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Data Visualization Using Google Maps:
the Hard Way and the Easy Way
Shailesh Shrestha
a*
and Franz-Josef Behr
b
a
Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics, University of Applied Sciences Stuttgart
Schellingstraße 24, D-70174 Stuttgart (Germany), [email protected]m
b
Department of Geomatics, Computer Science and Mathematics,
University of Applied Sciences Stuttgart
Schellingstraße 24, D-70174 Stuttgart (Germany), - franz-[email protected]
KEYWORDS:
Data Visualization, Google Maps API, Google Fusion Table
ABSTRACT:
Commercial mapping tools and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are often quite costly and out of reach of
many Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) which operate on low budget. However, emergence of freely
available spatial tools over past few years has propagated the use of spatial information to a broad range of
users. One of these tools, Google Map API has revolutionized online mapping service to display and integration
of spatial data in a lot of different ways. But it is still a daunting task to display spatial data in Google Map for
people who do not have knowledge about programming languages.
This paper aims to introduce Google's Fusion Table, cloud-based service for data management and integration,
as an easy tool to visualize data quickly and easily without almost any prior programming knowledge required.
At the beginning, brief description of displaying point data with the use of Google Maps API based on Flash will
be given which is followed by much simple and straight forward method using Google Fusion Table
visualization approach.
There are some limitations associated with Fusion Table but this is not a hindrance for people who are happy to
visualize the data with few clicks in a graphical way with no database setup costs. Therefore Google Fusion
Table can be especially advantageous for people with no programming experience and for organizations
operating on low budget.
1 Introduction
Commercial mapping tools and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are often quite costly and therefore out
of reach of many Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) which operate on low budget. However, the
emergence of freely available spatial tools and web mapping applications over the past few years has propagated
the use of spatial information to a broad range of users. Nowadays, there are several free tools and so-called
mash-ups (Purvis et al. 2006, Udell 2008) exposing their application development interface (API), which can be
utilized for disseminating and processing of spatial information. One of these tools, Google Maps API has
revolutionized online mapping service to display and integration of spatial data in a lot of different ways. It
allows users to embed Google Map in own websites and with some programming knowledge opens a wide array
of possibilities to create robust and interactive maps.
Users and developers have widely embraced this API according to their requirements and hence Google Map has
established itself as a pioneer among the online mapping service. Since its inception, Google Maps API makes
use of JavaScript as a scripting language for programming. In Nov 2008, Google has released new version of
Google Maps API based on Flash (http://code.google.com/intl/en-EN/apis/maps/documentation/flash/) which
uses XML based vocabulary language named MXML and ActionScript. But it is still a daunting task to display
spatial data in Google Map for people who do not have knowledge about programming languages.
This paper aims to introduce Google's Fusion Table (http//tables.googlelabs.com/), a cloud-based service for data
management and integration, as an easy tool to visualize data quickly and easily without almost any prior
programming knowledge required. Google Fusion Table is a cloud based data management and integration
service supporting collaboration among multiple users and has since received considerable use (Gonzalez et al.,
*
Corresponding author