Often I have had various GeoCommons users ask me, “How do I turn my excel spreadsheet data into proportional shapes like the map below?”

Before now I would have told these users that they would have to use complicated and expensive mapping software. This would allow users to combine spreadsheet data with the desired shapes that they want to view on their map.

I am now happy to announce that with GeoCommons you no longer have to rely on the ways of the past. Now FortiusOne has created the new feature of GeoJoin which allows you to move beyond points and easily visualize regions. Below is a walk-through of the process or click this link to view a video that will visually assist you.

First, I have a spreadsheet of data in excel. The data is of various States in the USA with a corresponding value associated with each State.

Now I want to take this data and visualize it proportionally as the actual shapes of the States on my map. So, after saving the excel spreadsheet as a csv file I then upload it into Finder!

After I upload the file I proceed to the next steps:

Pending layers list. Click Next.

In Step 2 of the upload process click “Join with a boundary dataset”. This is the step I choose to perform the GeoJoin process.

The next part of step 2 allows me to search the Finder! database to find the appropriate boundary dataset to join to the data in my excel spreadsheet. In this case I want to find a boundary dataset of States in the USA. I can either search for the right boundary dataset by searching in the search bar or I can use the categories on the left hand side of the page to navigate to the appropriate dataset.

After the appropriate boundary dataset is chosen, my next step is to choose what attributes in the datasets I want to join together. In this case I’m matching ‘state’ from my data with ‘State name’ in the selected layer. I pay close attention to the message on the right hand side of the box to see how successful my GeoJoin match is.

I proceed through the rest of the upload steps of review, describe, and then map. When making a map in Maker! I choose to map by visual theme and can now view my map proportionally as it appears below.

GeoJoin is a great new feature of GeoCommons. To see a listing of what boundary datasets are available in Finder search ‘referenceboundary’ in the search bar on the Finder! homepage. There is a wide range from international borders to neighborhood boundaries of cities in the USA. Check it out and start GeoJoining today.

Popularity: 8% [?]

At the GeoCommons Office some of us are into Foursquare.  Foursquare is a location based game with social networking aspects.  Essentially when you go somewhere you “check-in” and you can get points for that.  Whoever has the most check-ins at a location becomes the “Mayor” of that location.  Here is the page for FortiusOne/GeoCommons, as you can see I’m currently the Mayor.

You can get your check-in feed as RSS, KML and ICS from the feeds page.

From the Finder! API you can register URLs.  Below is a sample curl command to register a KML feed of your Foursquare check-ins.

curl -i -X POST -u “yourusername:yourpassword” -d “overlay[wild_url]=http://feeds.foursquare.com/history/yourkmlfeed.kml” http://finder.geocommons.com/overlays.xml

Replace “yourusername:yourpassword” with your GeoCommons username and password and “http://feeds.foursquare.com/history/yourkmlfeed.kml” with your Foursquare KML feed.

By default your layer is not shared in Finder!, if you want to make a map though you have to share it.  In order to share it go to Finder and login.  Once logged in press “My Layers” and share your layer there.  If you ever decide you no longer want to share your check-in feed you can mark it “not shared” here as well.

Once your layer is uploaded and shared you can create a map.

I embedded the map I made in my personal blog’s about page.  To embed your map click on the “Details” button while viewing the map and then click on “Do you want to embed this map in your website?”  Copy the code that appears and paste it into the HTML of your blog or other website.

If you enjoy playing Foursquare and want to share your feed try this out.  For more information on the Finder! API checkout it out here. Also if you ever happen to visit us in the GeoCommons’ office, check-in it is an order from the Mayor.

Popularity: 17% [?]

We’ve been collaborating with our co-founders back at George Mason for the last few months on a paper modeling oil dependency/vulnerability from a geographic perspective. We wrapped up the paper yesterday and it got me thinking about what a fully interactive version of the paper would look like. What if all the maps and charts were embeds? What if you could download all the data sets used for the analysis right from the paper?

While many journal have come online and some even in openly accessible venues - I don’t think we’ve really tapped the power of the Web for interactivity, data sharing, innovation, or peer review. Having more interactivity in charts and maps could make research more accessible and engaging. Further, having the data for a paper downloadable could provide better peer review, and create the opportunity to innovate and extend the research. A fellow resercher could have an idea to extend or optimize an equartion test it on the same data set and see if it yielded better results.

Currently the academic peer review system is quite limited with a only a few colleagues reviewing papers. This is often a bit of a buddy system, especially in fields with only a few experts. Opening up the commenting and feedback process could foster even better critique of work. By also making data available, an incentive is created for fellow researchers to interact with the research, provide feedback, and collaborate with authors. Potentially you could create a journal in such a format leveraging interactive tools across the web like Swivel, InfoChimps, ManyEyes, YouTube, Google Charts, DataMash, or Flickr, To give this idea a go I’ve created an example of what such an article could look like with our oil paper as the guinea pig:

The Repercussions of Being Addicted to Oil: Geospatial Modeling of Supply Shocks

Laurie Schintler – George Mason University School of Public Policy
Rajendra Kulkarni – George Mason University School of Public Policy
Tom Buckley – FortiusOne Inc.
Emily Sciarillo – FortiusOne Inc.
Sean Gorman – FortiusOne Inc.

Abstract

In a world addicted to oil and the prodigious infrastructure that produces it there are distinct spatial variations in oil dependence and vulnerability. Depending on a countries location they have dependencies of different sources of oil. Disruptions in any one source of oil will have differing impact in both magnitude and breadth of countries affected. To begin to understand such a volatile landscape this paper will review pertinent literature surrounding oil shocks and propose a model of how they can be geospatially modeled. Specifically the modeling will calculate an oil import vulnerability index, oil dependency index and the percent reduction in import diversity for 63 countries.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 25% [?]

Farmers markets are an important part of our food system in the US both for giving citizens access to fresh and healthy produce and other locally produced products and for giving local farmers an opportunity to market and sell their products. They also play a role in providing a more environmentally friendly food source than foods shipped from far away, even from other countries. Also, with more food contamination outbreaks occurring from mass produced products, farmers markets can offer a local alternative for fresh foods. With summer fast approaching and the seasons fresh picks beginning to ripen, many seasonal markets are or will soon open for business.

The USDA provides a database on their website that lists all of the farmers markets in the US, by state. We have geocoded all of these markets and put them together in one dataset. The dataset also contains useful information such as the market schedule and if the market takes food stamps. This dataset can be used just to locate a market closest to you or to do analysis in the areas of agriculture, public health and economics.

This map shows all of the markets in the US. Using Maker!, you click on a point and all of the market information will be available.

(Click on map to view in Maker!)

Below, you can see the markets in different cities in the US.

Farmers Markets, while a great way to get fresh produce and other products , can sometimes be pricey. That means that citizens who may be most in need of access to healthy foods can often not afford to shop at their local market. Since some markets accept food stamps (EBT), I thought it would be interesting to look at the markets that accept EBT with January 2009 unemployment rates by county. The map below shows areas with populations that may be suffering economically which can limit their access to farmers markets. These populations may benefit from markets who accept EBT (the dataset also contains information on which markets accept WIC and SFMNP).

Click here to view this map.

(Finder! also has datasets for Farmers Markets for each state. Click here to access those.)

Popularity: 12% [?]