World Events Visualiser

This interactive data visualisation uses a map and timeline to reveal the connections between world events.

Locations are marked on the map while the list on the right shows the related people and events. Pan & zoom the map, drag & resize the timeline and click on place markers or event names to get more info.

Launch the app in a new tab.

Dates and location of events are extracted from Wikipedia using an algorithm we developed. Simply scanning the article text for patterns like 1902 or 3rd Century gives a good estimate of when an event took place. Examining the links between articles allows us to find related articles. These can be linked to the Geonames dataset using DBPedia to determine which of them are geographical places.

This was a project for Data Art, which is co-funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, Westminster University and BBC Learning.