SAS VIYA NUTS CHOROPLETH

[LiviaKrj]

Hello. I am working in SAS Viya Visual Analytics with EU-SILC data and I would like to create a choropleth (filled) map for European NUTS regions (NUTS1 or NUTS2). My data contain region identifiers such as PL2, PL4, ITC, ITF, SK0, etc., together with calculated indicators that I want to visualize by region color intensity.

However, I am struggling to correctly map these NUTS region codes in SAS Visual Analytics. Standard geographic roles (ISO country codes, subdivision names, etc.) do not recognize the NUTS identifiers, and ArcGIS authorization is not configured in our environment.

Could you please advise what is the recommended approach in SAS Viya VA for visualizing European NUTS1/NUTS2 regions?

Thank you very much for any guidance.

[FalkoSchulz]

Hi! Standard geographic lookups in SAS Visual Analytics default to ISO country codes and first-level administrative subdivisions (like states or provinces), which naturally reject NUTS codes like PL2 (NUTS2 for Macroregion Południowy) or ITC (NUTS1 for Nord-Ovest Italy). You can however, import custom NUTS geometry as a Custom Geographic Data Provider in SAS Cloud Analytic Services (CAS).

So, head over to the Eurostat GISCO (Geographic Information System of the Commission) data portal which provides free GIS data specifically formatted for NUTS regions. Download the NUTS shapefile dataset matching the year of your EU-SILC data (e.g., NUTS 2021 or NUTS 2024) and ensure you download the Esri Shapefile (.shp) format.

Once you have your data - you need to convert and load the shapefile into CAS. There is %SHPIMPRT macro which you can use to load it. Once loaded into a CAS library, you must instruct Visual Analytics on how to interpret its structure by defining a geo data provider. 

At this point - you would define your geo item just like you tried before but use the 'geographical data provider' option and select your provider. You can then use that item in you geo region map - just like any other geo data item.

Hope this helps!

Falko

[LiviaKrj]

Hello Falko,

Thank you very much for your reply! I was able to import the NUTS shapefile using PROC MAPIMPORT and I successfully loaded the filtered NUTS1 map table into CAS as CASUSER.NUTS1_MAP.

However, when I try to register it as a custom geographic data provider using the geoMap action set, I get the following error:

“Failed to load action set 'geoMap'. Read access is denied or the action set is unregistered.”

Could you please advise which permission, CAS action set, or administrative configuration is required to create/register a Custom Geographic Data Provider in SAS Viya Visual Analytics?

Thank you.

Livia

[FalkoSchulz]

Great progress so far!

While I haven’t encountered that specific error message before, it strongly points to a permissions issue. By default, creating geo data providers is restricted to administrators. To fix this, you will need to either log in as an administrator or update the permissions for the /maps/providers URI endpoint (the VA admin documentation covers this in detail). This restriction is in place because deleting a provider can break existing reports that rely on it.

Also, regarding the data you loaded into the CASUSER library: since geo data providers are typically shared across multiple reports and users, you might want to move that data to a shared library (like Public) if you want others to be able to access it.

Hope this helps. Falko