David Attenboroughs Travels Banner Image

David Attenborough’s travels

View Map

About the map

This map was made to celebrate Sir David Attenborough's 100th birthday on 8th May 2026. It focuses on one of his most iconic collections of documentary series that he wrote and presented - the ‘Life’ series.

The nine ‘Life’ series saw Sir David travel the world to document the diversity of life, exploring how species adapt, survive, reproduce and interact with their environments.

Our interactive map shows Sir David’s global travels whilst filming the nine series, with descriptions of what he did in all 255 locations.

Why it works

The app provides an interactive experience, allowing the user to click on each point to find out about each location. The episode slider and series filter enable exploration of Sir David’s journey from start to end of the series, with coloured points differentiating between seasons.

The map uses the Robinson projection which gives a globe-like appearance while maintaining a more balanced representation of continents. Simple polygon layers for the land and ocean give it a clean, traditional atlas aesthetic.

Important steps

  • 1.

    Create a new feature layer in ArcGIS Pro and manually collect data from the seventy-nine ‘Life’ series.

  • 2.

    Use the ‘project’ tool in ArcGIS Pro to reproject layers for country boundaries, USA state boundaries, and a global background (for the ocean) from the Living Atlas to the Robinson projection.

  • 3.

    Publish the four layers to ArcGIS Online, adjust their visibility scale, and choose a basemap in the Robinson projection from the Living Atlas.

  • 4.

    Style the points with distinct colours to represent the nine different series in the collection. Use colour filters to check for colour-blind accessibility.

  • 5.

    Use HTML to style the pop-ups, and  ArcGIS Arcade to make the colour of the pop-ups change depending on the series number.

  • 6.

    In ArcGIS Instant Apps, use the Slider template to create an app where points progressively appear from episode one to seventy-nine, using custom CSS to adjust the app theme.

Previous
Next

Requirements

  • Data and software

    Information about the filming locations visited by Sir David was taken from Wikipedia and the BBC documentary episodes. ArcGIS Pro was used to create and populate a feature layer with the information, before publishing as a web layer. ArcGIS Online was used for configuration, with the final application built in ArcGIS Instant Apps.

  • Analysis

    The Project tool was used to reproject layers from the Living Atlas to the Robinson projection to improve app performance. HTML and ArcGIS Arcade were used to configure the pop-ups.

  • Time

    Most of the time was spent collecting data for the pop-ups, given that there are 255 locations with multiple fields, including a location description. Configuring the final app after this took a few days.

Previous
Next

Tips and tricks

  • David Attenborough's travels tip 1

    Use generative AI to help with styling

    ArcGIS Arcade, HTML and CSS were used in the configuration of the app’s styling, with generative AI proving useful for writing this code.

  • David Attenborough's travels tip 2

    Use colour filters to check for colour-blind accessibility

    Microsoft Windows includes built-in colour filters that can be enabled in system settings, allowing you to check whether colour schemes are accessible for colour-blind users.

  • David Attenborough's travels tip 3

    Save frequently when collecting data.

    Better safe than sorry.

Previous
Next

Links & resources

Previous
Next
Joe Harris

Map Author

Joe Harris (he/him)

Joe is a Graduate GIS Consultant at Esri UK with a background in Geography. Outside of work, he enjoys travelling around the world and running.

LinkedIn

Start making maps with a free trial of ArcGIS Online

Try ArcGIS