Mapping Air Population & Mapping Real-Time Flight Data

Mapping Air Population&Mapping Real-Time Flight DataMichael P. Peterson & Paul Hunt & Konrad WeiGeography / GeologyUniversity of Nebraska at Omaha

Air PopulationAir population refers to the total number of people flying above the earth at any point in time.a distinct and separate population from those still physically connected to earthEphemeral, like urban areas having a high daytime populationAir population exhibits similar daily patterns

Animated Atlas: Air Traffic over North America 200775 animations, frame-based, 2003-2006Total flights, by airline, by aircraft, by city, by corridors, by region, by statesCondensing 24-hours into 30-secondsShowed flight patternsPulsating hubsRed-eye flightsPopcorn commuter traffic

LAX

JFK

United Airlines

United Airlines pulsating hubs

Popcorn Commuter Flights

DataAtlas based on FAA dataFlight tracking companies now collect data

FlightAware,FlightRadar24,PlaneFinder- Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B)- Raspberry Pi, dongle and filter$85 total

FlightAware PiAware Sites

Urumqi, China

Air PopulationComment made to Paul: We should map the number of people flying above the US.Pursued FAA connectionNeeded dedicated hardware (router, server)Special Connection (IPsec)Installation of specialized data communication softwareDesigned for data security

SolutionFlight Tracking companiesAll present maps of current trafficRead data from their server using JavaScriptAJAX through proxy serverOrganized by individual tileDuplicated their data retrieval methods Retrieving lat/long of flights, airline, aircraft, etc.

Evolving ImplementationInitial implementation was real-timeflight data was requested on page loadLater we decided we wanted more than just a snap shotBegan storing a days worth of datarequired server side databaseNow hourly requests stored (no more on-demand)In the future we will use this for daily animations

Programmatic MethodsMapping done with ESRI ArcGIS API for JavaScriptAPI performs spatial queries that allows features to be intersected based on geographic locationGeneral Programmatic tasksFlight data requested from database (AJAX)Planes enhanced with population dataPlanes (JSON objects) are added to map as pointsPlanes (and attributes) spatially aggregated to states

Live Demonstration

Map of Planes

Air Population by State

Ratio of Air to Ground Population

Air Population Density

Heatmap

5 AM

7 AM

9 AM

3 PM

11 PM

3 AM Ratio Air to Ground

3 PM Ratio Air to Ground