
163Thematic Visualization
Benefits and Drawbacks of Flow Maps
Interactive Web mapping provides another incentive to start creating ow
maps: animation. Flow maps are no longer restricted to showing movement
merely via lines and arrows; now, these lines and arrows can be animated to
show movement over time. Animation and ow maps go together like pea-
nut butter and jelly or, for my European audience, chocolate hazelnut spread
and baguettes. Because Web mapping allows for animation, one might think
that ow maps would become ubiquitous; yet, they remain relatively rare.
Designing ow maps still requires a lot of grunt work on the part of car-
tograp ...