Wednesday, March 22, 2023

A Couple of Mismatches in Tableau's Map

In the process of creating a dashboard on the US Travel Advisory 2023, I found some mismatches in a few regions in two countries.

Gaza Strip

One is Gaza Strip in Palestinian Territories. In the latter, there are two regions: Gaza Strip and West Bank. However in Tableau's map, the corresponding polygon to Gaza Strip doesn't show up. I later found out that the region is named "Palestinian Territories" which is the same as the country. So the pair country/province is like "Palestinian Territories/Palestinian Territories". This gives me the correct polygon for Gaza Strip. I noticed that Gaza is a city within Gaza Strip and also the name of cities in multiple countries.

I expected the correct pairing is "Palestinian Territories/Gaza Strip".  I checked openstreet map whose map is used in Tableau. In that map, the region is called Gaza Strip.

Mexico City

Mexico City as the capital is like Washington DC and is regarded as a state in Mexico. In mapping Mexico at the state level, I found that Mexico City is not showing up. After some research, I found that I need to use "Distrito Federal" for it to show up. In Britannica, it is stated that Mexico City is officially equivalent to the "Distrito Federal". 

I expected that Mexico City or CDMX work as well as Distrito Federal. It seems that CDMX is replacing Distrito Federal as the official name of the capital.

Conclusion

I hope the above can be fixed to reduce the confusion by Tableau users.

Below's the US Department of State's Travel Advisories visualized in Tableau. The interactive version is here. It's dated on 3/14/2023. This is a dynamic map which needs to be updated all the time. Please refer to the US Department site for the latest.




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