Thursday, March 12, 2009

Using Google Maps to Produce Heat Maps

HeatMapAPI

Heat maps are a graphical representation of data on a map through the use of colors to indicate the density of something. For example a heat map could be used to show the level of unemployment in different states.

The HeatMapAPI is an API that enables anyone to create their own heat maps. If you wish to use the HeatMapAPI the GeoChalkboard blog has a good tutorial on how to create a heat map with the API and Google Maps called Density Mapping in Google Maps with HeatMapAPI.

The GeoChalkboard tutorial shows you how to create a heat map using data showing Starbucks closure of 600 stores.

One alternative to the HeatMapsAPI is using Google's Visualization API with Google Spreadsheets. Ouseful has a good example of a heat map of Olympics medal winners created using Google Spreadsheets.

The Google Maps creation website Maker! also has an option to create coloured heat maps (Choropleth Maps).

Via: Mapperz

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6 comments:

Don Schindler said...

Thanks for this great information. I totally needed this for a presentation. You rock, Keir.

David H said...

Are there any similar libraries in PHP?

Unknown said...

hi all, you can also try our new (currently free) web service for making google dynamic heatmaps and color contour overlays:

diffent.com/heatmap

No programming is required to start, just paste your 3 columns of data (latitude/longitude/data) into the web page and it will generate your map.

For programmers,
you can drive this from PHP, though the example is in javascript. It's basically a POST operation from PHP, much like sending info from a web form.

Anonymous said...

newly added to diffent.com/heatmap : example how to drive the service from PHP code.

Petr said...

Hi all, give a try to http://en.tixik.com/tools/heatmaps, creating a heat map can eat all server resources, so there is a free way how to create heat maps for free.

Anonymous said...

Here's another service that generates heat map tiles for Google Maps:

http://www.heatmaptool.com/