The NSW Interactive Atlas

The Atlas of New South Wales is an initiative of the Land and Property Management Authority and it was created with the objective of providing detailed statistics across a range of topics to educational institutions and the broader community. It is built with Bing Map so, provides very familiar to many, simple and intuitive interface to government information.


All the information is presented as a series of thematic map overlays in four categories:

  • People (eg. population, health, housing, religion, indigenous population, indexes of relative advantage/disadvantage, crime);
  • Economy (eg. labour force, taxation and revenue, and production of fruit and vegetables, oils and grins, and livestock);
  • History (eg. information on settlement, State elections and boarders); and
  • Environment (including vegetation, geology and soils, and locations of national parks).

Users have a choice between satellite image or roads map as a base layer and can adjust transparency level of thematic overlays. Each overlay is accompanied by a comprehensive legend, explaining the meaning of presented data. A click on individual region brings up a pop-up window with information about the region, presented as charts and gauges.


The Atlas of New South Wales is quite responsive considering the amount of data that is required to present thematic overlays. It would benefit though from a bit more legible charts and access to source data in a tabular format and/ or for download. Overall, the application is well built and very simple to navigate through.

Google Earth: Mount Rushmore looks great!

Peter Olson, who has previously shown us such excellent models such as Machu Picchu, the Disney Monorail and the Tenerife disaster, is at it once again.

This time, Peter has created a very detailed model of Mount Rushmore, which looks far better than the default (terrain-based) model. Check it out:

rushmore.jpg

In addition to the famous faces on the mountain, Peter also built the “Hall of Records” behind them. The Hall was never completed, but you can learn more about it on the National Parks Traveler site, as it’s quite interesting.

hall-of-records.jpg

To see it all for yourself, you can fly there using this KML file or you can view the details in the Google 3D Warehouse.