Maps for ThoughtOpen data, mapped honestly

About

An atlas that shows its working.

180 layers of open data about the environment of the UK and of Europe, on 6 maps, with the caveats left in and every number checked against its source.

The five UK maps, stacked like layers Five map sheets stacked on top of each other over the coastline of Great Britain, each showing something real from its own map: Environment shows 6 real contour lines of ground slope; Energy shows a sample of 455 of the 1364 power stations, sized by generating capacity; Transport shows the motorway network (50 motorways), as lines; Land and heritage shows the outline of all 15 National Parks, as shapes; Curiosities shows all 141 silly place names, each as a point. Curiosities Land & heritage Transport Energy Environment

Honest by design

A map should say what it doesn’t know.

What each layer is, and what it covers

Observed, modelled, projected or live, with units, period and resolution. Each layer lists its caveats under a small arrow, one click from the controls: flood zones ignore defences, air-quality maps show background levels, habitat boundaries are approximate.

Coverage is never implied

Many official datasets stop at a border. Layers carry a coverage badge (England only, Great Britain, UK) and the click panel says so where there is no data, rather than staying blank.

Open, credited, checked, private

Every licence and credit was read at the source and is on Data & sources, along with what was left out. Readings are compared with the raw files on every test run. No cookies, no analytics, no accounts.

Why it exists

Environmental data is scattered across dozens of agencies, in formats built for specialists, and often stops at a national border. The atlas puts a lot of it in one place you can simply click on, and tries to be straight about what each layer is, what it covers and how far to trust it.

It is free, has no advertising and sets no cookies. Until a proper licence review has been done it is deliberately non-commercial.

What this is not

  • Not advice. Nothing here should be used to make decisions about property, insurance, planning, safety or health. For flood risk always use the Environment Agency’s (England) or Natural Resources Wales’ official service.
  • Not a forecast. Projections are scenarios under stated assumptions. The warming layer shows one high-emissions scenario, averaged over 16 model runs.
  • Not exact. Many layers are interpolated (the climate grids), modelled (air quality, flood zones) or generalised for the web (boundaries). Values read from the map colour are approximate and labelled so.
  • Not UK-wide everywhere. A lot of official data is England-only or Great Britain-only. Every layer carries a coverage badge and the click panel says when a place is outside coverage.
  • Not a land-ownership map. Who legally owns land isn’t open data (title records are sold by HM Land Registry). The Land & heritage map shows public access and land held for public benefit instead.

How it is made

Each dataset is downloaded from its publisher, checked (licence, credit, coordinate system, units and plausible ranges) and turned into small static tile files. There is no server and no database: your browser reads only the tiles for the layers you switch on.

  • Every layer is declared in one place and validated. A layer without a licence, credit, coverage statement and at least one caveat cannot appear.
  • Credits are exact. The wording for each dataset is copied from the source itself and listed on Data & sources, along with what was done to the data.
  • Values are verified. On every test run, hundreds of readings taken from the published tiles are compared with the raw source files by coordinate. That check exists because an early version of the warming-projection layer was drawn upside-down; it was caught, fixed and written up in the project notes.
  • Sums are shown. Silly statistics (like “Olympic pools of rain on a football pitch”) are plain arithmetic on real figures, and the working is in each layer’s caveats.

The code, the data pipeline and the working notes are kept in a single project repository so every step can be re-run.

Privacy

  • No cookies, no analytics, no accounts, no advertising, no tracking.
  • Your view, chosen layers, year and opacity are kept only in the page address, so a link reproduces exactly what you see. Nothing is stored on a server.
  • Postcode and place-name searches are answered from files on this site, in your browser; what you type is never sent anywhere else. The only things remembered on your device are your choice of basemap and language.
  • Your browser does contact two outside services, which see your IP address as any website would: OpenFreeMap for the basemap tiles, and (only if you switch on the live carbon-intensity layer) the National Energy System Operator’s Carbon Intensity API.
  • The “locate me” button asks your browser for your position only when you press it, and it is not sent or stored.

Accessibility

The site is built to work with a keyboard, screen readers and reduced-motion settings, and to be readable in light and dark modes and on phones.

  • Controls are real buttons, checkboxes and sliders with labels, visible focus and skip links.
  • Colour ramps use ColorBrewer scales chosen to be colour-blind safe, and legends always name the values.
  • Animations (including the hero drawing and the year-slider crossfade) switch off when you ask your device to reduce motion.
  • Automated checks (axe) run on the map, with every layer on, in light and dark modes, and on the About dialog.

Known limits: the map itself is a graphic and cannot be read by a screen reader, so values are offered through the click panel instead, which is a normal text list; that works with a mouse or touch, and keyboard-only map exploration is not yet complete. Automated checks do not replace testing with people who use assistive technology.