Google Fusion Tables Info Windows

A short post today related to info windows for Google Fusion Tables maps. In case you didn't know, an info window is what pops up when you click on an area of a Google map - as shown below. I've blogged about this in the past and today am sharing some more tips in relation to how to get a Google Street View snapshot of an area to appear in the info window. I just added this in to my new SIMD website.

This page tells you how to add a Street View snapshot and there isn't really much to it. You just need to make sure you have an API console key (baffled? see this for how to get one) which is just a key code that you need to make it work.  All you need to get one is a Google account. The other thing you'll need is two columns in your table specifying a latitude and longitude. I do this in ArcGIS before importing the data into Fusion Tables. Once you've done this you can add in the Street View code to the Fusion Tables info window layout (via Tools, Change info window layout... as below) and then add in the code via the Custom tab.

I've added in an Employment page to my new SIMD site where this is all put into practice - I have an info window chart, some data and a Google Street View snapshot in it, plus some text. Here's the code that makes it work - I'm certainly not a coding expert so apologies if it is a bit messy. If you're into this kind of thing, I hope you find it useful. 

You can change the dimensions from 400x400 to whatever you like. The curly brackets specify which column the lat/long comes from so you will need to make sure that this matches the name of your lat/long columns.

The only downside to this is that the image it displays is fairly random and not always representative of the area people click on. Sometimes, no image is available.

Deprivation in Northern Ireland

On this blog I've covered deprivation in England, deprivation in Scotland and deprivation in Wales but, to date, not deprivation in Northern Ireland. Today I'll complete the UK set by looking at deprivation in Northern Ireland according to the Multiple Deprivation Measure 2010. What I've done is produce a couple of Google fusion table maps. A screenshot from one is shown below and if you click on it you'll be taken to a web page where you can select any local authority area. Clicking an individual area on the map will reveal a pop-up with all the information for that area, including the map key...

I've also produced a full screen version of this fusion table map, as you can see below in the screenshot. Once again, you just have to click an area on the map to find out more about it.

I'm going to get on to the more general subject of mapping deprivation and different methods and options for this type of thing (including cartograms) in a subsequent post but first a quick look at the actual deprivation data for Northern Ireland. According to the MDM, the most deprived super output area is the one named 'Whiterock 2' in Belfast, though this in itself is not perhaps that significant. Of more significance is where the clusters of the most deprived areas appear - and this is generally in Belfast and Derry. These two local government areas both have 47% of their super output areas classified among the 20% most deprived in Northern Ireland. Craigavon and Lisburn are next on the list, at 27% and 17% respectively. Having said that, many of the least deprived areas are also in Belfast, but this pattern is not mirrored in Derry.

In many ways, then, spatial patterns of deprivation in Northern Ireland are similar to those in different parts of the UK, with an inner-urban focus and smaller pockets and clusters of deprivation elsewhere. These are often located in close proximity to areas of affluence, though of course that is not really what the MDM measures.

The final image is a simple dot map showing the location of the 10% most and 10% least deprived super output areas in Northern Ireland in 2010...

The last thing to say is that this measure is produced by the same team who produce the deprivation indices for other parts of the UK. The web pages for the MDM are pretty useful and contain everything you need to know.

Info Windows for Google Maps (from Fusion Tables)

A slightly boring technical post today because from time to time people get in touch to ask technical questions. So, I thought I'd just share a bit of my (limited) knowledge on controlling what appears in a google map info window when you click a map layer using Fusion Tables. Most of this probably applies to non-Fusion Table maps as well. Here's what I'm talking about...

Link directly to this page here.

As you can see from the screenshot above, this info window has a chart (drawn from the Fusion Table which is mapped) an image (a map key) and some text, which also pulls out unique data for each area on the map when you click on it. Since Fusion Tables are relatively new, there isn't an awful lot of information out there on how to do this (at least not info that simpletons like me can understand) so I spent quite a bit of time experimenting with the code behind the info windows. There is some useful information on this page and the pages it links to but when you have your own dataset it can be a bit difficult to grasp.

Not much else to say except that I've copied an image below which shows the code and the info window side by side. If you click on the image it should take you to a PowerPoint file which you can then use to copy the code if you wish. I'm certainly no expert but someone may find this useful!

Further Fusion Experiments

A short post today to report on some further experimentation with google maps, fusion tables and Scottish deprivation data. I've been exploring patterns of deprivation for a talk I'm giving at the Employment Research Institute in Edinburgh this coming week. Some results follow but in the examples below, the red areas are most deprived, yellow next most and blue less deprived. First of all we have an extract from Wick...

Then one from Inverness...

And finally one from Campbeltown...

The point here is not really to map deprivation data, though of course that's what I've been doing. Instead, it is to test the capabilities of fusion tables. More specifically, I've tried to make the data from the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation from 2004, 2006 and 2009 appear in a chart when you click on an area - and I have been able to get it to work. When you click on any area in any of the maps above (best to use a full screen version), you'll see a chart in the info window that pops up, like this:

Information on how to do this can be found here. It's not that difficult but it does take a while to figure out. My view is that fusion tables are a very powerful way of visualising data and making it easily accessible online. Still in its infancy really but worth a look.

Google Fusion Tables

A short post today about the wonderful Google Fusion Tables. It may sound baffling, but Fusion Tables are basically a service (provided by Google, obviously) that allows you to manage and map large databases 'in the cloud', as they say. In plain speak, you can upload large tables of data and display them and map them and share them. For someone like me who is into mapping data, this is great because all you need to do is get your data into kml format. This can be done with normal GIS software like ArcGIS but the best way I have found is to use shpescape.



The example above is just something I created a couple of years ago in ArcGIS and then recently uploaded to Fusion Tables. It's a 'tile finder' for Ordnance Survey data so you can figure out which 20km tile you need to get based on which area you are interested in. This is not the point here though - I'm just showing how you can get data into google map format very easily.

If you work with lots of data on a regular basis - and particularly any mappable data - you should take a look at Fusion Tables...