Maps and Mappers of the 2017 GeoHipster Calendar: Ralph Straumann

Ralph Straumann – June

Tell us about yourself.

I’m a consultant, data analyst, and researcher with EBP in Switzerland and the Oxford Internet Institute in the UK. My background is in geography, with a PhD in geoinformation science from the University of Zurich. Besides GIS I studied remote sensing, cartography, and political science. In my work for EBP I assist clients with data analysis tasks, do strategy and organizational consulting, and build tools, geodata infrastructures, and workflows. In my free time I occasionally blog about GIS, data, and visualization.

Tell us the story behind your map (what inspired you to make it, what did you learn while making it, or any other aspects of the map or its creation you would like people to know).

A few years ago, Stephan Heuel and I developed a raster-based walking time analysis tool. This product has since matured into Walkalytics. Based on OpenStreetMap and/or cadastral surveying data, we can infer the time it takes somebody to walk to or from a place, construct pedestrian isochrones, and compute quality of service metrics, e.g. for public transit. We can carry out these types of analyses world-wide, at high resolution, very fast, and taking into account the topography. The map serves as an illustration of the capabilities and versatility of Walkalytics.

Tell us about the tools, data, etc., you used to make the map.

I used our Python Walkalytics client and a test subscription to the Walkalytics API to derive the data for the map. Besides, I used data from the (in my opinion, fantastic) Natural Earth. I then designed the map entirely in ArcMap. I tried to move away from the ArcGIS defaults. I’m simplifying, but I think a map tends to be good when you cannot tell straight-away which software has been used to make it. For the interested: Below you can see a GIF of some of the revisions of my map for the GeoHipster calendar: