Spatial Mapping Question

General
1

Hi,

New to the forum. What is the best way to create spatial maps? Is python better or R? What is the typical code you use to make them?

Thanks

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2

I find for base maps that R is great to use with the library(maps) function. You can take a look at some code used for generating an R map from these posts: Visualization: Geospatial & Other and Introduction to Analyzing Spatial Movement.
Python also offers nice images as well. Here is a quick example with some code if you’d like to try it:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from PIL import Image

# Load the saved image
img = Image.open("western_new_york_map.png")

# Convert the image to RGB mode
img_rgb = img.convert('RGB')

# Get image dimensions
width, height = img.size

# Generate random points
num_points = 10
x_coords = np.random.randint(0, width, num_points)
y_coords = np.random.randint(0, height, num_points)

# Create the plot
plt.figure(figsize=(12, 8))
plt.imshow(img_rgb)

# Plot the random points
plt.scatter(x_coords, y_coords, c='red', s=50)

# Add labels to the points
for i, (x, y) in enumerate(zip(x_coords, y_coords)):
    plt.annotate(f'Point {i+1}', (x, y), xytext=(5, 5), textcoords='offset points')

plt.title("Map of New York State with Random Points")
plt.axis('off')
plt.tight_layout()
plt.show()

print("Map with random points has been generated.")
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