From Britain to China to Mali, new maps showing travel times to the nearest urban centre reveal huge differences between countries. Using Open Street Map and Google, a University of Oxford team have created a visual breakdown that suggests major inequalities when it comes to commuting. Here: China. The dataset used for China was unique as it relied solely on Open Street Map, due to restrictions on accessing Google data. The population is densely concentrated in the east and accessibility is increased, whereas rural provinces in the west remain remote. (Photo by Daniel Weiss/Jennifer Rozier/Malaria Atlas Project/University of Oxford)

People take part in a water gun battle as part of the annual Songkran festival, also known as water festival, the traditional Thai New Year celebrations, at the tourist spot of Khao San Road in Bangkok, Thailand, 13 April 2023. Thailand celebrates its first water-splashing Songkran festival following a three-year pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Songkran is celebrated with splashing water and putting powder on each other's faces as a symbolic sign of cleansing and washing away the sins from the old year. (Photo by Rungroj Yongrit/EPA)

Workers carry sacks of coffee beans at a warehouse at the Nogales farm in Jinotega, Nicaragua January 7, 2016. Soaring temperatures in Central America due to climate change are forcing farmers to pull up coffee trees and replace them with cocoa, spurring a revival in the cultivation of a crop once so essential to the region's economy. (Photo by Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters)

People use snowshoes during a tour of the Great Kemeri Bog, Latvia, October 17, 2015. The Kemeri bog is more than 8,000 years old and is one of the largest dry moss swamps in the Baltics. A more than decade-long joint restoration of the bog by the European Union and the Latvian government helped the bog recover its high moss marshes, damp black alder forests, floodplain meadows and seaside lakes – features now considered rare in Europe due to industrialisation. (Photo by Ints Kalnins/Reuters)

Graffiti saying “justice” partially seen above flood waters in Asuncion, December 27, 2015. More than 100,000 people have had to evacuate from their homes in the bordering areas of Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina due to severe flooding in the wake of heavy summer rains brought on by El Nino, authorities said on Saturday. (Photo by Jorge Adorno/Reuters)

A worker carries a tray of boiled tofu in a traditional tofu factory in Depok, Indonesia, 21 January 2015. Tofu has been a common side dish for many Indonesian families. It is healthy, inexpensive and easy to find throughout the city. Tofu entrepreneurs in Indonesia are suffering due to the weakening of the rupiah against the US dollar and the rise in prices of imported soybeans in the international market, forcing tofu-makers to cut their production and lay off staff. (Photo by Adi Weda/EPA)

Russian President Vladimir Putin visits the Byzantine and Christian museum in Athens, Friday, May 27, 2016. Russia's president is due in financially struggling Greece Friday for a state visit that will include a trip to a 1,000-year-old, all-male Orthodox Christian sanctuary in the north of the country. (Photo by Thanassis Stavrakis/AP Photo)

Partially constructed notched burial plots are seen at the construction site of an underground tunnel designated for traditional Jewish burial at the Givat Shaul cemetery, on May 14, 2015, in Jerusalem, Israel. Underground cemetery being built by the Israeli Burial Society in Jerusalem due to a decrease in available land for traditional Jewish burials. (Photo by David Vaaknin/The Washington Post)