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

Wed Sep 24 16:24:41 UTC 2014

On 23 September 2014 17:47, Michael Bauer <michael.bauer at okfn.org> wrote:

> 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 -
>

I'd go for this. I assume you'd store the region info on each transaction
and then link that up with the geojson in the viz.

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

I don't think this would be great (at least without a lot of thought). You
definitely want to store the region / province info but not the geometry
itself (IMO).

Rufus

> 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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