How Can I Create Custom Geo Maps in SAS® Visual Analytics? Q&A, Slides, and On-Demand Recording

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Watch this Ask the Expert session to learn how to create rich, customizable maps in SAS Visual Analytics. 

Watch the Webinar

You will learn how to:

• Import shapefiles into CAS in SAS® Viya®.
• Define a custom polygon provider in SAS Visual Analytics.
• Create a geo map using an Esri feature service.
• Create region maps for custom areas.

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.

Q&A

Any suggestions on how to manually add the sequence variable (or a macro similar to SHPIMPRT but for SAS EG)? 

If you have SAS9.4 (with EG), there are a different set of steps to follow to import the shapefile and use it in Visual Analytics (https://documentation.sas.com/doc/en/bicdc/9.4/vaag/n1oaashorywocun10c5epp8z9r97.htm). But to answer your question, you can create the sequence variable by adding an assignment statement like this:  

__seq__ = _n_; 

We have both VA on LASR, as well as VA on Viya. Could we use a geography data item created in Viya by means of the macro also in VA on LASR? 

There are other steps for creating a geographic data provider in SAS 9 (https://documentation.sas.com/doc/en/bicdc/9.4/vaag/n1oaashorywocun10c5epp8z9r97.htm) 

Is there anything that we can do if we are *not* admins of our SAS product? 

You just need admin privileges to create the geographic data provider. If you don't have them, you can ask your admin to do it. Once it's created, you can use it however you wish (even without admin privileges). 

What predefined geographic regions/boundaries are built into SAS Visual Analytics? 

There are a couple of different ways to create geography data items. If you are creating a coordinate map and you have latitude and longitude in your data, you can use X and Y coordinates in your data to create a geography data item. You can also create geography data items using a geographic name or code look up. Out of the box, SAS Visual Analytics supports a number of different geographies: country names or country codes, state or province names, ZIP codes, and US state names or abbreviations. For example, in the previous demo, I created a geography data item based on US state names and then used that to create a region map of US states - without having to worry about Esri feature services or shape files.  

Can you show us how to find the feature maps on the ESRI site? 

If you Google ArcGIS Online or go to arcgis.com, you'll see that there's a search field. Once you open that, you can search not just feature layers, but many different kinds of data and information that's present on ArcGIS. Because SAS Visual Analytics supports creating geographic data providers from feature services, you can limit your search to just that: select Layers and then Feature layers. There are thousands of possibilities. You can simply enter a search term and look for whatever particular feature service you might be interested in using in SAS Visual Analytics. 

Can we overlay features using ESRI feature service in the same map? 

You can use SAS Graph Builder to create multi-layer geo map templates – for example, a geo map with three different region map layers. Then you could create geographic data providers based on three different Esri feature services and display them all on the same map. (See https://documentation.sas.com/doc/en/vacdc/v_019/grbldrug/p1wjt3d8a05thmn14gkcug4ft5wu.htm for more information) 

You can also display custom Esri ArcGIS web maps using the Data-driven content object in SAS Visual Analytics. Doing so will allow you to display as many feature services layers as you want. See the following blog series for more information about this: (https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/Everything-you-need-to-know-about-web-maps-in...) 

Recommended Resources

SAS® Visual Analytics 1 for SAS® Viya®: Basics course, available as Live Web and as self-paced e-lea...

SAS® Visual Analytics 2 for SAS® Viya®: Advanced course, available as Live Web and as self-paced e-l...

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

Introduction to Esri Integration in SAS® Visual Analytics

Moving from SAS®9 to SAS® Viya®

Move to Viya Board

Please see additional resources in the attached slide deck.

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