Designing maps might seem easy, but it is not, especially when many tools require certain levels of technical knowledge. A good map design can promote your presentation, website, and increase your work exposure.
Data scientists, business analysts, marketeers, advertisers, and many other professions require map design in their daily work. Some may use free tools and web service like Google Maps, and OpenStreetMap and others.
Here, in this article we offer you the best open-source free map design solutions out there.
1- Tilemill
TileMill is an amazing open-source desktop application that helps you design a highly sophisticated stylish and reactive maps in no time.
You can customize your map using CSS or Geography Class (MMS) file, extend your project with plugins, and add more interactive layers to your map.
Tilemill allows you to export your maps in several formats as PNG, PDF, and more.
Some may consider Leaflet.js as the right open-source Google Maps alternative. It is an open-source mobile-friendly responsive map library that supports touch, tiles, and plugins.
Kepler.gl is a powerful open source geospatial analysis tool for large-scale data sets. It is an ideal solution for created rich and heavy map visualization. Kepler.gl has a dozen of plugins and a strong community of developers who support the project.
CesiumJS is an open source JavaScript library for creating world-class 3D globes and maps with the best possible performance, precision, visual quality, and ease of use. Developers across industries, from aerospace to smart cities to drones, use CesiumJS to create interactive web apps for sharing dynamic geospatial data.
It works on all modern browsers, and with all popular JavaScript frameworks.
OpenLayers makes it easy to put a dynamic map in any web page. It can display map tiles, vector data and markers loaded from any source. OpenLayers has been developed to further the use of geographic information of all kinds. It is completely free, Open Source JavaScript, released under the 2-clause BSD License (also known as the FreeBSD).
The Turing Geovisualisation Engine (TGVE) is a web-based, interactive visual analytics tool for geospatial data analysis, built using R and JavaScript/React, that can be used as a complete server-client application or just as a front-end stand-alone application.
DynamoVis is a data visualization software specifically targeted for spatiotemporal movement data. It is developed by Move Lab @ UC Santa Barbara and designed to be accessible and easily usable for scientists without extensive prior experience with programming, GIS software, or custom data visualization tools.
folium builds on the data wrangling strengths of the Python ecosystem and the mapping strengths of the leaflet.js library. Manipulate your data in Python, then visualize it in on a Leaflet map via folium.
folium makes it easy to visualize data that’s been manipulated in Python on an interactive leaflet map. It enables both the binding of data to a map for choropleth visualizations and passing rich vector/raster/HTML visualizations as markers on the map.
OSMnx is a Python package that lets you download geospatial data from OpenStreetMap and model, project, visualize, and analyze real-world street networks and any other geospatial geometries.
You can download and model walkable, drivable, or bikeable urban networks with a single line of Python code then easily analyze and visualize them. You can just as easily download and work with other infrastructure types, amenities/points of interest, building footprints, elevation data, street bearings/orientations, and speed/travel time.
WorldMap.js is a JavaScript library based on D3.js to visualize Jason data or spreadsheets on a map by plotting graphs, markers, text, images, arcs and bubbles. It also has some basic GIS functionality such as loading and drawing objects in Geojson format.
The library is fully customizable allowing you to set almost all the styles of the map. You can customize the map style, the objects on the map and the animations by setting custom values into the Worldmap object. You can also choose which data you want to display by selecting specific columns or attributes in the table panel.
jQuery Mapael is a JavaScript library to render and manipulate dynamic vector maps. It is based on Raphael.js library. It renders a responsive map that you can zoom, add tooltips, dynamic events, and plots.
Geocomplete is an advanced jQuery plugin that wraps the Google Maps API's Geocoding and Places Autocomplete services. You simply provide an input that lets you search for locations with a nice autocomplete dropdown. Optionally add a container to show an interactive map and a form that will be populated with the address details.
Kartograph is a feature-rich map design framework for JavaScript and Python. With it, you can create 3D maps, vector maps, heatmaps, and rich presentation in no time.
The JavaScript library works on all modern web browsers, and it is built on top of Raphael, and jQuery.
Datamaps is intended to provide some data visualizations based on geographical data. It's SVG-based, can scale to any screen size, and includes everything inside 1 script file. It heavily relies on the amazing D3.js library.
Maplace.js helps you to embed Google Maps into your website, quickly create markers and controls menu for the locations on map. It requires jQuery and Google Maps API v3, so you need to have both in your page.
Stately is a symbol font that makes is easy to create a map of the United States using only HTML and CSS. Each state can be styled independently with CSS for making simple visualizations. And since it's a font, it scales bigger and smaller while staying sharp as a tack.
Marble is a free open source globe and virtual atlas for Linux, Windows, , macOS and, mobile (Android, and iOS).
Marble allows you to explore cities, countries, historical maps, plants, and more. It also comes with a rich search options that searches for everything, and works in offline mode for desktop installations.
React Simple Maps is an SVG maps library for React, that uses d3-geo library and topojson. It comes with a developer-friendly documentation, a dozen of examples, and a flexible API.
This is a small lightweight Python + JavaScript project that enables you to scrap Google Map leads in almost no time.
Features
1. Scrape up to 1200 Google Map Leads in just 25 minutes, providing you with an extensive pool of potential customers to drive sales.
2. Access 30 Data Points,
Raven - Advanced Cyber Threat Map (Simplified, customizable and responsive. It uses D3.js with TOPO JSON, has 247 countries, ~100,000 cities, and can be used in an isolated environment without external lookups!.
Panel is an open-source Python library that lets you easily build powerful tools, dashboards, and complex applications entirely in Python. It has a batteries-included philosophy, putting the PyData ecosystem, powerful data tables and much more at your fingertips.
Features
High-level reactive APIs and lower-level callback based APIs ensure you can
Business Intelligence, commonly known as BI, is the process of collecting, analyzing, and presenting data to make informed business decisions. BI helps organizations to transform their raw data into meaningful insights that can drive their business strategies. BI provides a range of advantages to organizations, including improved decision-making, increased efficiency,
QuakeFeed is a lightweight free iOS app that notify and alert users with earthquakes. It uses multiple sources, uses an interactive map, and contains a historical data back to 1900.
With its latest update, the app also supports wildfires, hurricanes, and erupting volcanoes.
Features
1. Simple clutter-free interface
2. Browse
Bike Router is an interactive open-source map app that can help you plan your cycling trips. It allows you to set the start point, end point and several mid-points for your trip.
It calculates and display the path, distance, and routes on a map and a visual graph.
The project
Designing maps might seem easy, but it is not, especially when many tools require certain levels of technical knowledge. A good map design can promote your presentation, website, and increase your work exposure.
Data scientists, business analysts, marketeers, advertisers, and many other professions require map design in their daily work.
CesiumJS is a JavaScript library for creating 3D globes and 2D maps in a web browser without a plugin. It uses WebGL for hardware-accelerated graphics, and is cross-platform, cross-browser, and tuned for dynamic-data visualization.
CesiumJS can stream 3D content such as terrain, imagery, and 3D Tiles from the commercial Cesium
Hamza Mousa
Leaflet
Patrick Cozzi
Dennis Nienhüser
