Global arms transactions, visualized in interactive map

ARMSFLOW.org is a data visualization project that shows international arms transactions between 1950 and 2006. The site (a big ole Java applet) was created by Jeffrey Warren of Vestal Design, based on data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Link, via monochrom blog.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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mshaneen

makes me think of the artist Mark Lombardi’s work

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Lombardi
James David

This is an amazing datavisualization. They Rule is a similar one that links up the corporations that produce the ammunition with other powerful leaders… pretty interesting to see the who’s who of that world. Also, I noticed that fans of the Armsflow project can lend their support by funding server costs. (Look for the “CLICK HERE” link at the end of the write-up.)
dainel

I’m pretty sure, those arms from the US to Australia / Taiwan / Japan flew across the Pacific. This will remove some of the red lines over Europe and makes some of the lines clearer.
naggs

we’re #1!(?)
searconflex

Confused by Canada’s lines being drawn to Yellowknife… of all places?
zjmna

Cool, although the 2D flat world is a little misleading… lies and damned lies, I guess… I would like to see the same information represented in 3 dimensions, but I guess I’m just being picky…
alexsanmiguel

Thanks,but do not see links to Mexico and Central America …
James David

@#10 Thanks, I’d never heard of Mark Lombardi before… interesting stuff!
Brok Enlish

this is art. sublime!
brokenglish.blogspot.com
Dustin Driver

@#4 Yeah, Yellowknife? A remote place for arms trading? A manufacturing center, perhaps?
RyanH

It looks like they just picked a middle point for each country and that’s where the lines run to. Or rather, they defined the geography and let the program decide what the middle point was. As long as you include Alaska and all the northern islands in the Canada land mass, the spot the lines are running to looks to be right smack dab in the middle if you chopped it in half north/south and east/west. The other countries look similar. The line for Mexico actually terminates in the ocean.
Domster

@#4 New Zealand’s arms, meanwhile, seem to have been dumped in the ocean a few hundred kilometres off the East coast.
Takuan

bloody kiwis, just can’t trust them. Remember the bloke that built a GPS controlled jet powered cruise missile in his garage?