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Sunday 10 June 2012

Fusion Tables, Occupations Ireland map

I've been looking for a reason to use google fusion tables. Here is the result Occupations in Ireland map by Electoral District

Inspired by Guardian Datablog and this example by @manaboutcouch 2006-2011 population change and with a guide fusiontables with Irish census data by rusty at dt106ers blog.

I looked back at using openheatmaps but it easier in fusiontables to upload custom polygons, one could set up openheatmaps yourself and add new boundaries but I'd need more information on how to do that.

I got the broad occupations in the
CSO Database by Electoral districts

  • Farming, fishing and forestry managers
  • Other agricultural workers
  • Manufacturing workers
  • Building and construction workers
  • Clerical and office workers
  • Administrative and Government workers
  • Transport workers
  • Sales workers
  • Professional workers
  • Services workers
  • Other workers
  • Total

I change the raw numbers in percentages of the total in each area so the compared across all areas.

Using 2006 data as the 2011 isn't available yet.
Boundaries files
2006 Census Boundaries shp files


There is an error in files, a Roscommon ED Lough Allen/Altagowlan is listed as 20 not 30, have to change.

The cso data doesn't have the full 5 number CSO code, county electoral area so you have to go down the list add that the county code if you using open office make sure you format and open that row by text to keep the leading zeros.

You can use the free Quantum GIS programme setting projection as TM75/Irish Grid.
Select just the EDs and save as ESRI shapefile, pack the 4 associated files into a zip and upload to shpescape, which will convert it fusion tables kml format.

I converted the CSO data to precentages so I could compare all EDs. Merge with the CSO data with the geometry data by the common CSO Code.

Occupation by County It seems that higher values should be darker but to me the lighter shades jump out more and you can read the location. I took advice to be careful with choropleth maps and used equidistant colors from a HSV gradients.

I tried to adapt these two examples from fusiontables developers blog advanced fusiontables

dynamic styling template
Based on this table
Occupation by ED




You can't show all the map as fusion tables won't load that many polygons. I had trouble hand making gradients to match the varying max numbers in each sector so I used the out of range red to highlight areas with particularily high numbers of that occupation.



I adapted this fusion table to this example with both map and chart.

Fusiontable Occupation Map and chart.

Looking to put all the occupations type in the one view.
Reading about Choropleth maps of the multivariate type like the famous Pop vs Soda map.

I made a map with highest of each type of occupation in each ED.



Created a highest occupation with chart by cso town and by county.

NIUM's AIRO Mapping has similar maps and stats down to small areas.