April 2021 Summaries

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) launched an interactive version of their 2021 Watchlist, a comprehensive annual report that identifies the 20 countries most at risk of major humanitarian crises, using Mapbox technology for enhanced storytelling and engagement. This version, developed in collaboration with the Mapbox Community team, translates the IRC's Crisis Analysis methodology into a digital tour featuring interactive maps that provide context and scale for each country. The IRC's Crisis Analysis team created twenty-two chapters, each with specific map design notes, and utilized Mapbox Studio for styling and custom basemap creation, aligning with IRC's branding. The storytelling solution allows dynamic engagement through features like filtered layers for highlighting countries, custom sub-national layers, and bounding boxes to ensure visibility of entire countries across different screen sizes. This initiative aims to engage global leaders, media, and the international community in focused humanitarian response planning and has been widely viewed and shared, notably featured by media outlets such as NPR, BBC, and the Washington Post.

Strava has introduced a new feature for subscribers that allows athletes to view their activities in 3D, enhancing the visualization of their Personal Heatmaps with detailed topographical representation. This feature, which can be activated via the sidebar, offers an immersive experience of runs, rides, and other activities by displaying routes over varied landscapes and is notably enhanced when combined with Mapbox's upgraded satellite maps. Athletes can customize heatmap colors to better contrast with different terrains, whether urban or rural. Senior Product Manager Will Meyer highlights the value of the collaboration with Mapbox in enriching user experience and motivating athletes. The 3D mode is immediately available to Strava subscribers, who can find more information on Strava's "What's New" page.

General Motors (GM) has become the first automaker to adopt Mapbox Dash, an app-based in-car navigation system, through its new Maps+ application. Mapbox Dash offers a comprehensive and customizable navigation experience that automakers can easily integrate into their vehicles. It includes features such as live traffic updates, lane-level guidance, voice assistance, AR navigation, and companion mobile app integration. The system is available as a subscription service with continuous updates and allows manufacturers to add services like parking, fuel suggestions, and streaming music, significantly reducing the time to launch new applications. GM plans to roll out Maps+ via an over-the-air update to about 900,000 vehicles, providing brands like Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac with a unique, branded navigation experience. The platform's modular architecture and integration capabilities enable carmakers to tailor the system to their specific vehicle models, enhancing the digital location ecosystem and allowing features such as audio controls for music and personalized driver profiles.

The recently launched bathymetry style and tileset by Mapbox transforms ocean layers into detailed landscapes, providing essential context for maritime navigation and marine sciences. Utilizing the Mapbox Tiling Service (MTS), users can process various bathymetry data sources into custom tilesets that are continuously updated as data changes, thanks to an auto-scaling, distributed processing infrastructure. MTS allows developers to upload source data with transformation rules, or 'recipes,' which define how data is processed into vector tiles, offering customization options like zoom level extent and geometry simplification. These tilesets, initially private, can be styled and composited with other vector tilesets in Mapbox Studio. To optimize performance and style, developers can refine their tilesets by manipulating source data through recipe configurations, which ensure efficient and visually appealing map outputs.

Bathymetry, the study of underwater depth data, is revolutionizing marine navigation and ocean sciences by transforming water layers into detailed landscapes. A new bathymetry map has been released to enable developers to create custom marine maps, with companies like Zero Six Zero using this data to enhance expedition tracking apps. The Great Reef Census has also employed detailed bathymetry data to guide surveys of the Great Barrier Reef, allowing for better planning and exploration of areas not visible through satellite imagery. Mapbox has developed a public tileset, mapbox-public.bathymetry, using Natural Earth data, which simplifies the integration of bathymetric data into maps without the need for processing raw data. The creative possibilities for styling this data are vast, with options for nautical chart-inspired designs and underwater 3D effects, encouraging developers to explore and share their creations on social media platforms like Twitter.

Disaster Ninja is a tool developed by Kontur in collaboration with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) to enhance disaster response efforts through improved mapping efficiency. It streamlines the preparation and prioritization of mapping tasks by integrating critical data layers, reducing the time required for emergency response coordinators to assess situations and deploy mapping campaigns. This tool offers features such as rapid intelligence gathering, automated alerts, and analytical layers that highlight population density and infrastructure mapping, aiding both immediate disaster response and broader OpenStreetMap community efforts. By facilitating the identification of under-mapped areas and suggesting local mapping communities, Disaster Ninja supports both local and remote mappers in improving OpenStreetMap data. The tool's analytical capabilities include visualizing the relationship between population density and OpenStreetMap object distribution, assessing building and road coverage, and understanding mapping activity and data antiquity. It also emphasizes the importance of maintaining a global population dataset to inform mapping priorities, demonstrating Kontur's commitment to a tool driven by community needs and ongoing user feedback.

Mapbox GL JS v2.2.0 introduces significant enhancements, including optimized GeoJSON update performance in Safari, ensuring smoother rendering for dynamic data like vehicle tracking, which benefits services such as Instacart by providing seamless animations. This update also features level roofs on 3D terrain, correcting the rendering of building extrusions to be level relative to the earth rather than the terrain, improving visual accuracy for all fill-extrusion layers. Additionally, a new Continuous Integration (CI) test mode enables developers to integrate Mapbox GL JS into their automated testing without an access token, allowing for comprehensive test coverage and confident delivery of high-quality applications without incurring additional costs, as resources are loaded locally.

Mapbox has significantly enhanced its address data by adding or improving 115 million addresses across the United States and Europe, expanding its capabilities to seven new countries. This update, which is accessible through the Search API, Search SDK, and Studio, aims to optimize in-app checkout processes, improve store location searches, and assist delivery drivers. In the U.S., 80 million addresses have been enhanced, with 15 million new addresses added, leading to improved geocoding results in several states. Europe sees an addition of over 20 million addresses, with new search support in countries like the Czech Republic and Portugal. By employing the Mapbox conflation engine, which integrates a vast array of data points including user feedback, the update ensures greater accuracy and coverage, enabling more precise geocoding and navigation solutions.

Garrett has joined Mapbox after a successful tenure at Verra Mobility, where he held the position of EVP and GM for the smart city business unit. His career spans over a decade of leadership roles at SAP and GE, where he excelled in product and service innovation, with significant achievements in smart building and smart city markets as GE's Chief Digital Officer. Garrett's professional journey also includes co-founding a Silicon Valley startup and roles as a management consultant and environmental engineer, reflecting a diverse and accomplished background. Outside of his professional life, Garrett enjoys outdoor activities with his family and indulges in science fiction novels.

Mapbox has introduced the Static Playground, an interactive tool that simplifies the use of its Static Images API by allowing developers to visually experiment with map features without diving into code. This playground enables developers to adjust parameters like position, resolution, padding, and overlays in real-time, facilitating a more intuitive approach to generating static map images. It supports functionalities such as Geojson Overlays, which integrate point, line, or polygon data, and Marker Overlays, allowing for custom images. Users can also encode coordinates into polylines and apply custom styles from Mapbox Studio. The output is a URL ready to be embedded in web or mobile applications, streamlining the process of incorporating dynamic maps into various platforms.