How to Create GIS Google Map Overlays

Post date: Sep 30, 2015 4:11:14 AM

Today I discovered an exciting way to create interactive visuals using Google Maps and GIS data from the Venice Project Center! As an example, I've created an overlay for the islands of Murano.

To create my map I followed an excellent example from #interhacktives that can be boiled down to the following steps:

• 1. Create a Google Spreadsheet in your Google Drive. As an example, I made one where I assigned a random percentage out of 100 to each island in Murano so that I could experiment with making a choropleth map. Make sure that the data you want to merge with your GIS overlays has the same column title as in the GIS file. In my case, I chose to merge based on Nome_Isola, which are the names of the islands.

  2. Create a Google Fusion Table from your spreadsheet.

  3. Upload your GIS data to your google drive using Shape Escape. In my case I used a .zip file of the GIS shapefiles for the Venetian Lagoon provided to our team from the Venice Project Center.

  4. Go back to your Fusion Table. Choose File->Merge from the menu bar, and merge the Fusion Table with your newly created shapefile. Your fusion table will look something like this when you're finished.

  5. Configure your map as you see fit. In my case, I used a Feature Map with a polygon fill.

You can publish your newly created map by choosing Tools->Publish. From here, you can embed your map in a website using the given code, and also export HTML and Javascript code for the map itself.

I published my map to a very basic website using the embedded HTML publishing option, check it out!