How can I create digital choropleth maps of Ireland?
December 6, 2013 12:49 PM   Subscribe

Does anyone know if gis data for irish townlands, parishes, and/or electoral districts is available? If not, would it be possible to draw a vector map and then somehow connect each region on the map to data on a spreadsheet? I can always color the hundreds of little pieces by hand, but I thought I'd check if there was an easier way, maybe in cartodb or processing. Note: I am not a programmer. Thanks!

I'm a genealogist and designer, and I am interested in creating choropleth maps from Irish census data to help me understand more about where my ancestors lived, as well as identify where they might have encountered the ancestors of people I share DNA with. There is a lot of rich data in the 1901 and 1911 censuses, but the current census site at the National Archives offers no way to visualize the complex Irish land divisions. I am particularly interested in mapping surname locations. So, does anyone know if gis data for irish townlands, parishes and/or electoral districts is available? If not, would it be possible to draw a vector map and then somehow connect each region on the map to a spreadsheet? I can always color the hundreds of little pieces by hand, but I thought I'd check if there was an easier way, maybe in cartodb or processing. Note: I am not a programmer. Thanks!
posted by pantufla to Technology (7 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
You might try Ordnance Survey Ireland
posted by exogenous at 1:02 PM on December 6, 2013


Some d3 results here: D3 Choropleth Map Ireland and NORTHERN IRELAND: BIRTHS BY ACADEMIC YEAR.

I realize your question states you are not a programmer twice, but you might use those as a jumping point to deciding if hiring a programmer would be useful.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:11 PM on December 6, 2013


Response by poster: Thanks guys. That Northern Ireland map looks like what I want to make.
posted by pantufla at 2:10 PM on December 6, 2013


I haven't delved deeply, but SpatialNI looks like a place to start.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 3:00 PM on December 6, 2013


I just recently used Mapbox's Tilemill to make a custom streetmap for Dublin using this OpenStreetMap data. I'm not sure if that info contains townlands (on first glance it doesn't. It contains:places, points, railways, roads, waterways, natural, landuse) but it might give you a starting point.

Tilemill is quite learnable, but I am a webdesigner by trade and certainly found it easier having those skills. Here is the beginnings of a technical tutorial on making a choropleth using the tool.
posted by distorte at 1:50 AM on December 7, 2013


The SpatialNI link above is very good resource. NI always seems so much better served for this kind of thing! Here is a roundup by the Irish Organisation for Geographic Information of information available in the Republic. It's quite scattered, but some of these resources to seem to deal with census information at least.

Oh, jackpot in that list. Here is a very complete-looking list of .shp files for electoral areas, towns, small areas, church dioses, etc from the Central Statistics Office.
posted by distorte at 2:24 AM on December 7, 2013


Response by poster: Thank you all so much..looking...
posted by pantufla at 9:45 PM on December 8, 2013


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