alifeee

maps

I like maps, geojson, and data. As such, I end up making a lot of custom maps.

Here are some of those :)

Table of Contents

Making Data Open

Personal maps

Sheffield Stink Pipes (geojson) #

source / map

I like stink pipes. This is a map of the 21 Grade II listed stink pipes in Sheffield.

The source also has generic instructions for making a geojson file from any list of data from Historic England (i.e., any collection of listed structures).

screenshot of a map of Sheffield, with a few pins visible

Mountain Bothies (geojson) #

source / map 1 (geojson.io) / map 2 (my server) / map 3 (the MBA)

I made this because I wanted to choose a bothie to visit that had good pedestrian access, and that I could plan a route to, and the bothie map on MBA's (Mountain Bothies Association) website uses a map overlay of OS maps, which uses the "Standard" map type, which doesn't show common footpaths, bridleways, etc.

So, my solution (as you see in source above) was to scrape the bothie locations, and create my own map, which I could then overlay onto Bing Maps, which (for some reason) includes a premium OS Maps layer for free.

In the end (and mainly because of train timetables) we went to Abyssinia.

screenshot of a map of the UK, with lots of labelled pins visible

UK & Ireland Service Stations (geojson, gpx, kml) #

source / map 1 (geojson.io) / map 2 (Google Maps)

This is a map of all the service stations I found on https://motorwayservices.uk/ and https://motorwayservices.ie/. Their map (to my knowledge) does not show all of the services, so I made my own. There is a nice flow of commands in the source of how I made the file.

It comes in very handy for hitchhiking.

screenshot of a map of the UK, with lots of labelled pins visible

Sheffield HMO (Houses in Multiple Occupation) Licences (geojson, gpx, kml) #

source / map 1 (geojson.io) / map 2 (Google Maps)

Sheffield City Council publishes data on House in Multiple Occupation Licenses (HMO Licences) in its district on https://www.sheffield.gov.uk/housing/houses-in-multiple-occupation.

They only post an excel file, and refused to consider posting a CSV. They also said that historical data is not available, and they delete the file every time they upload a new one. Hey-ho.

Anyway, I downloaded it, geocoded the addresses from street names and postcodes into latitude/longitude coordinates, and created some data files, so one could view the data nicely on a map. It also has the bonus of being colour coded by "Permitted Occupants". Apparently some houses are allowed to house 93 occupants. Crazy.

screenshot of a map of Sheffield, with lots of labelled pins visible of differend colours

River Walks (geojson) #

Sheffield has 5 rivers, which makes it ideal for river walking. I found the IDs of the rivers on OSM (Open Street Map) and created a query for Overpass Turbo, which is a tool to visualise OSM queries.

River OSM relation
River Sheaf 11890887
Porter Brook OSM relation
River Rivelin OSM relation
River Loxley OSM relation
River Don OSM relation

Combined

To find good-looking spots for a river walk, I combined Sheffield's four smaller rivers into one map using Overpass Turbo.

Sheaf/Porter/Rivelin/Loxley combined using Overpass Turbo

Sewage

In a river in a city, you should probably be aware that there are many storm overflow drains which dump untreated or treated sewage into the rivers. They should only operate in times of high rainfall, and I believe their use is declining.

Yorkshire Water's Storm Overflow Map / The Rivers Trust's sewage map / The Rivers Trust's article on sewage in our rivers

my river walks

I enjoy a river walk. Here are some maps of some that I've done

River Sheaf / geojson / map

River Rivelin / geojson / map

combined / geojson / map

screenshot of a map of part of Sheffield, with a black line visible following a river

Scotland Trip (gpx) #

source / map

I went on a road trip through Scotland, and kept track of our stopping points. I exported several GPX files of the routes between the points, and used Python to make them into an SVG.

screenshot of a trace around several labelled cities

Bike to Cambridge (gpx) #

source / blog post

I biked from Birmingham to Cambridge and made a lot of maps of the journey. You'll find a lot more information in the blog post.

screenshot of a map trace from Birmingham to Cambridge