Death in the Grand Canyon

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Why we love it

Morbid as its theme may be, this map makes great use of hexagonal binning and chromastereoscopic colour—which means it can be viewed holographically in 3D if you’re wearing special glasses. Dramatic, rich colours remind us of the power, beauty, and dangers of the Grand Canyon. As we zoom in, the map reveals more information and shows details-on-demand, encouraging us to explore.

Why it works

Inspired by the book, Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon, this map helps tell the fascinating and heartbreaking stories of more than 700 lives lost. The map quickly shows patterns, clusters, and isolated incidents across the national park so we can understand how and where people died. The almost abstract style and strong colours invite further inquiry.

Important steps

  • Make it 3D

    To render height data with chromastereoscopic colours (red nearest the eye, blue farthest away) you will need a digital elevation model (DEM) of your area.
    Learn how to do it

  • Learn how to create hexbins

    Hexbins are constructed using a hex-binning technique downloadable tool that allows you to create a feature class of regular gridded hexagons.
    Get the tessellation tool

  • Summarise

    Summarise the point data into the hexagon feature class. Repeat this for different resolutions of hexagon if needed.

  • Customise

    Use custom designed symbols (as PNG files) to represent categories in your data.

  • Publish

    Publish the map using group layers that have different scale visibilities set so they render in an ArcGIS Online map with different content at each scale.
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Requirements

  • Data

    The hex-binning technique works for any point dataset to avoid overlapping features and visual clutter. The different resolutions of the hexagonal grids make sense when zoomed out, and zooming in the map shows more detail and eventually reverts to individual points.

  • Analysis

    Try different size hexbins to see which is most effective at capturing the events for the map scales where point locations are overlapping (and hiding the story rather than revealing it).

  • Time

    It takes one hour to display a DEM chromastereoscopically and one day to build hexagon grids at different scales and summarise point data. It takes one day to organise layers, populate pop-ups, and publish to ArcGIS Online.
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Tips and tricks

  • Size hexbins to the correct scale

    When creating the hexbins for your data, use a size that works well at each scale. Decrease the size of the grid for larger scales where you want to see more detail.
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Resources

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Cartoon image of Ken Field, map author

Map Author

Ken Field

Professional cartonerd, amateur drummer and snowboarder. Lifetime encourager of cartographic quality not quantity. Map with the times while building on the past.

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