Charlotte just fine after the bank crisis

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Charlotte is a corporate town. Counting its suburbs, it’s still home to eight Fortune 500 companies and is still very much the country’s other banking center.

Thanks to Jamie Metz from the Mecklenburg county GIS division for the help with the data. In the most recent issue of Fortune magazine.

The booming shipping network

Click to see full six-pages graphic

Not since 1956, when a North Carolina truck driver named Malcom McLean created a standard-size container for cargo, has global shipping seen such radical change. Carriers are bigger than ever, ports are becoming automated, and routes are shifting. The volume of goods that move between ports in Asia now accounts for 13% of all seaborne trade, up nearly a third from a decade ago. Routes through the ice-free far north now beckon. While global shipping volumes rose 6.2% in 2011 and port operators were profitable, owners of container ships were hit hard by overcapacity and falling cargo rates. In the latest issue of Fortune magazine..

Foreign Aid, Capitalist Style

Poor countries that want money from the Millennium Challenge Corp. pledge to end corruption and embrace democracy. Can this little known agency change the model for global aid? In the last issue of Fortune.

New storm tracker

A new storm tracker, courtesy of programers/designers John Balestrieri and Siobhan Dooley. Some little design glitches are still in the work.

Click to see tracker in pop-up window

Obama German ancestry

Graphic by Phil Holm, using a dynamic map projection. We decided it made sense to use a map rather than a classic family tree.

Stricter auto emissions standards announced

President Barack Obama announced new standards Tuesday to curb vehicle carbon dioxide emissions by about one-third by 2016. A great occasion to use the excellent data from Purdue University. Under the Vulcan Project, they calculated carbon emissions per source, and made it available for a variety of geographic levels.

This first picture just use color coded county areas. the amount shown is the yearly total.

Then, I decided to study the differences between the total emissions, and the per capita emissions, to see if it would highlight differences due to legislation. For example, one can see that california emissions are not that dramatic, when seen per capita, due to their more drastic regulations. Click maps for higher resolution, and click here to see Beth Davidz flash interactive.

Economic Stress Index

A series of  maps tracking the state and change of economic indicators by county. The Economic Stress index is a combination of these results. Carrie Osgood designed the flash interface, Troy Thibodeaux and John Balestrieri on the back-end of the application. Data displayed are unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcy in addition to the Index itself. (Click on the map to see interactive)

Most cities post gain in graduation rate

Just over half of students in the principal school systems of the country’s 50 largest cities complete high school with a diploma. That rate remains well below the national graduation rate of about 71 percent, as only three of these 50 principal districts reach or exceed it.
The interesting fact about this chart is that it allows to navigate from coast to coast, rather than navigate a list classified by rate size or alphabetical order. See that as a kind of U.S. map that would be vertically shrank to the extreme. You can see the print graphic here. AP members also have a more traditional chart available here.

Stats are from the EPE Research Center.