If you collect a lot of geographic data for research, or if you like poking around census files or other databases full of stats, you’ve got a new tool for visualizing that data in a 3D, dynamic map. Uber has released Kepler.gl, an open source mapping software with an easy interface for uploading sorted data.
Kepler.gl is built on mapping platform Mapbox, whose tools we’ve covered before. Mapbox explains what they’ve built and what you can do with it, and Fast Company shows some of the best implementations of the technology.
We find this kind of visualization more useful than numbers and charts for learning geographic information. For example, you can see commute patterns in England or New York City neighborhood populations in 3d, which give you a better sense of geography than a list of numbers. You can find more maps and visualizations on the #keplergl Twitter tag.