Https www shipmap org

Important Note: This web-based visualization may require up-to-date Adobe Flash Player browser plugin. Make sure to take note of any pop-ups or requests to download updates. Accordingly, be prepared to wait for video and interactive feature load times, which will depend on Internet connection speeds and other factors.

In this spatial module, you will observe the volume and patterns of global shipping in actual routes for most of the year of 2012. In Chapter 12 Creating a Global Economy, you examined the role of transportation in facilitating the space-time-cost convergence that makes the global economy possible. Now you can explore the networks of connections that flow across the world. With this interactive, you can sort through the types of ships that constitute the whole of global shipping. By exploring the types of ships in the merchant fleet, you will get a sense of the types of trade connections that link up parts of the world. Further, you may see evidence of the regions’ economic specializations and of the global shift in manufacturing.

Following the link above will take you directly to the interactive map. First you will notice a basic base map of the world’s waterways with animated dots as the ships moving among them. You can change between data under the dropdown menu Show. Select to show Ports. Next to that you can change the type color and filter out types, with two remaining dropdowns. Notice the two sets of text on the map. One attributes the map and data. The box on the right provides you with the aggregate data on major trade goods. At the bottom is a timeline for the point in the year that is currently animated. You can select on any point on the timeline to skip forward or back.