Working with Geography Data Items :: SAS® Visual Analytics 7.4: User's Guide

About Geographic Data Items

A geography data item can be useful if your data contains values that are mapped to geographical locations or regions. For example, a geography data item can identify geographic information that is specific to your organization (for example, sales regions, warehouse locations, oil platforms, and so on).

If you change a numeric measure to a geography data item, then it automatically becomes a category data item.

Note: Custom data items cannot be changed into geography data items.

Use a Predefined Geography Data Item

You can use the geography data items that are available in SAS Visual Analytics or you can create custom geography data items. To access existing geography data items, select the Data tab in the left pane. Right-click the data item that you want to use for the geography data item, and then select Geography. Then, select one of the following items:

Country or Region Names
Country or Region ISO 2-Letter Codes
Country or Region ISO Numeric Codes
Country or Region SAS Map ID Values
Subdivision (State, Region, Province) Names
Subdivision (State, Region, Province) SAS Map ID Values
US State Names
US State Abbreviations
US ZIP Codes

Note: For predefined geographic roles, the values of your geography data items must match the lookup values that are used by SAS Visual Analytics. To view the lookup values, see http://support.sas.com/va72geo.

Tip

To get geographic maps to work with any data set, add a column with the predefined lookup values to your data set.

Create a Custom Geography Data Item

A custom geography data item consists of three values:

Latitude
Longitude
A category (other than the latitude or the longitude)

For example, suppose you have data that includes airport location identifiers, latitude, and longitude. You can convert the airport location identifiers to custom geography data items.

To create a custom geography data item:

On the Data tab in the left pane, right-click the data item that you want to use for the custom geography data item. Select Geography, and then select Custom. The Geography window is displayed.

Tip
Make sure that the data item that you select is a category data item other than the latitude or the longitude.
Select a measure for the Latitude. You can also enter the first letter of the name of the latitude column to quickly search for it in the drop-down menu.
Select a measure for the Longitude. You can also enter the first letter of the name of the longitude column to quickly search for it in the drop-down menu.
Select a Coordinate space (coordinate system) that is used to project the longitude and latitude coordinate values. Your choices are World Geodetic System (WGS84), Web Mercator, and British National Grid (OSGB36). The default is World Geodetic System (WGS84).

Note: The coordinate space should match the projection that your data is in. The designer supports the World Geodetic System (WGS84), Web Mercator (EPSG:3857), and British National Grid (EPSG:27700) for data coordinate space.
Click OK. The icon identifies the new geography data item on the Data tab.