In-map Analytics

Maps are not just pretty pictures - they are data and information visualisation tools that bring out hidden or not so obvious facts about locations of interest.

This one shows where 450,000 jobs are physically located in the City of Melbourne.

City of Melbourne - Employment Distribution 2015

Such information is just trivia for most people but it is an invaluable insight for a business trying to reach this market. Think in terms of finding the best location for a billboard advertisement, strategic parking of company trucks for maximum brand exposure to the largest possible audience, or identifying the best location for opening up a new cafe, etc. 

The ability to mix and filter non-spatial data in real time has been a basic feature of business intelligence software and data visualisation dashboards for many years now. However, the same functionality is very difficult to implement in mapping applications due to the complexities involved in real time merging of spatial data and the information that can be attributed to it.

Traditional online mapping software simply does not allow individual users to select their own data, and create and style maps dynamically to their liking in real time. So there is always a data publisher or administrator involved who decides what can be mapped and how. Needless to say, this uses up valuable time and adds additional costs to the process.

But the age of personalised online mapping, where users select the data then filter it and style however they want, is just around the corner! The upcoming upgrade to MapDeck’s Thematic Mapper app will put into your hands a very powerful, personalised, in-map analytical tool.

City of Melbourne - buildings constructed before 1950.

In the example above, the building footprints (spatial features) and the attribute information (such as the year of construction, building height, number of floors, total area, number of occupants, etc.) come from a different source. Yet, both can be merged easily using standard Thematic Mapper functionality and filtered to show only a required subset of information. And the resulting map can be styled to user liking. No data publishers or administrators are involved in this process.

More announcements are coming soon, stay tuned!