topic Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics in SAS Visual Analytics

US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

sasdavo — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 19:18:04 GMT

Hi All,

I am attempting to create a county-level choropleth map of the United States in SAS Visual Analytics. Although there are default options for state-level choropleth maps and ZIP-level choropleth maps in SAS Visual Analytics, there is not an option for county-level choropleth maps.

Note that there appears to be a session at the upcoming SAS Global Forum on this exact topic:

https://sasglobalforum2016.lanyonevents.com/connect/sessionDetail.ww?SESSION_ID=3460

Since I would prefer not to have to wait a few months for a solution to this problem, does anyone currently know how to create a county-level choropleth map in SAS Visual Analytics?

Thank you very much.

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

AngelaHall — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 15:42:39 GMT

Hi sasdavo!

You have asked and you shall receive. Included is a snippet of the paper which corresponds to your request to map by county. Once these changes have been made, you can use county name or FIPS code with the 'Geography' data type.

Included are examples:

Subdivision (State, Province Names)*	County Name	Prince William
Subdivision (State, Province) SAS Map ID Values*	FIPS Code	US-51153

Be sure to stop by the SAS Solutions OnDemand booth in Vegas and say Hi!

Angela Hall

Director, Analytic Integration Consulting

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

Sam_SAS — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 14:05:33 GMT

Thanks Angela for sharing your paper!

It should be noted that officially VA does not support adding custom regions, from a technical support perspective.

Sam

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

mduarte — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 01:46:26 GMT

Hi Angela (anybody else - please also free to comment!).

I have attempted to add custom regions using your paper downloaded from the SAS Global Forum 2016 site referenced above (and also the paper attached by @mtoledo on the Import shapefile in SAS Visual Analytics v7.1 topic).

I am using SAS VA7.3 and wanted to check first of all, whether any changes need to be made so that custom regions work in this version of SAS? If not, I wouldn't mind any tips on what can be wrong ...

I have made a dataset AU_STAT1 - which contains Australian statistical area level 4 data and placed it in the MAPSGFK library and been given read and write access to it. I have also updated attrlookup and centlookup. I am able to create bubble charts based on a test dataset so my conclusion is that attrlookup and centlookup are working fine. However, I cannot create region charts, so my conclusion is that SAS VA can't find (either through miscommunication or otherwise) the datasets that I created that are referenced to in the mapname field of centlookup. Are you able to think of what could be wrong?

We have restarted all SAS services, but also want to check if this is still necessary? - as changes were seen in attrlookup and centlookup in valib before restarting.

Edit: I attempted to attach my versions of centlookup, attrlookup and au_stat1 (however received an error message that the contents of the file did not match the file type ... )

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Marie

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

mtoledo — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 09:35:47 GMT

Hi @mduarte,

When you plot a buble map do you actually see those bubles inside the region, i mean can you see state / county map as background or bubles are plotted to a gray background?

If you are getting bulbes in a gray background, I suggest you to check the coodirnate system that your original shape file is using. SAS VA works with WSG8. If you need to convert to it, you can use the GPROJECT procedure.

proc gproject data=[PROC MAPIMPORT OUTPUT] out=NEW_TABLE
from="EPSG:2157" to="EPSG:4326";
id COLUMN_A;
run;

proc gproject data=[PROC MAPIMPORT OUTPUT] out=NEW_TABLE
from="+proj=tmerc +lat_0=53.5 +lon_0=-8 +k=0.99982 +x_0=600000 +y_0=750000 +ellps=GRS80 +towgs84=0,0,0,0,0,0,0 +units=m +no_defs" to="EPSG:4326";
id COLUMN_A;
run;

* EPSG:4326 = WSG84

Cheers,

Marcel

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

mduarte — Tue, 27 Dec 2016 23:51:40 GMT

Hi Marcel,

The bubble map shows the country as follows:

I currently have x and y the same as longitude and latitude, but have created a dataset (ready for upload to the server) in which I create x and y by projecting longitude and latitude as follows:

proc gproject data=temp OUT=FP_polygon_proj degrees;
id sa4_code11 ;
run;

(This loses longitude and latitude and so I merge with the original dataset (temp) to have longitude and latitude in addition to x and y)

Unfortunately, our sas administrator is away and so I have no way to test this new dataset (no access to upload 😞 until after New Years ...

I have also attached an Excel file with extracts of the polygon data (AU_STAT1), ATTRLOOOKUP and CENTLOOKUP with master data and data for one region.

Hopefully changing x and y works.. Otherwise, in one of the referenced papers, the name had to end with 1, it wouldn't now have to start with "VA" as well would it? It seems all map names in centlookup start and end with 'VA' and '1', respectively ... I am at a loose end at what else to try!

Marie

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

Sam_SAS — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 13:51:24 GMT

Hi Marie,

The dataset does not have to start with "VA". It does have to end with "1", but your "AU_STAT1" should be fine as far as the name.

Please let us know if you have luck with your new data set.

FYI, custom map polygons is one of the top feature requests for VA and better support is planned for the near future.

Sam

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

mtoledo — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 15:13:44 GMT

Hi @mduarte,

Your dataset seems to be ok. To display regions in VA you need to do as follows:

Create a sample data set.E.g

ID IDNAME Value
"AX-208" "Melbourne - Inner South" 1231

Within VA.

Define the ID category as Geography - select Subdivisions (State,Province) SAS Map ID Values
Define the IDNAME category as Geography - select Subdivisions (State,Province) SAS Names - Then, select Australia Statistical Area as the map name.
Add the IDNAME Geography item to a GEO Region Map and then add the Value mesure to it.

It should work.

Cheers,

Marcel

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

mduarte — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 02:38:56 GMT

Thanks Marcel - I had created a test dataset and tested as you prescribed - but unfortunately I cannot see any region (unfortunately even with the projected coordinates ).. only bubbles.

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

mduarte — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 02:40:07 GMT

Hi Sam - I have finally been able to try the new dataset but it still doesn't work. Do you have any suggestions on what else I can try?

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

mduarte — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 04:30:44 GMT

Note that if I read in MAPSGFK.AU_STAT1 (now AUSTAT41) and plot the longitude and latitude (by defining IDNAME as a custom region) for a subset of the data (two IDNames) I can see the bubbles in the correct places (i.e. defining a region) so it seems the longitude and latitude are correct ....

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

Sam_SAS — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 14:45:41 GMT

Marcel's instructions should work.

Is it possible that you are seeing bubbles because the wrong type of mapping report object is displayed? That is, rather than using an autochart, specifically select a "Geo Region Map".

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

mduarte — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 22:02:50 GMT

Just to clarify - the bubbles I see when the bubble map is selected (either via the automap or Geo Map, Map Style "Bubbles" , only the background map is what I see when I select the region map (via Geo Map, Map Style "Regions")

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

BobW_HBF_Oz — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 04:32:30 GMT

I am adding this reply so that I can help if possible.

I am actively working on exactly the same problem, luckily, I am an administrator as well, so hopefully I can try a few thinngs as I go.

I thought I had everything all setup, but still not seeing regions, even though the data I have successfully and beautifully produces GMAP output.

I am not entirely clear under what circumstances I need to restart my SAS VA web service though.

At this stage, I am assuming every time I change anything in the MAPSGFK library that might affect the exisiting metadata.

I also have a custom Maps library, but VA doesn;t seem to see any of that.

I am currently running my GREDUCE on some ESRI Shape files, so I will keep you posted with any progress.

Cheers

Bob Whitehead

SAS Contractor

(SAS VA 7.3 Linux Distributed)

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

mtoledo — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 11:36:57 GMT

Hi @mduarte,

I've created an E.G. project that imports shape files into VA. There is also a step by step document that may help you to debug your own code.

Both files are available at https://github.com/mrclll/theSASGitRepository/tree/master/ImportShapeFilesToVa .

Cheers,

Marcel

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

mduarte — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 04:45:31 GMT

Hi Marcel, Thank-you very much for making your program available and with such clear documentation. I have ran your code and will restart the SAS services this evening - fingers are crossed !

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

mduarte — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 04:46:34 GMT

Lets hope we both get this working soon!!

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

mduarte — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 05:18:53 GMT

Hi Marcel,

I have ran your code, the SAS server has been restarted but I still have the same issue. I have placed a screenshot below showing the region map (left) and the bubble map (right).

The following screenshot is from SAS Enterprise Guide which shows the contents of MAPCUSTM library ... Note that it is white, not yellow (could that be signalling a potential cause of the issue?) I wonder whether there are any tests to confirm that SAS VA can see MAPCUSTM library ... (Note we already had this library defined and so I adjusted your code accordingly)

Thanks again for making your code available.

Marie

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

mtoledo — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 11:40:10 GMT

Hi Marie,

Cool. Exactly, the MAPCUSTM libray should be yellow (assigned). Assuming that you have just restarted your VA Server, it should be assigned, so I suspect that the appserver_autoexec_usermods.sas may be the problem. Openthe <SAS CONFIG>\SASVA\appserver_autoexec_usermods.sas It must have a line that create the MAPCUSTM library reference. Something as shown below.

/* 
 * appserver_autoexec_usermods.sas
 *
 *    This autoexec file extends appserver_autoexec.sas.  Place your site-specific include 
 *    statements in this file.  
 *
 *    Do NOT modify the appserver_autoexec.sas file.  
 *    
 */

LIBNAME MAPCUSTM BASE "<PATH TO FOLDER>";

If you do have this line in the cfg file, try to run the appserver_autoexec_usermods.sa file within E.G. - if it's safe to do so - and check the log for errors.

Remember that when you change the appserver_autoexec_usermods.sas , you must restart your VA server.

Let me know how you are getting on with this work.

Cheers,

Marcel

Re: US County-Level Map in SAS Visual Analytics

mduarte — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 01:00:53 GMT

Hi Marcel,

We had (and still have) the following:

libname MAPCUSTM "/sasconfig/Lev1/SASVA/Data/MAPCUSTM/";

We didn't (and still don't) have BASE, however, the hover over help in SAS EG says it is an alias for V9.

We have issued the libname statement from EG and it resulted in the following message (no error):

NOTE: Writing TAGSETS.SASREPORT13(EGSR) Body file: EGSR
22         
23         GOPTIONS ACCESSIBLE;
24         libname MAPCUSTM "/sasconfig/Lev1/SASVA/Data/MAPCUSTM/";
NOTE: Libref MAPCUSTM was successfully assigned as follows: 
      Engine:        V9 
      Physical Name: /sasconfig/Lev1/SASVA/Data/MAPCUSTM

I realised I can change the colour of the library from white to yellow via SAS Management Console, by selecting the library, right-clicking on the library, choosing the Options tab, pressing the Advanced Options... button and then ticking the LIbrary is Pre-Assigned checkbox. I have done this but not restarted the server.

Questions:

Would the BASE keyword, or trailing forward slash, make a difference?

Other Notes

We are using SAS 7.3 which is what is listed as the version you are using on the documentation you supplied, so it doesn't seem to be the version that is the problem.
I am running SAS VA from Google Chrome

Marie