A choropleth map is a type of statistical thematic map that uses colors corresponding with a number range to summarize a geographic characteristic within a geographic area. Typically Choropleths are used to display information such as population density or per-capita income.
You can easily add a Choropleth map to your dashboard by dragging and dropping it from the selection of map charts. It is located underneath the ‘Maps’ section.
After adding the map to your dashboard and clicking on the ‘data’ settings, you will see the three different dataslots you can add data to: geography, measures, and category. Let us take a look at each slot!
Unlike the other maps available the Choropleth Map only takes topography data. As topography data is used to display different areas on a map.
There are datasets in the public Luzmo library that can be used for this. If you just want to visualize countries, you could use the public dataset "World countries" which includes a Topography column. In case you need a map on the European level, try to search for the datasets with the word ‘NUTS’. Different options will appear.
If you use PostGIS (PostgreSQL's GIS extension, for geometry type) or SQL Server (for geometry/geography types) you can connect your datasets with topography data via our native connectors.
Alternatively, you can upload your own topography dataset by uploading a .geojson or .topojson file: if you don't know how to upload files to Luzmo, take a look at this Academy article. You could use e.g. geojson.io to create a .geojson file yourself!
Please note: Geojson and topojson files can only be uploaded via manual local uploads. You are unable to upload these file types via the API or a data connection.
Before adding your data to the measure slot be sure to link the dataset containing your measure data to the topography dataset. Learn More about Linking here.
After adding your geography data, and linking it to your measure dataset if needed, you can just add your measure column to the Measure slot. The data will appear immediately on the map.
You can use the category slot to define how the data is grouped. The measures that share the same value will be aggregated into a single area and displayed on the map with a shared color. In the example below we are using a hierarchy containing continent data to group the data by the continent.
Similar to a Heat Map, the Choropleth is a two-dimensional representation of data in which a range of values are represented by colors. You can manually define the ranges in the charts setting under the classification by switching the method to manual.
The choropleth map is similar to the heat map. However, the choropleth takes topography data while the heatmap takes coordinates data. More information about all available map types can be found here.