Swinging away from the weather theme for a bit, the Global Incident Map is an interesting visual overview of the various ‘incidents’ that are happening all over the world. The term “incidents” is used broadly; items covered on the main map range from things like ‘terrorist events’ and ‘radiation/proliferation/smuggling events’ to ‘food-product tampering’ and ‘anti-war activists conferences’.
The free version of the map gives only the visual overview, with very minor details about each incident. Sign up for a free trial, however, and you’ll see how robust the product is. Hover over the individual events, and you’re shown a pop-up box with more information and the link (where possible) to the English-language version of the news item that describes the event in greater detail. Underneath the map, a scrolling news feed can be sped up if you’re a speed reader like me. The map can be limited to events of certain types, severity/importance, and/or types of infrastructure affected. For instance, I was able to easily view all the incidents that affected transportation (airport, shipping, bus, bridge, and railways) and were of a severe or unknown nature. There’s also a search function, with the same options. For those of us who are less visually-oriented and more text-oriented, there’s a list of all the incidents, sorted by type and complete with dates, at the bottom of the page.
Additionally, there is a Forest Fires map (which also pulls through NOAA’s Day1 Fire Weather Outlook and the USFS’s Wildland Fire Assessment System maps), an Amber-Alert Map, a North American HAZMAT Situations and Deployments map (although it seems a stretch to call a meth lab bust a “HAZMAT” situation). The HAZMAT map includes a helpful (at least for us here in that region) “Zoom to National Capitol Region” button. Two more “New” maps complete the tools: Gang Activities (searchable by gang name, as well as by region) and Sri Lanka Focus. The Sri Lanka Focus maps are produced in partnership with the Community Tsunami Early-warning Centre and the Safer Sri Lanka blog, pointing out Global Incident’s relationships within the broader community.
About the Global Incident map: started as a free service, it has evolved into a fee-based subscription model which accepts advertising (but not money from ‘any foreign or domestic government entities, nor any special interest, religious, or political groups’). The map is produced (evidently) by Morgan Clements. Click here for a link to his interview on On the Media (NPR program). A free 72-hour trial is available, but the site normally costs (I think!) $99./year to subscribe.
