US map tile chart examining the surface area of deficient bridges

[#1]

I'm always looking for more unique ways to display US State data in my SAS Visual Analytics reports. Recently, looking at some data which examines deficient bridge surface area within each US state.  Using a custom graph, I was able to build the following visualization of the United States which compares the surface area of deficient vs. non-deficient bridges.

Data contains information on the number of deficient bridges in the U.S. from 2013 to 2015.  Obtained from this Curriculum Pathways Data Depot resource and processed with SAS Visual Analytics 8.3.

Get the details of how to re-create this chart in this SAS Communities Library article.

[tomrvincent]

It would be interesting to make a 2nd version of that taking into account vehicular traffic for each bridge to display the risk of fatalities.

[Mike_Drutar]

That would be interesting!  This article has an attachment that contains the data set template and code to build this graph.  If you re-create it with the vehicular traffic data, please share the results!

[tomrvincent]

@Mike_Drutar I tried...some sort of junk unprintable characters at the end of state that I couldn't get rid of...I give up.

[tomrvincent]

We don't have SAS VA anymore and I couldn't find bridge traffic, but my suggestion is to use this info to get close (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories_of_the_United_States_by_population) to calc populations at risk based on deficient bridges and state population.

I might try to do some kind of state map with SAS EG.

[Mike_Drutar]

As Tom mentions above, the bridges data contains an unprintable character at the end of a few of the state names. A new variable (named NewState) which doesn't include these characters can be created using the following assignment statement within a data step.

NewState = compress(state,"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ " ,"kis");

Happy Graphing Everyone!

[tomrvincent]

came up with something.  This uses those goofy MAPSGFK.US_STATES_ATTR and MAPSGFK.US_STATES tables with deficient bridge counts multiplied by the percentage of the US population for the state.

[frobi]

In addition to this article, it would be great to describe how to make visualization in three dimensions. For example, add state population data to your chart, as @tomrvincent suggested. Or for example, not a population, but an annual budget.

[Mike_Drutar]

Hi frobi!

That's also a good suggestion!  Following this example, you might be able to create what your looking for using PROC GMAP!

http://support.sas.com/kb/25/561.html

Cheers!

- Mike