Webfoot's Mapeteria

Want to make a choropleth thematic map (i.e. coloured based on your data) for Canadian provinces, U.S. states, or French départements? Or for countries of the world? This is the right place. (Here's one example; there are more below.)

To get a map, give me a version of your spreadsheet, then give me a few pieces of information on how it should be displayed, and I will give you a map!

NOTE: Google Maps display of country-based information doesn't work well -- it has too much information for most computers to cope. Use Google Earth instead for country-based information.

CSV file

The first thing I need is your actual data -- a file that says what territory has what value. I need a comma-separated-value file where the first column is the two-letter ISO country code, and the last value is the data value (like number of mosques or freqency of cancer). For provinces/states/départements, the second column needs to be the two-letter ISO code for that province/state/département. Get more detailed instructions on what the format needs to be.

What is the URL of your CSV file?

Divisors

If you have aggregate data for a region (like number of basketball teams in a country), but would really rather see colours based on per capita basis or on a per area basis (like number of basketball teams per capita or number of basketball teams per square kilometer), you can do that here!

What do you want your data divided by?

Colour mapping

If you don't specify a min and max cutoff, Mapeteria will colour the territory with the maximum data value bright red and the territory with the minimum data value completely white. You can specify where "full red" and "full white" are. Get a more detailed explanation.

What value do you want to correspond to the minimum colour value?:

What value do you want to correspond to the maximum colour value?:

Descriptive text (optional)

It is a good idea to embed some description of your data in the file, so that you can remember (and others can tell) what this map is of and where the data came from.

What is the title of this map?:

Where did your data come from?:

What year is your data from?:
Why should you give the year?

Hi-res or low-res?

High resolution
Low resolution
Beats me. You decide.

How do you choose the resolution?

Known Issues

Google Earth

In some (most?) configurations, downloading the KML won't launch Google Earth. If you have Google Earth installed and everything configured right, Google Earth should launch with this overlay. Unfortunately, it seems rare for everything to be configured just exactly precisely correctly. You might have to save this file on your local hard drive, then open the file from Google Earth.

On Linux, the KML overlays (sometimes?) show up as pure white on Google Earth. If you know why, I'd appreciate the help.

Google Maps

The display can be slow on Google Maps, especially the first time. Google seems to do some caching of the maps, so if you look at the map twice in quick succession, if should be faster.

The French hires KML seems to overwhelm Google Maps. If you want hires, look at it on Google Earth. If you want Google Maps, use lowres or default.

I don't have good error notification yet. I have the code to do lots of error detection, but I haven't figured out yet how to get that information to you. In particular, if Mapeteria can't find your CSV file, all you see is that the map shows up but not the data.

See the FAQ and credits.

Examples

You can try this:

Title: Per-capita paper consumption by country
URL: http://maps.webfoot.com/mapeteria/numerators/countryPaperConsumption2005.csv
Denominator: 1
Min colour value: 0
Max colour value: 335
Source: EarthTrends
Show KML or Google Maps

Or this:

Title: Guns per 100 civilians
URL: http://maps.webfoot.com/mapeteria/numerators/countryGuns.csv
Denominator: 1
Min colour value: 0
Max colour value: 90
Source: Small Arms Survey 2007
Show KML or Google Maps

Title: Men per 100 women
URL: http://maps.webfoot.com/mapeteria/numerators/countrySexRatio.csv
Denominator: 1
Min colour value: 90
Max colour value: 110
Source: United Nations World Population Prospects, 2006
Show KML or Google Maps

Title: Obese people per 100
URL: http://maps.webfoot.com/mapeteria/numerators/numerators/fatByCountry.csv
Denominator: 1
Min colour value: 2
Max colour value: 31
Source: OECD
Show KML or Google Maps

Title: US and Canadian Median age
URL: http://maps.webfoot.com/mapeteria/numerators/provinceMedianAge2000-2001.csv
Denominator: 1
Min colour value: 22
Max colour value: 40
Source: U.S. Census Bureau and Stats Canada
Show KML or Google Maps

Title: US and Canadian Median income in US dollars
URL: http://maps.webfoot.com/mapeteria/numerators/provinceMedianIncome2005.csv
Divisor: 1
Min colour value: 33000
Max colour value: 60000
Source: U.S. Census Bureau and Stats Canada
Year: 2006
Show KML or Google Maps

Or this:

Title: US State legislators per capita
URL: http://maps.webfoot.com/mapeteria/numerators/usStateRepresentation.csv
Divisor: P
Min colour value: 0
Max colour value: .0000003
Source: National Conference of State Legislators, http://www.ncsl.org/programs/legismgt/elect/cnstprst.htm
Year: 2007
Show KML or Google Maps

Or this:

Title: US average residential energy prices in cents per kilowatt-hour
URL: http://maps.webfoot.com/mapeteria/numerators/usStateResidentialElectricityPrices2006.csv
Divisor: 1
Min colour value: 6
Max colour value: 23
Source: Energy Information Administration, as reported by The Public Policy Institute of New York State, http://www.ppinys.org/reports/jtf/electricprices.html
Year: 2006
Show KML or Google Maps

Or this:

Title: Population density
URL: http://maps.webfoot.com/mapeteria/denominators/usStatePopulations2006.csv
Divisor: Area
Min colour value: 0
Max colour value: 350
Source: U.S. Census Bureau via Wikipedia
Year: 2006
Show KML or Google Maps

Or this:

Title: French Milk production (kiloliters)
URL: http://maps.webfoot.com/mapeteria/numerators/frMilkProduction1997.csv
Divisor: 1
Min colour value: 0
Max colour value: 1415510
Source: http://www.ac-nantes.fr:8080/peda/disc/histgeo/ouTICE/wingeo/departem.htm
Year: 1997
Show KML or Google Maps (Note: you'll need to recenter on France.)

Or this:

Title: French Grape production per capita (kg/person)
URL: http://maps.webfoot.com/mapeteria/numerators/frGrapeProduction1997.csv
Divisor: Population
Min colour value: 0
Max colour value: 2100
Source: http://www.ac-nantes.fr:8080/peda/disc/histgeo/ouTICE/wingeo/departem.htm
Year: 1997
Show KML or Google Maps (Note: you'll need to recenter on France.) Or this:

Title: Abortions per 1000 women aged 15-44
URL: http://maps.webfoot.com/mapeteria/numerators/usStateAbortionRate2000.csv
Divisor: Population
Min colour value: 0
Max colour value: 40
Source: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3500603.html
Year: 2000
Show KML or Google Maps