Build a dashboard with styled point locations
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Understanding population distribution has important implications in a wide range of geospatial analysis such as human exposure to hazards and climate change or improving geomarketing and site selection strategies.
In this tutorial we are going to represent the distribution of the most populated places by applying colours to each type of place and a point size based on the maximum population. Therefore, we can easily understand how the human settlement areas is distributed with a simple visualization that we can use in further analysis.
Access the Maps section from your CARTO Workspace using the Navigation menu and create a new Map using the button at the top right of the page. This will open the Builder in a new tab.
Let's add populated places source. To do so, follow the next steps:
Select the Add source from button at the bottom left on the page.
Select Custom Query (SQL) and then Type your own query under the CARTO Data Warehouse connection.
Click on the Add Source button.
The SQL Editor panel will be opened.
To add populated places source, run the query below:
Change the layer name to "Populated Places". Click over the layer card to start styling the layer.
In the Fill Color, we will use the 'Color based on' functionality to color by featurecla. It has information about what kind of places there are, so we will pick a palette for a categorical variable (versus a gradient). Additionally, we will remove the Stroke Color so we are able to differentiate the different categories.
Now click on the options for the Radius configuration and in the section “Radius Based On” pick the column pop_max. Play with the minimum/maximum size to style the layer as you like.
Go to Widget tab and click on 'New widget' to add a new Widget for "populated_places" source.
Select the Category widget, choose COUNT as the operation method and select the column admin0name. Then, rename your widget to 'Populated places by country'.
Using the Category widget on the right panel, select “United States of America” to filter out the rest of countries. You can also lock your selection to ensure the selection is not removed by mistake.
Let's now add another widget, this time a Pie widget based on featurecla. We will add a Markdown note for this widget to provide users with further information about each category type. We will also set the behaviour mode of this widget to global, so the represented date is for the whole dataset without it being affected by the viewport intersection.
Finally, we will rename this widget to 'Places by type' and move it to the top of the Widgets panel by dragging the card on the left panel.
The third and final widget we will add to our dashboard is a Histogram widget using pop_max column. This will allow users to select the cities based on the population. Finalise the widget configuration by setting the buckets limit to 10 and formatting the data to be displayed. Finally, rename the widget to 'Max population distribution'.
Interactions allow users to gather information about specific features, you can configure this functionality in the Interaction panel. First, select the type of interaction to Click and Info Panel. Then, add the attributes you are interested in, renaming and changing the formatting as needed.
Finally we can change our basemap. Go to Basemaps tab and select “Dark matter” from CARTO.
Rename the map to “Populated Places”.
Add a map description that will allow users understand the nature of your map.
Finally, let's export our map into a portable, easy-to-share PDF.
In the window that appears, select Include map legend. You can also include comments here (such as the version number or any details about your approval process). In the Share drop-down menu, select Download PDF Report.
Select Preview, and when you're happy Download PDF Report.
We can make the map public and share it online with our colleagues. For more details, see .
