Mapping address data
April 30, 2017 9:01 PM Subscribe
I volunteer as membership director for a local non-profit in Canada. We have addresses for each of our ~600 members. 98% of our members live within our city. Is there some way (maybe using an online service or something) that I can take this data and get it combined with a map of the city to see the distribution of where our members live. I'm thinking something like a heat map to see where our members are located?
Batch Geo is dead simple to use, although you get points rather than a heat map.
posted by AFABulous at 9:13 PM on April 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by AFABulous at 9:13 PM on April 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Oh, looks like they have a heat map option in their pro version. Very, very simple.
posted by AFABulous at 9:17 PM on April 30, 2017
posted by AFABulous at 9:17 PM on April 30, 2017
Check out Carto. You'd have to upload the data yourself, and free accounts are a little bit limited in terms of how many addresses can be converted into lat/long pairs. But it displays things really nicely and you have a lot of options for colors etc.
posted by zebra at 9:41 PM on April 30, 2017
posted by zebra at 9:41 PM on April 30, 2017
Google maps can integrate with Google Sheets and do this for you.
posted by entropone at 4:27 AM on May 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by entropone at 4:27 AM on May 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
Canadian geocoding can be a bit hit or miss, in part because of Canada Post's reluctance to open up their postal database without spending $$$$$. Google's addressing can be pretty far off here too. Unfortunately, your city doesn't provide open data under any kind of usable licence, either.
If you can get in at the cheap levels, Mapbox can make very pretty maps.
posted by scruss at 6:33 AM on May 1, 2017
If you can get in at the cheap levels, Mapbox can make very pretty maps.
posted by scruss at 6:33 AM on May 1, 2017
Another vote for Batch Geo!
posted by forkisbetter at 8:09 AM on May 1, 2017
posted by forkisbetter at 8:09 AM on May 1, 2017
Map Customizer is linked with Google Maps and I've found it to be preferable to Batch Geo (which is still a handy resource)
posted by raider at 10:35 AM on May 1, 2017
posted by raider at 10:35 AM on May 1, 2017
Scruss is right about the challenges in geocoding Canadian addresses, but there's a really good solution. As a Canadian locally-focused non-profit, you might be a member of a Community Data Program data consortium through the Canadian Council on Social Development. If so, you'll have free access to Canada Post's postal code data for your city along with other fun data stuff. You can then use that data to match your members' postal codes to lat/long data, which you can then map with a number of free tools. It's not open data, but it's the main way that postal code data is licensed for community orgs in Canada.
Judging by your location, your area definitely has a consortium. If your organization isn't already a member there's a yearly fee, but it's worth asking someone in your city's social research department about data access.
posted by blerghamot at 12:04 PM on May 1, 2017
Judging by your location, your area definitely has a consortium. If your organization isn't already a member there's a yearly fee, but it's worth asking someone in your city's social research department about data access.
posted by blerghamot at 12:04 PM on May 1, 2017
Also, if you need help with any of this, please MeFi Mail me - I've worked in this space a fair bit.
posted by blerghamot at 12:21 PM on May 1, 2017
posted by blerghamot at 12:21 PM on May 1, 2017
I asked a similar question recently, maybe some of those responses will be helpful. Here.
posted by kev23f at 11:43 AM on March 27, 2018
posted by kev23f at 11:43 AM on March 27, 2018
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by rada at 9:12 PM on April 30, 2017