Getting Started with Geo Analytics in SAS® Visual Analytics

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Q&A, Slides, and On-Demand Recording

Watch this Ask the Expert session to understand your data better by seeing where it lives. 

Watch the webinar

Join Robby Powell, a Product Manager at SAS, as he discusses how adding geographic context to your categorical and quantitative data through geographic visualizations can present patterns that help you understand why things happen and what you can do to encourage certain behavior or change outcomes. Watch this webinar to learn:

• How to use data visualization to transform your data into insights.
• The geo analysis capabilities of SAS Visual Analytics.
• About the seamless integration between SAS Visual Analytics and Esri.

The questions from the Q&A segment held at the end of the webinar are listed below and the slides from the webinar are attached.

Can you tell me more about SAS and the Esri partnership and integration?

SAS and Esri jointly collaborate to address customer scenarios that can best be served by us working together. To support customers who are both SAS and Esri customers, SAS is working to increase Esri integration in SAS Visual Analytics and other SAS products and Esri is working to integrate with SAS offerings.

Is the demographic data also available for Europe?

Esri provides global demographics data for 130+ countries.

https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/data/data-portfolio/demographics

What SAS products are required for integration with Esri?

All topics presented in the demo are available out-of-the-box with SAS Visual Analytics with the exception of support for multi-layer web maps - which is available for download at no additional cost. Support for ArcGIS multi-layer web maps can be added with the geowebmap project on the SAS GitHub site. This open source JavaScript project written using the ArcGIS SDK for JavaScript allows Report Designers to embed web maps from Esri ArcGIS Online into reports in SAS Visual Analytics and apply data from SAS as a layer on web maps.

Is it possible to export some of the summary info created? For instance, you showed a table of the ages or distances between a pin and nearby groceries. The visuals are great but saved data for further analysis might be required.

Currently, this capability is not part of the product, but it is on the product development road map.

Is Esri ArcGIS integration only available for SAS Viya?

Esri ArcGIS integration with SAS Visual Analytics is available for all SAS Viya versions of Visual Analytics as well as Visual Analytics 7.4 and 7.5. However, not all the integration capabilities shown in the demonstration are available in 7.4 and 7.5. The pin management was added in 8.3 and forward. Geo Analytics has been a focus area for SAS Visual Analytics during the 8.x versions and going forward.

Is this also available with SAS 9.4/VA 7.5 as well as Viya?

All topics presented in the demonstration are supported in VA 7.5 except for:

• Pin management
• Contour maps
• Multi-layer web maps

Were there features shown today that depend on Viya or are these also available in Visual Analytics 7.5?

Everything except multi-layer mapping and Pin Management are available with SAS Visual Analytics on Visual Analytics 7.5.

What are your experiences working with other GIS providers - Intergraph, MapInfo?

By default SAS Visual Analytics display Open Street Map base maps and provides out-of-the-box Geo Analytics capabilities for radial distance selection from a pin, linear routing between pins, and manual geo selection for circle, rectangle, and lasso.

Esri integration provides report authors and end users with access to enhanced geo capabilities in SAS Visual Analytics. Esri is the only GIS provider currently supported for these capabilities in Visual Analytics. If you have map layers in other GIS software, you should be able to export your map layers as shape file format files. Shape files can be imported into SAS Visual Analytics for use as region and line(soon) layers in the geo region and geo region-coordinate objects.

Can you share your perspective on integrating SAS/VA and Microsoft Power BI?

Last year SAS and Microsoft announced a partnership to shape the future of analytics and AI (Microsoft announcement / SAS announcement). 

What variables do we need to have in the GIS system data of a road construction project to plot the road in SAS Visual Analytics?

GIS data can be divided into two categories:

1. geo data (polygons, lines, points), and
2. attribute data (aka business data. SAS Visual Analytics can use geo data to visualize in your reports: polygons (regions), and points (data marker), and soon lines.

Your data can be used to for Geo Analysis in SAS Visual Analytics in the following ways:

• Create a Geographic Object:
• If you already have latitude and longitude data, then you can directly use those columns to create a geographic object in Visual Analytics.
• If your data includes columns that match one of the pre-geocoded data sets in SAS Visual Analytics, then you can create geographic objects based on that data (e.g. Country name, US State Name, US State Abbreviation, ISO 2 and 3, …)
• If you have address information in your data, then you can geocode your data to retrieve and join with your data the lat/long values for each address in your data.
• Use of shape files
• If you have geo data in the form of shape files, then you can import those shape files and have them in Visual Analytics geo region and geo region-coordinate objects. The regions can be mapped to your attribute (business) data to set gradient color if a continuous value is assigned or to distinct colors if a category is assigned.
• Use of Esri feature Services
• You can connect to published Esri feature services that are public or private. The information in the feature services can be rendered on a map in Visual Analytics, and mapped to variables in your business data.
• Geo Visualizations
• Geo coordinate – to position data markers on a map
• Geo region – to display regions on a map
• Geo region coordinate – support both coordinate and region layers in a single object
• Geo contour – show a contour (heat map) representing density of data markers on a map.
• Geo network – if you have location information in your data that describes a network – including origin and destination information, then the geo network is a great option.
• Multi-layer Web Map – through the geowebmap project on the SAS GitHub site, you can access web maps you have in Esri ArcGIS Online.
• Geo enrichment
• You can augment your business data with information available through Esri Demographics - https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/data/data-portfolio/demographics.

Is any of the Esri content free or is it all fee-based?

Through the SAS-Esri partnership, SAS Visual Analytics provides at no additional cost to our customers the following Esri capabilities:

• Access to Esri base maps – optionally displayed as background maps for the Visual Analytics geo objects.
• Geo Search – After dropping a pin you can search for points-of-interest near that pin (e.g. hospital, grocery, …)
• Geo Identification – right-click on a map to get location information.
• You can access any web maps you have in ArcGIS Online at no additional charge.
• You can access Esri feature services at no additional charge.

What are the resources for people in the financial and health industries to get ideas on how to use geo analysis? Are there examples of things that have already been done?

Information about SAS Visual Analytics, both geo-specific and in general, can be found at the following locations:

SAS Coronavirus Dashboard

• From SAS: https://tbub.sas.com/COVID19/
• From Esri COVID-19 Map Gallery: https://www.esri.com/en-us/covid-19/community-maps/gallery#/map-detail/5f049c35f3b616cb349a2f63

SAS VA Page: https://www.sas.com/en_us/software/visual-analytics/demo.html

SAS Visual Analytics Gallery: https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Visual-Analytics-Gallery/tkb-p/vagallery

The Departure – Rise in Global Temperatures

• Video of building a VA Dashboard: https://youtu.be/RiFoAH-XWiY

SGF 2020 Proceedings Papers:

• SAS Visual Analytics: “Where” Can Tell You “Why” - https://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/support/en/sas-global-forum-proceedings/2020/4094-2020.pdf

• Designing Dashboards for Multiple Target Audiences with SAS Visual Analytics - https://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/support/en/sas-global-forum-proceedings/2020/4323-2020.pdf

• Create Impactful Data Journeys for “Informavores” with SAS Visual Analytics on SAS Viya - https://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/support/en/sas-global-forum-proceedings/2020/4158-2020.pdf

• Leverage custom geographical polygons in SAS Visual Analytics - https://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/support/en/sas-global-forum-proceedings/2018/1732-2018.pdf

• Practical Geospatial Analysis of Open and Public-Use Data - https://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/support/en/sas-global-forum-proceedings/2020/4293-2020.pdf

• What’s New in SAS Visual Analytics? Smart Business Intelligence, Smart Analytics - https://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/support/en/sas-global-forum-proceedings/2020/4078-2020.pdf

• Solving the VAST Challenge: Three Case Studies Using SAS Visual Analytics - https://support.sas.com/en/search.html.html?q=geo&fq=siteArea%3A%22Papers%20%26%20Proceedings%22&fq=...

• SAS Global Form 2020 Proceedings – All the papers! - https://support.sas.com/en/search.html.html?q=geo&fq=siteArea%3A%22Papers%20%26%20Proceedings%22&fq=...

Embed Multi-layer Esri Web Maps in VA

https://github.com/sassoftware/sas-visualanalytics-geowebmap

Can real-time location data be used in SAS Visual Analytics?

The Geo objects in SAS Visual Analytics can be set to update at a prescribed cadence (minutes, seconds). While not real-time, this is near real-time refresh.

Recommended Resources

SAS Visual Analytics: “Where” Can Tell You “Why”

SAS Visual Analytics: Location Analytics – Where Things Happen

SAS Visual Analytics Gallery

SAS Coronavirus Dashboard

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