Map: See Which Earthquake-Prone Areas Have the Most People

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This stunning Global Earthquake Intensity map was created by Benjamin D. Hennig at the University of Sheffield to communicate the general risk of the global population to earthquakes. Click here to read more about how Hennig created the map, or click on the image above for a huge version.

The color shows historical earthquake activity—the redder the region, the more earthquake-prone it is. The scale of map itself is distorted by population, in what the geographers among us call a “gridded equal-population cartogram.”

According to the press release, the map

gives each person living on earth the same amount of space while also preserving the geographical reference. The map does not only show the areas that are at highest risk, but also how this risk relates to global population distribution.

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One small nugget of good that has come out of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan has been the burst of creative tools and resources that have come as responses to the disaster.