SpatialKey continues to evolve and add new capabilities making it one of the most powerful location intelligence tools available for business users. This release focused on improved mapping. Not only have we made mapping easier, we’ve added new capabilities to showcase your data in new ways. We now offer thematic maps by state, county or zipcode as well as custom thematic maps. If you are an existing beta user of SpatialKey and have data within your organization you can take advantage of these features today. Simply login and start creating thematic maps by state, county or zipcode. SpatialKey also supports custom thematic mapping, allowing users to create map custom geographic areas like sales territories, block groups or any other custom shape that can be represented on the map.
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| Custom thematic map | Thematic by state | Thematic by county |
An overview of what you will find in this release:
Mapping wizard
The map wizard is a new addition to the SpatialKey report creator that provides a simple step-by-step process to walk you through mapping your data. As new mapping features have been added to SpatialKey our goal has been to preserve the simplicity and ease of use for new users, but not allow it to get in the way of power users. The mapping wizard is automatically invoked anytime a new dataset is added to a map within a report. Figure 1 below shows the first step in the mapping wizard where you choose the specific type of rendering you want to use in your map. For a walkthrough of the map wizard within SpatialKey see this article.
Figure 1: Selecting a renderer in the mapping wizard
Thematic maps
A thematic map is a type of map especially designed to show a particular theme connected with a specific geographic area. SpatialKey provides thematic maps by state, county and zipcode if your data is in the United States but also support custom thematic maps using custom shape files. Figure 2 below shows the mapping wizard where a user selects if they want to see their data using US geographic boundaries (State, County, zipcode) or custom boundaries.
Figure 2: Selecting a thematic mapping option in the mapping wizard.
State, County and ZIP code thematic maps
SpatialKey provides an easy to use solution to thematically map your data by state, county or ZIP code. Based on the geographic distribution of your data SpatialKey will start at a zoom level and granularity that works best with your data. If you have data that spreads across the United States SpatialKey will start with a state based thematic map (as show in Figure 3). As you zoom in SpatialKey automatically changes the granularity to county or ZIP code as shown in Figure 3.1 and Figure 3.2. You can also manually switch between the different thematic maps see Figure 3.3 for an example. For a walk through of creating state, county and ZIP code thematic maps see this article.
Figure 3: Sales by state
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| Figure 3.1: County thematic map | Figure 3.2: ZIP code thematic map |
Figure 3.3: Switching thematic layers
Custom thematic maps
Beyond state, county and ZIP code SpatialKey can thematically map your data using custom geographic boundaries. Some examples of custom thematic maps include but are not limited to:
- Sales by territory
- Foreclosures by block group
- Risk assessment by flood zone
Figure 4: Custom thematic map by sales territory
To create a thematic map you need a shape file to represent the geographic boundaries, a csv for the data and a common field between the csv and shape file to join the data.
General mapping improvements
We have added several other features in this release that enhance the mapping capabilities of SpatialKey.
Identify hotspots by low values
The default heat map rendering with SpatialKey highlights areas with the highest value. With this release you can invert the color scheme and have the heatmap identify areas with the lowest value. For example with a real estate dataset you could highlight lower priced areas or with sales data you could highlight low performing areas.
Figure 5: Highlight low values with hotspots
Linking multiple maps together
If a report has two or more maps you can link them together so that they pan and zoom together. When a second map is added to a report the “Link Maps” option appears on the map control bar. For more information on this feature see this article on linking multiple maps.
Figure 6: Linking two maps together by pan and zoom
Zooming to an address
If you need to focus your analysis to a specific location on the map simply open the zoom option in the toolbar and enter an address. SpatialKey will zoom and center the map to this location. This makes it very easy to move from one location to the next without having to continuously pan and zoom. SpatialKey supports several different zooming options, for more details see this article.
Figure 7: Zoom to address
SpatialKey March 2017 Release Notes