When good enough is good enough: a quick guide to simple maps
GIS can be really complex: from modelling possible climate change scenarios decades into the future, to planning and engineering giant infrastructure projects down to sub-millimetre accuracy.
However, sometimes all that’s needed is a little map to show roughly where something is. Maybe something that just needs to go at the start of a report or presentation to contextualise the location.
A major principle of good IM is: don’t reinvent the wheel. Resources and expertise are too scarce to waste time making something that already exists.
So, what already exists?
ReliefWeb is a humanitarian information service provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Their editorial team monitors and collects information from more than 4,000 key sources, including international and local humanitarian agencies, governments, think-tanks and research institutions, and the media.
Apart from aggregating information products about specific events or crises, ReliefWeb also have a location map library. Each map highlights a country, its capital, and the surrounding regions.
The maps are available to download in .pdf, .svg or .png format at a number of different resolutions. Alternatively, you can copy/paste the URL for the image directly into your document and always show the latest version.
Below is the map for the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. In order to reproduce it, all you need to do is add a citation: “Source: OCHA/ReliefWeb”.
That’s great, but what if I need something more customised?
Well, there are a few different options, without the need for a full on GIS.
Option 1: an Office 365 chart
The built in map “Chart” functionality in Office 365 allows you to add a customisable map with sub-national country divisions (or the whole world) to a Powerpoint, Word or Excel document.
In Powerpoint and Word, the map is customised by editing a mini-Excel table (or in Excel just by using your spreadsheet data). The customisation means your map can be coloured based on values like 1 to 10, or yes/no etc.
When you add in the map, the wizard adds in the accompanying table and you can easily update the map by updating the values in the table. Changing the colour scheme is the same as with any other chart.
At the time of writing, map charts can be viewed on the online versions of the Office 365 apps, but only edited on the desktop versions.
Also, there doesn’t seem to be comprehensive documentation of which parts of the world are recognised within the chart, so it could be a case of trial and error to see if your country of interest is available.
Sub-divisions in the United Kingdom worked well for me….
…as did areas of South Sudan:
Option 2: manually customising imported shapes
Powerpoint, Word and Excel allow you to import sets of shapes that can represent a geographic area and be coloured however is required.
Below is an .svg image of the world. Libya is highlighted by colouring the individual country area in the same as colouring other shapes in a document: by using the “shape fill” tool in the shape formatting menu.
Unfortunately, the shapes can’t be easily data-driven, so you would need to manually update the colours of each area if the data changes. Also, as each map is a collection of smaller shapes, it’s easy to accidentally move a shape around by mistake, if they are not grouped together!
Option 3: MapChart.net
This website allows you to create your own custom map for free, using a set of templates that cover the world and various regions.
The interface lets you colour code countries or states on the map, then fill in the legend and download the map as an image file.
It’s very intuitive and easy to use and you can make more complex maps using it as it also comes with a corresponding legend.
Update — December 2022:
Option 4: Annotate your own map
You can use this tool to draw or write your own annotations on top of a selection of different base map options. Although you can’t shade or highlight areas based on a data table, you can add arrows, text labels and coloured points, lines and polygons.
I made this tool, so I’d be interested to see how it’s used — let me know in the comments under this blog.
Ok, great! That’s easy! I suppose you are out of a job then?
Hopefully not quite! The above options are great for an overview of somewhere that’s well mapped, but what if you want to show data about more than one thing on the same map, or show a map of a disputed territory?
That’s when more advanced GIS comes into play!
If you are working in a less straightforward context or want to show more complexity on your maps, then we might be able to help. Either send us a request for support or come for an informal chat at our weekly surgery space — the details for both are on our RedRoom page.
