The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the way we live
by Daniel Dorling, Mark Newman and Anna Barford

366 digitally modified maps – known as cartograms – depict the areas and countries of the world not by their physical size, but by their demographic importance on a vast range of subjects ranging from population, health, wealth and occupation to how many toys we import and who's eating their vegetables.

• Amazon entry
• Thames and Hudson Information

Map 564: Muslims

There is a new series of Worldmapper maps available on the subject of Religion. The maps use data from the World Christian Database.

This series does not have the accompanying PDF posters that were available with the first 366 maps.

• Index of Religion Maps
• World Christian Database

Millennium Galleries, Sheffield

We have created an animation from twelve of the static Worldmapper images, to be displayed at the Millennium Galleries in Sheffield, in an exhibition entitled On the Map, from the 19th January 2008.

The exhibition is free, and open until 15th June 2008.

The animation is also available to view from the link below. Please note it is a large file (14MB), and requires Flash Player. We hope to make a smaller, animated gif version available soon.

• On the Map exhibition details
• Worldmapper animation (note 14MB Flash animation)

Map 529: All Infant Deaths

There is a new series of Worldmapper maps available on the subject of Age of Death. The maps use data from the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Global Burden of Disease (GBD) statistics for 2001.

This series does not have the accompanying PDF posters that were available with the first 366 maps. The data files on which they were based will be available soon.

• Index of Age of Death Maps
• Mortality estimates paper (PDF)

There is a new series of Worldmapper maps (118 in all!) available on the subject of Cause of Death. The maps use data from the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Global Burden of Disease (GBD) statistics on death and disability worldwide in 2002.

A huge debt of gratitude is owen to David Dorling for his contribution to this series (and Worldmapper in general); these revealing maps, and especially the information that goes with them, would not have been possible with out him. Thanks also to Anna Barford, who put many hours of work into this series before she left the project to start her PhD.

This series do not have the accompanying PDF posters that were available with the first 366 maps. The data files on which they were based will be available soon.

• Index of Cause of Death Maps
• Introduction, full technical notes and tables

Anna Barford has worked full-time on the Worldmapper project for two years, writing the information that accompanies the maps, promoting Worldmapper, and doing many other things besides. In October 2007, she leaves the project to begin a PhD.

The Worldmapper team would like to thank her for all of her hard work and professionalism she has made a huge contribution to the project.

To mark the occasion, we have asked Anna a few questions about her experiences with Worldmapper (link below).

• An interview with Anna
• Anna's home page

Four Worldmapper PDF posters, all relating to water resources, have been translated into Spanish for us by Ana Lopez Garcia and Ethel Pirola Igoa.

Further Spanish posters may become available in the future, and we are also going to add posters translated into Chinese in the near future.

• Index of Spanish maps (Índice de mapas españoles)

A Worldmapper map of Scouts is on display at the 21st World Scout Jamboree, along with several other Worldmapper maps relating to the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The maps have been used in an interactive stand in the Global Development Boulevard area. The activity, which involved responding to the variety of maps, has raised a lot interest.

The Jamboree is being attended by  over 32,000 young persons and 12,000 leaders and staff from over 150 countries, as well as up to 10,000 visitors daily.

The MDGs and related maps used are listed below:

MDG 1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger: Map 174 human poverty
MDG 2. Achieve universal primary education: Map 199 Primary education
MDG 3. Provide gender equality and empowerment of women: Map 181 gender empowerment
MDG 4. Reduce child mortality: Map 261 infant mortality
MDG 5. Improve maternal health: Map 258 Maternal mortality
MDG 6. control HIV/Aids/Malaria: Map 229 cases of Aids/hiv
MDG 7. Ensure Environmental sustainability: Map 322 Ecological footprint
MDG 8. Develop a global partnership for development: Map 336 internet use, Map 135 child labour, Map 173 HDI

Click on the scout map for a bigger version. The full poster version, together with the data, will be available at a later date. Thanks to Robert Lang for the scout data which he obtained from the World Scout Bureau scouting census 2005.

Further Information:

• Scout Jamboree Homepage
• The Scout Association homepage
• UN Millennium Development Goals

Worldmapper posters depicting nuclear waste, carbon emissions and HIV/AIDS were displayed at the recent Glastonbury festival. They were used as part of the 'Give Geography its Place' campaign. The photos were taken by Daniel Raven-Ellison, one of the campaign members.

• 'Give Geography its Place' campaign
• Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts

A new report from ActionAid, entitled Merkel’s moment: The G8’s credibility test on Africa, has been released, and contains Worldmapper maps. The report calls for G8 leaders at the forthcoming summit to honour the commitments made at the 2005 summit in Gleneagles of increased aid to Africa.

• PDF report on SASI website
• Article on ActionAid website
• ActionAid Home

Maps commisioned by David Aplin, of the National Botanic Garden of Belgium, have been added to Worldmapper. They are botanical gardens, plant species, and the ratio of the two.

We have added an animation, which shows the Land Area map morphing to the Population map (it can also be viewed in the opposite direction).

It is likely that more of these animations, showing different maps, will be added in the coming months.

• Morphing Animation (547kB) (Requires Flash Player)

Did you attend an anti-war demonstration in February 2003? After a lot of research on the web, we have records of demonstrations, and estimates of demonstrators numbers, for many towns and cities. However, we would like to improve the dataset and the map, so we are asking for people who attended a demonstration on the weekend of 14/15/16 February 2003 to check this list to see whether the demonstration that they attended is listed, and get in touch if not.

• Current list of demonstrations (355kb)
• anti-war demonstration map (no. 361)
• Excel datafile giving more information
• Opendocument version

Congratulations to Worldmapper team members Anna Barford and Danny Dorling, who recently received an award from the Geographical Association in the UK, for an article they wrote about Worldmapper for Teaching Geography.

The title is 'Award for Excellence in Leading Geography'

• Link to article
• Link to Geographical Association Website

The Worldmapper map "Girls not at Secondary School" has been painted by the German artist Annegret Poschlep. The painting is titled "e a r t h  number one". More details and a larger image are on the link below:

• larger "e a r t h  number one" painting image and more details
• Annegret Poschlep's website
• Original "Girls not at Secondary School" map