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⚠️Active Development Notice: TimeTiles is under active development. Information may be placeholder content or not up-to-date.
Overview

What is TimeTiles?

TimeTiles is an open-source platform that transforms spreadsheets of events into interactive, explorable chronicles on a map. Built for journalists, researchers, activists, and organizations, TimeTiles makes complex spatio-temporal data accessible and engaging for any audience.

🎯 In Simple Terms

Upload a CSV file with events, dates, and locations → TimeTiles creates an interactive map with timeline controls → Share or embed your chronicle anywhere.

The Problem TimeTiles Solves

Traditional tools fall short when it comes to geospatial storytelling:

  • Excel/Sheets: Can’t handle maps or large datasets effectively
  • BI Dashboards (Metabase, Superset): Too complex for non-experts, dashboard-focused rather than narrative
  • GIS Tools (QGIS, ArcGIS): Require technical expertise, not designed for public consumption
  • Custom Solutions: Time-intensive to build, hard to maintain

TimeTiles bridges this gap by providing a ready-made platform specifically designed for creating interactive chronicles of geospatial events.

Core Concepts

Interactive Chronicles

Unlike static reports or complex dashboards, TimeTiles creates interactive chronicles - explorable datasets with narrative elements that allow readers to discover patterns and stories within your data.

Event-Centric Design

Every data point in TimeTiles represents an event that happened at a specific:

  • Location (latitude/longitude)
  • Time (date/timestamp)
  • Context (rich metadata like victim info, categories, descriptions)

Non-Expert Friendly

TimeTiles is designed for storytelling, not analysis. Your audience doesn’t need to understand SQL queries or statistical concepts - they can simply pan, zoom, and filter to explore your data intuitively

How It Works

1. Import Your Data

CSV/Excel → TimeTiles → Interactive Chronicle

Bring your data from:

  • CSV/Excel files with location and timestamp columns
  • JSON datasets from investigations or APIs
  • API endpoints for live data feeds
  • Manual entry for smaller datasets

2. Automatic Processing

TimeTiles automatically:

  • Detects schema and suggests optimal field mappings
  • Geocodes addresses when only text locations are available
  • Clusters nearby events for performance with large datasets
  • Generates visualizations appropriate for your data

3. Share Your Chronicle

Deploy as:

  • Public website for maximum reach
  • Private instance for internal research
  • Embeddable widgets (future feature) for integration into articles

Real-World Examples

Journalist: Police Shooting Database

“I have a database of fatal police shootings and want to display it to the general public (non-experts in exploring data).”

Challenge: Making 5 years of police shooting data accessible to readers who aren’t data analysts.

TimeTiles Solution: Import CSV data with victim demographics, location coordinates, and incident details. Readers can explore patterns by filtering by victim age, race, or weapon status while seeing geographic and temporal clusters.

Researcher: Investigation Dataset

“I have a dump of 100k points coming out of a journalistic investigation and want to explore the data.”

Challenge: Analyzing massive datasets to find newsworthy patterns and stories.

TimeTiles Solution: Import the full dataset and use server-side clustering to maintain performance. Filter by metadata fields to identify trends, then create focused chronicles highlighting specific findings.

Activist: Environmental Justice

“Document pollution incidents in marginalized communities over the past decade.”

Challenge: Connecting environmental data to demographic patterns in a way that’s compelling for policy advocacy.

TimeTiles Solution: Combine pollution incident data with community demographic information, allowing advocates to show clear patterns of environmental racism through interactive exploration.

⚡ Key Capabilities

Data Import

  • Upload CSV or Excel files
  • Automatic schema detection
  • Batch processing for large datasets
  • Smart geocoding with fallbacks

Visualization

  • Clustered map views for thousands of events
  • Timeline scrubbing and animation
  • Histogram and statistical charts
  • Customizable themes and styles

Sharing

  • Public or private chronicles
  • Embeddable widgets for websites
  • Shareable links with filters preserved
  • Export capabilities

Learn More

  • Core Concepts - Understand events, chronicles, and data flow
  • Comparison - See how TimeTiles differs from similar tools

TimeTiles is open-source software funded by the Prototype Fund from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

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