The Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) theme is really about constraints: build something using data meant for humanitarian response, not for cartography. That data is designed for global disaster planning, not fine-grained U.S. state mapping, and it showed — this was, honestly, the toughest entry to pull together all month.
Finding Utah inside a global dataset
The map draws on Who's On First, a locality dataset aggregated by HDX, filtered down to Utah's populated places. Getting a clear, Utah-specific picture out of a dataset built for global coverage took more filtering and cross-checking than any of the state-specific UGRC or UDOT sources used elsewhere in the challenge.
Small data, real use
The payoff is a settlement-distribution view that's genuinely useful for planning and emergency management — knowing where people live, at a glance, is a small but real building block for that kind of work, even when the map itself looks unassuming.
Created for the “Humanitarian Data Exchange” theme of the 2024 #30DayMapChallenge, using Who's On First locality data via HDX.