vahadruya/python_map_plotting

Plotting customized interactive maps using python roughly, as a temporary substitude to Tableau. Maharashtra state with district borders taken as an example

Python Map Plotting

Contents

1. About
2. Methods
3. Requirements
4. Transliteration System
5. Conclusion
6. Contact

Note

• Remember to use CTRL+left click on the links
• There may be display issues for the interactive map in github. Try opening it in colab.

About

Plotting maps using python. Coded roughly, as a quick and temporary substitution for Tableau, when creating a customized map of Maharashtra with relevant locations. For now, minus the terrain and rails/roads, just the state and district borders are of interest.

Maharashtra map just for reference.

Methods

Have plot using two methods.

1. First using geopandas and cartopy, which produced a crude map which required shapefiles of Maharashtra, a good one of which was difficult to come by. Nevertheless, found some here.
2. Second, used folium for an interactive map. Much better and refined, location names come as pop-ups on clicks. Required geoJSON files of Maharashtra, got it (with district borders) quite easily from here

Requirements

1. As stated earlier, shapefiles or geoJSON files depending on the method.
2. Latitude and Longitude of locations. Easily found from GoogleMaps

Transliteration system

For the location names: To maintain vernacular pronunciation, while still preserving readability as per original script, I have used a self-tampered Harvard-Kyoto transliteration - with the voiced retroflex lateral approximant ळ written as La, and the schwa as Ə.

Example, माळठाण in HK and modified HK are mALaThANa and mALəThANə respectively.

Conclusion

Typically, I'd have preferred the method using geopandas where I can add the distance scale using geopy.distance on the axes limits. The folium method while being interactive and also quite fluid, I cannot seem to find a method to lock in the zoom. Lack of a good shapefile for MH state influences the decision in favour of folium. But, better shapefiles (like one for NYC I found here) would make me choose geopandas.

Contact