Maps as dataviz tool

Maps are one of the oldest information visualisation tools and have been around for quite a while. There were times when map appearance was confined by application of the strictest rules in production, and of course the technology of the day, but once the capacity to create maps extended to general public maps as a data presentation medium blossomed in thousands of varieties. This is why working with maps is so exciting today…

Map is an abstract, graphical representation of the reality. These days that reality can be quite complex - we are after all capable of processing more and more data into information. So, as the result, there is ever increasing need to summarise and present complex spatial information in a meaningful and easy to comprehend way. This pushes the boundaries of modern cartography into seemingly unrelated disciplines of art, graphics, animations, etc.

A lot can be written on current trends in modern cartography but here is just one example of an innovative approach to presenting complex information on a map: 33 years of hurricane paths.

Opinions were divided on whether it was still “a map”, and some expressed a view that this presented “incorrect perspective on the world” but those who have open minds on modern cartography, and who have any experience in dealing with presentation of complex information, will undoubtedly be full of praises for the author of this “creation”!

Link to animated version (7.7MB): Hurricanes Flip-Book Style

ACT implements free data initiative

Following federal government and larger States, ACT government is the latest convert to the cause of liberating vast holdings of spatial and non-spatial data in hope of invigorating local business to develop innovative solution and use the data for better decision making. And in the process, to stimulate economic activity and increase the number and quality of services offered to the local community. Built on Socrata platform dataACT is an open data service initiative that will enable individuals, businesses and people in the public sector to access, explore and build upon existing government data sets.

dataACT has three core components which make it probably the most functional of all the initiatives in Australia. In particular, data is available in a machine readable and consistent range of data formats. This enables users to download static datasets in ready to use formats (eg. JSON but unfortunately, stopping short of being a dynamic web service). Secondly, the platform includes some basic data visualisation tools to make graphs or maps that can be embedded on external websites. This enables the creation of customised views of datasets for particular community needs or specific initiatives. However, the most exciting news is that data is uploaded from across the ACT Public Service through data integration systems that will update individual datasets appropriately. So, there is a commitment from day one to keep the data up to date.

Initial set of released data is only a teaser but it is a good start. Let’s hope that the ACT government will not back on its commitment to the project and take a leading role in liberating the data that would really make a difference – for the local spatial community it means access to street data, cadastre information, address files and/or geocoding service, property transactions data (current and historical), 2m contours / DEM, topographic data, tourism database and high resolution imagery over the Territory. Don’t get me wrong. There was a time when a release of information on “toilet locations” generated a furore (and many goods apps were created as the result) but if the expectation is to make a significant and lasting economic impact, more useable data needs to be put in the public domain.

Other data liberation and spatial data infrastructure initiatives seem to be fading fast after the initial flurry of activities, including myriad of hack-a-tons with rich prizes for participants. It is, after all, a hard work which requires more than just “sticking a few csv files on a web page” and hoping for the best. Let’s be brutally honest about it, it would be hard to name a single “public data mart” initiative in Australia that can really claim a success so, there is a big opportunity for dataACT to demonstrate how it should be done.

Related Posts:
What's the benefit of gov data warehouses?
Free data a GFC casualty
Governments intensify free data efforts
UK unlocks vaults of spatial data

Data viz tool from DataAppeal

Continuing the theme of data presentation, I would like to mention another application that caught my attention and which may be of interest to readers of this blog - especially as it does not require any training in GIS. It is called DataAppeal and is a web-based visualization application that allows users to transform location- specific data, stored in tabular format, into 3D animated maps.

The company behind the application set a very ambitious goal - "to bring together concepts of art, design and spatial analytics to increase interest in sharing information and knowledge between users, for quicker and better decision making".

Users can upload numeric data with location reference and render it into a 3D map using Google Earth application. The users can choose from a number of design templates or customise display options to achieve the desired "look" that will enhance the message they want to convey. Basic features are available under free subscription option but heavy users can upgrade to a more advanced version of the product, if required. The URL link of the data-map can be posted and shared through various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter or just email.

All in all, DataAppeal is simple to use and offers no-cost introduction to visualisation of corporate data on 3D maps.

Visualising Victoria's Groundwater

A few weeks ago Victorians added a new information source to the ever growing list of online interactive GIS applications: Visualising Victoria's Groundwater. The project is an initiative aimed at federating groundwater data from disparate sources to assist in groundwater research and water management.

The application contains extensive information on approximately 300,000 bores in across Victoria. The map also includes a number of useful layers to put the information in context. Those layers include elevation, depth to watertable and surface elevation.

It is built with OpenLayers framework and utilises Web Map Service (WMS) to facilitate publication of custom data. Click on the map brings up the information about a particular dataset, for that specific location (but is not enabled on all available layers; by the way, this is a great feature of WMS which is often overlooked by developers in favour of more complex solutions).

An interesting aspect of the application is that drawing tools are utilised as a feedback generation mechanism. That is, users can mark specific location and submit comments (“undo” option to remove drawn objects from the map would be a desirable functionality extension). There is also a support for exporting of numeric data (limited to a few hundred items at a time). As all modern GIS online applications it also supports layer reordering but I could not get this function to work properly. Overall, Visualising Victoria's Groundwater is quite nice and simple to use information presentation application.

The project has been funded by the State Government of Victoria - Broadband Enabled Innovation Program


First spotted on : Google Maps Mania

Landslides in Australia

Geoscience Australia has just released a simple mapping application that allows members of the public to search the internal landslide database for events that have occurred across Australia since 1842. A landslide consists of one or more related “landslips”. Since landslips are a naturally occurring phenomenon, they are difficult to predict and can often occur suddenly without any witnesses. This makes it difficult to determine some of the properties of a landslip, such as the triggering and contributing factors, and when exactly it occurred. Subsequently, landslip event details are sometimes incomplete as the information could not be determined. This is particularly true for historical records.

The Landslide Search application is intended to raise public awareness about this particular type of natural hazard in Australia. Users can customise search according to location, time or impact of the event, and view the results on a map and in an expandable table.

Visualising census data on maps

2011 Census of Population and Housing data was officially released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in late June 2011. Data is freely accessible on ABS site however, it is rather difficult to work with numeric tables alone to determine distribution of people with specific characteristics. Knowing geographic location of groups of interest can be invaluable in decision making for all variety of users: governments, businesses as well as individuals.

TableBuilder Basic, a free mapping application from ABS, will be released in August 2012 but you can start mapping and analysing of Census data right away: aus-emaps.com has just launched a free tool that enables creation of custom thematic maps with 70+ census data items from the Basic Community Profile. Below are just a few examples of what is available and how this information can be put to use.

Case 1: Locating areas with the greatest purchasing power

Personal incomes are indicative of propensity to spend so, areas with high median weekly income would be a primary target to concentrate promotional activities on if you want to attract customers for luxury items or high value investment products.

Case 2: Locating ethnic niches

Ethnicity related data can be used by various government departments delivering social services to profile their local customers in order, for example, to determine the need for personnel with specific language skills and/or adequate training to deal properly with cultural differences.

Case 3: Estimating market potential

Census data will help in determining if there is enough potential customers in a given location to support a business. For example, if you provide goods or services for infants and toddlers you would need to know how many are there in your catchment area.  

Case 4: Benchmarking investment performance

Property investors can take advantage of Census data related to housing. For example, median weekly rent statistics can help in determining whether their rental income is keeping up with the changes in the local market or not.

Explore the full set of data on Census 2011 Online Maps app.


Related Posts:
Census 2011 Online Maps User Guide
Mapping Australian social diversity
How maps can improve sales
Maps and property investment
Reference Maps for Fusion Tables

Reference Map for Fusion Tables

Reference Map for Fusion Tables is a free Web Application Service (WAS) provided by aus-emaps.com. The application enables displaying information stored in Google’s Fusion Tables as a thematic choropleth map. There are a few tricks you will need to know to put it to a good use. This post describes in detail how to configure Version 3 of the application to display custom choropleth maps (the concept of WAS is explained in an earlier post on this blog).

Firstly, some background information. Although Google included simple map configuration functionality within Fusion Tables, it is a manual process allowing formatting only one dataset at a time. If you have multiple columns of data available for mapping in a single table, the task of creating individual thematic maps can be quite a tedious process. Therefore, creating such maps programmatically, via Fusion Tables API, is the only viable option.

My recently released Census 2011 Online Maps application is an example of how to automate choropleth map creation process. There are two separate modules in that application. The first module enables selecting and analysing data stored in Fusion Tables, then formatting it for display as a thematic layer on a Google Map (ie. selecting number of classes, defining range break values and selecting colour scheme for thematic layer). The second module is a free-standing application, built with Google Map API, that displays the information from Fusion Tables as a thematic layer, formatted according to user requirements.

Now specifically about the mapping app. When designing Census 2011 Online Maps application I opted to incorporate Reference Map for Fusion Tables rather than coding mapping functionality from the scratch, but I had to update the application in order to enable proper formatting of numeric data retrieved from Fusion Tables. It also was an opportunity to expand the functionality of the reference map to enable generating thematic choropleth maps with 2, 3, 4 as well as 5 data ranges (five is a limit imposed by Fusion Tables API). All in all, the latest version of Reference Map for Fusion Tables now accepts a number of new parameters which enable quite extensive customisation of thematic layer for presentation on the map.

Below is a full list of accepted parameters and relevant options. Parameters flagged as “minimum” are compulsory in order to display Fusion Table in its “native style” (ie. as styled manually using relevant Fusion Tables functionality). “Optional” parameters can be omitted without degrading presentation of the information on the map. Please note, each parameter must be separated in compiled URL with “&” symbol.

Reference Map for Fusion Tables v3 – Acceptable Parameters:

ftl=  table id number eg: 1234567 [minimum]

q1c=geometry [minimum] - specifies which column contains spatial data

r1= defines the number of ranges for choropleth map: eg. 2, 3, 4 or 5

st1= thematic layer colour scheme selector, eg. b0=blue, pp0=purple, g0=green 2br0= blue-red; it is also possible to specify colours in reverse order as b0r, pp0r, g0r, 2br0r accordingly

qst1= SQL like data ranges specification; must correspond to the number of ranges specified for r1 parameter and be comma separated; column names must be between apostrophes; can  be either in ascending or descending order, eg.: 'Relevant Column Name' > 2030 AND 'Relevant Column Name ' <= 3035,'Relevant Column Name ' >= 0 AND 'Relevant Column Name' <= 2030  

q1=  SQL like WHERE query specification, to limit results to only specific set of data, eg. location: postcode > 1999 AND postcode < 3000  [optional]

n1= map title [optional]

xyz= allows to set map location and zoom level as longitude, latitude and zoom values, eg: 147.971361,-32.801441,6 [optional]

ad= can be used to hide ads on the map when set to 0, default is 1 [optional]


The following 3 parameters go together and are optional; each must contain the same number of variables separated by comma:

iw= allows to specify columns to be used to generate content of information window (“balloon”) that appears on the map when coloured polygons are clicked, eg. PC, D32 - if omitted the content of the window will be as specified manually using relevant Fusion Table functionality [optional]

iwalt= allows to specify alternative names for columns listed in iw parameter, eg. Postcode, Proportions of All Sales; default is column names as named in Fusion Tables [optional]

iwf= allows to specify format of numeric values returned from Fusion Tables, eg. n0, c2, %1, $0, where the first character indicates format option and the second (numeric value) specifies the number of decimal points; eg. if Fusion Tables column contains value 1.548  it will be formatted accordingly as: 1 (ie. “no format” and 0 decimal points),  1.55 (“comma format” for 1,000’s etc. and 2 decimal places), 154.8% (“percent format” with one decimal place) and $1 (“currency format” with 0 decimal places) [optional]. For columns with plain text use t0 code.

This is how fully compiled URL should look like:

http://www.aus-emaps.com/svs/ft/mapv3.php?
ftl=4369389
&xyz=147.971361,-32.801441,6
&n1=Median total family income weekly
&q1=name > 1999 AND name < 3000
&q1c=geometry
&r1=5
&st1=2br0
&qst1='B113' > 2030 AND 'B113' <= 3035,'B113' > 1484.5 AND 'B113' <= 2030,'B113' > 1194 AND 'B113' <= 1484.5,'B113' > 986 AND 'B113' <= 1194,'B113' >= 0 AND 'B113' <= 986
&ad=0
&iw=name,B113
&iwalt=Postcode,Median total family income weekly
&iwf=n0,$0

Finally, a short paragraph about the format of data in Fusion Tables that can be used with the Reference Map. The table must have polygons as a geographic component (eg. postcodes, suburbs, sales territories or other administrative boundaries) and it has to have a secondary descriptive column expressed as a number (eg. postcode number). The attributes to be mapped have to be numbers in order to divide them into meaningful ranges and to assign specific colours to those ranges. Those values could be any numbers representing characteristics of a given area (polygon) such as counts, percentages, densities or similar, or numbers used as “category descriptors” (eg. 1 means “mortgage stress belt”, 2 is “no mortgage burden areas”, etc...).

If it all gets too complicated, I will be happy to assist in setting up your own Fusion Tables account with a custom Reference Map.