Choropleth map using FIPS codes

[Anonymous]

Hi!

New to Power BI, forgive any silly questions. I want to create a choropleth map of Georgia's counties to display some quantitative data, and I'm having trouble getting the configuration right. I can almost get there using the arcGIS Maps visualization, but it's a dot density map and I don't see any options to change it. I think the Filled Map visualization is the one that would be a choropleth map, but it doesn't seem to accept my FIPS code column for its Location well. (It just doesn't react/graph anything when I load that in.) The codes are formatted in five digits, so two for GA and three for the county (ie. 13001). Any advice welcome to either get the arcGIS one into a choropleth format, or make these FIPS codes work with the Filled Map!

TIA,

Bonnie

[timg · Accepted solution]

Hi Bonnie,

To make a Choropleth on County level in the filled map I believe the working format is countyname + StateID (e.g.: Appling County GA). This seems to work as well in my test (see image 1). Also, the column needs to be categorized as geographic data (see image 2).

If using the FIPS is a hard requirement, you may want to check out the shape map visual. This visual allows you to add custom maps (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/visuals/desktop-shape-map#use-custom-maps). It does require some more effort though.

1

2

Hope that helps!

Best regards,

Tim

[Anonymous]

Ah, understood, thanks Tim! Seems kind of wild to me that Bing can't accept FIPS codes. But I actually did get a Shape Map (w/an open source GA county map) working! Brings up new questions haha, so I'm back to ask more about that. (If you know about them, please look for that ticket!! Want to pull out the JSON map keys into the dataset, basically.)

Thanks much!