. However the dots (representing the attacks) flash past times genuinely chop-chop on the map. This speed, coupled alongside the fact that the map offers no way to sentiment all the attacks at ane time on the map agency that the map sure enough doesn't furnish a clear spatial overview of where the attacks inwards Cologne took place. You mightiness recollect that a spatial visualization was the signal of using a map to visualize the information inwards the commencement place.
The effect is that Die Welt's map of flashing dots seems to both sensationalize together with trivialize the sexual attacks at the same time. CartoDB's Torque library has come upward inwards for a fair total 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 genuinely exhibit how a temporal analysis of spatial information tin travel done good alongside the library.
In defense forcefulness of Die Welt the article which accompanies the map does furnish a much amend analysis of both the times together with the locations of where the bulk of the attacks took house inwards the city. It's simply a shame that a footling to a greater extent than analysis of the information wasn't introduce inwards their mapped visualization.