Strava unveiled their Global Heatmap today. It’s an interactive visualisation of more than 1 billion activities by 10 million athletes across the globe.
Global activity on Strava
While it features data from 31 activity types from mountaineering to skiing, it gives you the option of selecting a specific sport like cycling. Even mountaineers scaling Everest and cross channel swimmers are featured.
It offers a visually striking and fascinating perspective of our activities. It also has a practical purpose: Strava Metro anonymises and aggregates data from the millions of activities on Strava which is shared with transport and city planning groups to improve infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians.
UK Activity on Strava
This allows a deep analysis of popular or avoided routes, peak commuting times, intersection waiting times and start and destination locations.
Jorge G. Coelho, Mobility Project Manager, AMAL, in Portugal says, "The Strava Heatmap is enlightening because it lets us connect the bike riders we spot on the streets with a broader perspective of our territory, over space and time. Strava Metro then gives us the possibility to dive much deeper, breaking down data minute-by-minute and segment-by-segment for the entire road network. It's a bit like our Pasteis de Belém: they're good to smell, but you have to really sink your teeth into them to fully take advantage."
London Cycling Activity on Strava
There are now over 100 cities around the world making use of Strava Metro to improve commuting.
Some Global Heatmap facts:
Over 1 billion activities from over 10 million athletes
3 trillion latitude/longitude points
10 terabytes of raw input data
A total distance of 27 billion km (17 billion miles)
A total duration of 200 thousand years
12 trillion pixels rasterized
5% of all land on Earth covered
Some Strava facts:
16 activities uploaded every second, 11 million every week
100+ compatible mobile phones and GPS devices
1,100+ professional athletes are on Strava
1 million athletes join every 40 days
1.3 billion kudos given between athletes last year
100+ cities making commuting better with Strava Metro
