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Monday, March 19, 2007

Extreme European Weather Map


My fellow Europeans, Meteoalarm has just received credible reports that severe wind will strike Norway. The threat level is now red.

Meteoalarm is a online, interactive map which locates and describes severe weather in many European countries and Cyprus. The continent view shows the various countries weather state (something similar to the American Homeland Security Advisory System) and the view can be zoomed into a country level. The country level then displays the various types of weather activity. By clicking on the extreme weather event one can attain a short description of what is going on.

The neat thing about Meteoalarm is that it is a online geography tool not based on Google Maps, Virtual Earth, or any other related program. I wonder if developers like to use pre-made API or if building from scratch allows them much more independence in design.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't really call this a mapping app. It's just a bunch of pre-generated images with HTML ImageMap links.

Catholicgauze said...

True, but I avoid calling it a map. I wonder if designers prefer the app maps or if going this route? It probably is a personal choice is my guess.

Dave Smith said...

In some instances it makes perfect sense to just have static polygons (or other features) that are wired up to a web service by ID, and from there you can do some basic thematic mapping. No georeferencing or fancy GIS functionality needed.

Simple and clean. Doesn't lend itself to much beyond its stated intent, but functional.