PL-300 – Section 7: Part 1 Level 6: Mapping Part 3

70. ArcGIS Maps for Power BI

Now, there is one other type of mapping visualisation and it is this one, the ArcGIS. GIS standing for Geographic Information System. Now, this is a third party add-in, ArcGIS is a company that specializes in mapping. And what you can see here is a three taster. There is additional functionality that is available with a plus subscription which can be purchased at an individual level or for the entire organisation. And there’s also art GIS online which allows for the more secure organisational GIS data. But for this particular video, we’re just going to have a look at the version that ships with Power BI.

So, you can see the writing is very small, so we seem to have the same sort of things that we’ve had before. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to put in the state from the U.S. states into location and see what happens. You can see we’ve got a representation here of the United States, so I can put a population in the colour. So, we can see after a few seconds, there’s a bit of latency, this has to go online to retrieve what it’s trying to do. How populous these United States are.

Now, I’ll try and drag in country as well and you can see, I can’t, I can only drag in one thing into the location. So, how could I say that these are all United States based? Well, after all, there’s a Boston for instance, in the United Kingdom. I can click on the format within the visualisation pane and go down to location type and I can change this to whatever country I want. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have all of the countries in the world which is a particular problem with our Afghanistan model because Afghanistan is not one of those.

Let’s look and see what else we can do in these map tools. We can also add zoom tools, on and off so I can zoom in and out choosing those tools. We can add base maps; I’ll show you what that does in a few minutes. And we can also lock the extent, so at the moment I can move the map around as much as I want. If I lock the extent, then I’m not able to. So personally, I have the zoom tools off.

Now, we’ve also got a position for something called the infographics. What is the infographics? Well, that could be the population of a country. Let’s add infographics on. And I’m going to click up here and the top left to expand map tools and we can see lots of different map tools go on. And if I was to select base maps, you would see an additional tool there as well which I think is quite useful. So, let’s go and add the infographics and I do that by clicking on this analysis tools and then we can see, we have got infographics right at the top.

So, I can say, I want to see the total population, I’m just going to reduce these so you can see this text a bit better. So, maybe, I want total population, I’ll just check that, close it. And now when I hover over any of these, you can see the population and over here in the top right you can see the United States current population as of 2016 in this case.

Looking at what else we can do here, we can add a reference layer. So, this can have a graphical layer for the country or states or something. So, maybe, I’ll put in the population density or maybe the per capita income. So, I’ll click add on that but nothing seems to be working. And the reason for that could be that we already have a layer, which is completely graphical. You know, it’s filled in maps, okay? Maybe, let’s change the filled in maps.

So, what we’re going to do, we’re going to go to our layers and you can see that there are two layers. So first one relates to the state, so this is the population that I have put in. So, just there and the other relates this U.S. per capita that have also I’ll put in. So, let’s change this top layer. So, I’ll click on the dot-dot-dot (…) next to it and go to zymology. And we can see we have a huge amount of things we can change.

So, we can see where the placements of all of these colours are, the colour ramp. Maybe, I want this colour to be a lot high, well, that’s okay, I can just move that and you can see that these states over here change colour when I do that. So, I can fine tune it, maybe I don’t want five classes, five different colours, I want two. So, now we can see it’s either low, middle or high or maybe I want 10. So that gives us a lot more into terms of diverseness.

Now, maybe, I don’t actually want it to be filled. Maybe, I just want it to be points. Well, let’s change that. So, we’ll go to location type in this layer section and I say, these locations do not represent boundaries. They represent points. And it’s also here that you can say that the locations are in one country or many countries and if it is one country, one country it is. So now you can see that we’ve got these individual points. And if ours to zoom in, we will eventually see the second layer forming underneath. So, this is the U.S. per capita.

Now, let’s change this back so that it is a filled state, I think that is probably the best for actual states, United States to have them filled. If there were cities, then that would be different. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to go to a new page and I’m going to add another ArcGIS map. And this one is going to be based on the United Kingdom data that we’ve got. So, I’ll put region name in location and here we can see we’re mapping these locations fairly well, have to say, even though they are broad locations and maybe I’m putting in the sales volume into the colour and into the size as well. So, we can visually see that the West Midlands and the greater Manchester are much more prominent.

Let’s have a quick look at the other options you’ve got. So, this is a selection tool so we can either say, I want to select singly or I want to select multiple locations. So, if I was to select multiple locations then I could do that and select multiple locations. I can find a particular location, so I suppose I was looking for West Midlands. Here we have the West Midlands. And maybe I wanted to see, okay, these are real places, I want to see what’s close to this particular area. So, what I’m you now, first of all, I’m going to see what reference layers I can add for this. So, I’m going to search ArcGIS for England because it would have to be England specific. And if I scroll down we can see the police force boundaries. So, we can see which areas these places are in. But what is close to this?

Well, let’s add our drive time. So, I want to see, click, all locations within five miles. Okay, so these are locations within five miles. So, you might see other stores and go, oh, that’s interesting but let’s change this now. So, I’m going to instead, click, say, I want to see all of those things which are within 30 minutes’ drive so that this takes account wherever there’s motorways for instance nearby. And so, here we can see, after a few minutes, all of those areas which are within 30 minutes’ drive, you can see with all of these quite a lot of things that we can adjust as well. Finally, let’s create a graphic based on our Afghanistan data. So, I’m going to go into Afghanistan and I’m going to put name two into location, it’s a real that we can’t put in country as well.

Notice what it says at the bottom. It says that the accuracy of your locations can be improved, go to location type. Well, location type is where we were and I want to say, it’s in one country, it’s in Afghanistan but there’s no such option so, I can’t do that. So, it’s not as good for countries where it doesn’t have all of the details. So, I’m going to put in the number into colour and into size, zoom in into the Afghanistan area.

Let’s add an additional layer so, I’m going to click on the spanner and then reference layer. Click on ArcGIS, look for Afghanistan and we can see Afghanistan districts so I’m going to add that so we can see various districts. Maybe, I’ll zoom back in, find a particular place near Kabul, the capital. And I want to say, okay, what’s near driving time? So, what’s near there? So, I’m going to click on that and I’m going to say anything that is this many miles, yards, kilometres, metres away, or this many minutes.

Now, you can see each time I do this, there is a bit of a lag because it’s got to go to the server and then come back so there’s a bit of latency. So, that latency doesn’t exist if you’re using one of the native mapping tools. So, where possible I would suggest using the native mapping tools you have identified a particular need to use the ArcGIS and then you can use this additional functionality that is included in ArcGIS. So, this is the base version but you could get a plus version that’ll allow you to do more at an extra cost.