[openspending-dev] Storing Geodata on Openspending - is this even a good idea?

[Michael Bauer]

Hi there,

I've realized there is no easy way to turn geographically based budget data
(e.g. projects in different regions of a country) into a map (e.g.
choropleth). 

I've thought about creating a mapping visualization for openspendingjs.
There seem to be two ways to do this:

A) The user supplies a topojson/geojson file with the visualization and
which parameters to join the data together.

B) We store geodata (shapes, points) on Openspending in a dataset.

ad A)

Seems to be quite easy to do - 

ad B) 

While it might be weird to add a geometry attribute to dimensions this
could be a lot more flexible.

e.g. you have geo-references on three levels: Think about projects budgeted
for in regions and provinces. All three, the project, the region and the
province have a geographical component. Why not add geometries to all of
them and have the map determine which level of detail to show based on zoom
levels?

Any thoughts are appreciated!

Michael

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