How Much Water in Queensland?

January 11, 2011 10:06 PM

How Much Water in Queensland?
A little interactive map to help compare the flood affected areas of Queensland, Australia to other countries of the world.
posted by gomichild (12 comments total)

I like it, really puts things into perspective (it's basically the size of Iceland!)

From a usability perspective, I expected something to happen when I 'dropped', and it took me a while (and testing in other browsers) to realise that nothing was supposed to happen; it's just a visual aid. But that could just be me being slow. Nice work though.
posted by londonmark at 8:07 AM on January 12, 2011

Thanks for the comments!

londonmark - what kind of things were you expecting to happen (out of curiousity)?
posted by gomichild at 9:43 AM on January 12, 2011

Nothing substantive, it was just an instinctive expectation of some kind of feedback that it had done what it was supposed to. Maybe highlight the country you drop on?
posted by londonmark at 10:07 AM on January 12, 2011

I wonder if this isn't underestimating it - several days ago the government declared 75% of Queensland to be a disaster zone, plus a fair chunk of northern NSW is also flooded.
posted by goshling at 5:23 PM on January 12, 2011

Thanks londonmark. I guess I was trying to avoid doing it in Flash so kept to some very basic animation in jQuery.

Yeah goshling I'm going to update it in a while when there's a better idea of the area affected - I will put the date updated underneath.
posted by gomichild at 6:43 PM on January 12, 2011

Gomi, instead of changing it to be 75%, could you offer the option to choose a size by date?
posted by coriolisdave at 8:24 PM on January 12, 2011

That's a good idea honey - will look at that in a future version.
posted by gomichild at 8:39 PM on January 12, 2011

I don't think that map projection show areas in correct proportions. So dragging a fixed size shape around doesn't really show anything very well.

The true area of Europe is a lot smaller than appears there, and the area of Africa is a lot bigger. Compare this map.
posted by philipy at 8:46 PM on January 12, 2011

Oh I explained that one in the thread on the blue actually philipy - the information I have access to online is almost all done in google maps - so this map follows suit. When numbers are worked out later I may do a different version based on a different map. Thanks for the link!
posted by gomichild at 8:56 PM on January 12, 2011

This is great. I was actually looking for something just like this yesterday afternoon. Way to go!
posted by empatterson at 11:49 PM on January 12, 2011

Oh cheers empatterson!
posted by gomichild at 12:49 AM on January 13, 2011

Very nifty, but I was hoping for some kind of zoom. As it stands it's a great means of getting perspective - it looks to be almost as large as the Great Lakes in N. America.
posted by metameat at 6:05 AM on January 13, 2011 [1 favorite]