As any geographer will tell you, mapping is a rich territory, cross-cutting many other sciences not just for showing where things are, but revealing vital connections.

At the Decision Theater, we draw on interactive maps for many of our projects. Geo-spatial mapping sheds light on growth and expansion issues. We used a mapping tool just last week for the pandemic ‘flu exercise, to give participants a sense of what a disease spread would look like on a city-by-city basis.

But mapping can be put to a variety of uses. Arizona State University was just selected to conduct a different  type of mapping, selected as one of seven universities to receive a Minerva award for a research project titled “Finding Allies for the War of Words: Mapping the Diffusion and Influence of Counter-Radical Muslim Discourse.” And the Mars space program at ASU has several ways of mapping the surface of the planet, as the image above shows. Check them out!

A few other good maps:

• FEMA maps areas in every state and US territories that are at risk of flooding
• USGS maps geographic boundaries and transportation networks
• NOAA maps flood risk
• BBC has a good interactive map of bird flu spread and human mortality