Recently, I was shocked to see some visual maps made by masters on the Internet. I was able to put the visualization into the data map, and the effect is definitely much cooler than the general map. Here are a few of them for everyone:

Although this visualized map looks elegant, it is definitely not complicated to make. I tried to copy it in 10 minutes. If you don’t believe me, read on!

In fact, there are generally two ways to achieve data maps:

The first is to knock code, such as Python, Echarts, etc., this way requires a certain JS programming foundation, high difficulty, but the degree of liberalization is very high, can achieve the effect such as fountain diagram, recommended to learn with programming foundation.

The second is to use visual platforms, such as FineBI in China and BatchGeo in foreign countries. In this way, the cost of learning is very low, and there is basically no need to type codes, but directly apply templates.

Like great god do several map above, using these two methods on all test, I can be implemented, the efficiency of speaking is undoubtedly the second method is simple, and the FineBI I am made of, do not use this tool is not only the need to write code, speed, and can be directly applied in the platform of built-in maps and template, just ready to data, The following gives you a simple demonstration of the flow map.

Flow to the map

As the name implies, stream-flow map is to display certain dynamic information (from position A to position B) on the map, which is generally used for the migration data of people and goods. The scale or quantity of movement represented by A single stream-flow line is indicated by its thickness, which helps to display the geographical distribution of migration activities.

The advantage of flow map is that it is suitable to show the changes of the corresponding data when things move in geographical space, but the disadvantage is that it is not suitable to show accurate values.

Data preparation

First, we prepare the raw data, which must contain two geographical latitudes and one data dimension:

The geographical latitude here is not the longitude and latitude in the geographical sense, because map information has been built into FineBI, so the data only needs to have “starting place” and “ending point”, as shown in the figure below:

This data contains several important fields:

• Geographic field: i.e., “City”
• Migration route: Corresponding to each migration route, such as Nanjing-Sanya city and Nanjing-Zhongwei City, each route contains two cities.
• Number: Defines the connection sequence from a small value to a large value. For example, the serial number of Nanjing is 0, and that of Sanya is 1. The line sequence of “Nanjing-Sanya” is from Nanjing to Sanya.

Data import

First, I directly imported Excel data into FineBI, and then click on the upper right corner to create a visual component, that is, enter the visual editing interface and create a map in the new interface:

Create geographical personas

As we said, FineBI has a lot of built-in data maps, so how do you match the geographic dimensions of the data with the built-in data maps?

Select a city from the drop-down box and create a city:

The “City” field can then be matched with the built-in data mapping system in FineBI, as shown below:

Making flow maps

Drag the created geographic dimension onto the horizontal and vertical axes, then select “Flow Map” from the chart selection area, and drag “Migration Route” and “City” into the fine-grained bar respectively:

To indicate the size of the migration as a color level, I drag “Migration” into the color bar and change the gradient scheme to “Aurora”. The number of migrants can then be mapped to the color of the line, as shown below:

Set wire Styles

Now the flow direction map has been initially completed, in order to achieve the cool effect done by the god above, the next step we need to beautify the work.

Click on the line bar, set the line to “Curve” and mark the point to “None”, as shown below, so that the lines flowing to the map will appear quite rounded:

Next, we will set the flicker effect again. Click the “Number” field under the graphics properties, select special display from the drop-down box, and set “Flicker Animation” :

Click “Add”, set the blinking interval to 5 seconds, and click “OK”, as shown below:

Background to optimize

Finally, the overall background is set to black, so that a cool flow map is completed. It actually takes less than 10 minutes to get started, but a few minutes to get used to it.

Other maps

In fact, there are many map types in FineBI, such as thermal map, point map, rectangular map, area map, etc., I won’t show you one by one here, they are very simple, so I’ll leave them to you to practice.