This week I was doing some research on the tragic events in Japan for a client of ours, and we needed to be able to draw multiple radius/circle overlays using GMaps Plugin for Xcelsius. We basically needed to show the potential reach, at multiple distances, of the evacuations ordered due to the radiation coming from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.
Rendering shapes using GMaps Plugin is very easy, but I needed to be able to track down the latitude and longitude coordinates of these radii fast. Naturally, I took to Google to find a free tool to quickly generate these shape overlays and came across an incredibly useful and easy-to-use tool here http://www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm. Within 10 minutes, I was able to track down this website, generate radii around the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, export my radii data to KML, and hook it all up into Xcelsius. I’ll definitely be using freemaptools.com for things like this until we bake shape-creating functionality into our map.
You can view the basic interactive map here.
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