Geo Maps using SAP Analytics Cloud

This is the third section of my blog series on SAP Analytics Cloud, and in this blog, we will get started with creating a basic Geo Map.

First and foremost, this blog assumes you understand the concept of Linked Analysis and how to create a story and a chart with this tool. If not,here are the links below to get familiar with them —

Creating a story- https://medium.com/@rajkumarbenny/introduction-to-data-visualization-using-saps-analytics-cloud-e7fb41c5c622

Linked analysis — https://medium.com/@rajkumarbenny/linked-analysis-with-sap-analytics-cloud-f264f83cca7a

Geo-Maps are a 21st century cartographer’s best friend. It has found its applications in many different fields — it has been applied in seismology to study areas hit with earthquakes and tsunamis and how to predict them, and in more popular cases, it has been used in studying population growth, and in studying climate change. There are many types of Maps, and they vary based on the purpose they are used for.

Whether you want to apply Geo Maps to your data, or if you are simply interested in creating a Geo Map since it looks cool, this blog will help you get started with it !

In this dataset that I used from https://mockaroo.com/ , we see that there are columns for latitudes and longitudes for each individual. But, before we go any further, let us take a moment to understand that the software doesn’t recognize the co-ordinates as they are, and we can’t really pinpoint the location of a person by just a single co-ordinate alone.

So, we get the software to recognize the two co-ordinates, namely the latitudes and the longitudes, by a process called Geo enriching. By geo enriching the co-ordinates, we basically create a single column, which I named as Mapping_2, that recognizes both the latitudes and longitudes.

The next step is to insert the Geo Map into the new page. I select the Location Dimension as Mapping_2 and we’re set with our first Geo Map !

Now, we can choose additional features to enrich our blog. The Layer type, by default, is specified as a Bubble Layer, and as we go further down, we can select the Bubble color, and that basically distinguishes one bubble from another based on a certain metric.

In this case, I choose the metric as Investment Amount , and based on the investment amount of the individuals, the bubble color changes based on the legend. Dark Red for high investment, and Dark blue for low investment.

Let us experiment by changing the layer type, and in this case, to Chloropeth Layer/ Drill Layer. It looks a lot more neater now , with the map displaying in terms of ‘countries’ rather than the individuals themselves.

But remember that the Chloropeth is used in the case of measuring population rather than the individual count, and in this case, each country is filled with relation to the investment amount. If the country has a higher investment amount, it’s in Dark Red. Thus, this layer is extremely useful when it comes to measuring population.

Lastly, I copy the table created with the individuals and the investment amount into the new canvas page.

I apply linked analysis to the table, and by doing so, whenever I click on any element in the table, I get the corresponding country with the value in the Geo Map !

Thus, this is how you get started with creating Geo Maps in SAP Analytics Cloud for the absolute beginners, and I hope that I covered every aspect of it !