How Far Are You From the Nearest Airport?

The science

This map answers a subtle question: from any given point, how far is the nearest airport? It uses the same open aviation data as our airport density print – airport locations from OurAirports, the DAFIF database and the UN's civil aviation organization – but treats them geometrically.

The technique is called a Voronoi diagram: the world is divided into cells, one per airport, where every point inside a cell is closer to that airport than to any other. It is a classic method in computational geometry, used for everything from mobile phone networks to ecology.

How we turned it into a print

Each polygon represents the territory nearest to a single airport. Large shapes mean remote regions with few airports; small, tightly packed shapes mean dense aviation coverage. The pattern is the inverse of emptiness – the biggest cells fall over the Sahara, Siberia and the open interior of Australia. It is a geometric, almost crystalline portrait of accessibility.

The print

From our Minimal collection and Maps for Travel Lovers, The World as Distance to Airport is printed on premium paper in 70x50 cm and 100x70 cm. Data source: OurAirports, DAFIF (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency), ICAO.