New map makes the Highlands look "less remote"

A new map of the Highlands has given a fresh view of the north and retells how the land lies.
The new map of the Highlands has been created using open digital terrain data from Ordnance Survey.The new map of the Highlands has been created using open digital terrain data from Ordnance Survey.
The new map of the Highlands has been created using open digital terrain data from Ordnance Survey.

Professor Alasdair Rae of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield used open data from Ordnance Survey to create the 3D relief map.

The typical map view, where north sits to the top, has been reorientated with the Highland Boundary Line sitting to the right-hand side of the map and the Great Glen down the centre.

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The effect brings the Highlands far closer to the viewer and avoids the traditional BBC weather map representation of the country, where the north trails off into the distance.

Professor Rae, who is originally from Inverness, said: “Growing up in the Highlands, at first you didn’t feel that you were remote from anything. Then I started travelling around a lot with my basketball team. We would play in Glasgow, Troon, Edinburgh and then they were the ones that felt remote.”

He added: “In my map I’ve tried to create a perspective that avoids conveying the impression of the Highlands as remote or bereft: they are very much the opposite.”

Professor Rae said he chose an “orthogonal camera” view of the Highlands, looking straight up the Great Glen.

He added: “This is an old cartographic technique, and may look slightly strange, but I wanted a view that put as much of the Highland terrain in the foreground as possible, and this was a good fit. I also exaggerated the elevation, to emphasise the topography.

“In this kind of view, unlike a typical perspective view of the world, the scale is not affected by distance from the camera so that places in the distance don’t become really small.

“It’s the kind of opposite of the effect we used to see for the Highlands in the old BBC weather map, for example. This was all part of trying to emphasise the the Highlands are not ‘remote’ or distant but very much the centre of the world!”

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