Open Geospatial Data for Analysis Within Alteryx

[Samantha_Jayne]

Often as sales engineers, we are faced with the same expressions and questions when we showcase spatial data or analytics in Alteryx.

First: Wow, isn’t that amazing? I never knew we could do that out of the box!

Second: Where can I find data to do that?

It’s the best part of the job when you open that new door for an organization, and they begin to get more from their day job. 

Spatial analysis is, and should be, a massive part of every business because “where” is an important question to ask. So, to support those commonly asked questions, we have decided to write a blog to help get anyone started on spatial analysis because the first thing you need is spatial data. These are common datasets across the globe, links to that dataset, and then regions where they are based so that you can find some data close to you to play with. This can then be used to help anyone get started with spatial data in Alteryx.

A top tip from #TeamSpatial is to Google Search: [your location of interest] Open Data, and you will have so many results to pick from it may be overwhelming, so we have decided to get you started with a table of our favorites.

Dataset Name	Used for	Region	Link
ESRI ArcGIS Hub	Spatial Datasets across the globe	Global	https://hub.arcgis.com/
ESRI	Countries	Global	https://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/esri::world-countries-generalized/explore
Humanitarian Data Exchange	Spatial Datasets across the globe	Global	https://data.humdata.org/
ONS GeoPortal Website	Boundaries and ONS Statistics	UK	https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/
London Data Store	Datasets based in London	UK	https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/?format=shp
Spatial Data Gov Scotland	Datasets based in Scotland	UK	https://www.spatialdata.gov.scot/
Government of Wales	Datasets based in Wales	UK	https://datamap.gov.wales/
Government of Ireland	Datasets based in Ireland	IE	https://data.gov.ie/
US Government Open Data	Agriculture, Climate, Energy, Local Gov, Maritime, Ocean and Older Health Datasets	USA	https://data.gov/
National Centre for Environment Information	Climate Data	USA	https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web/
US Geological Survey	Physical Geography datasets	USA	https://www.usgs.gov/products/data
Los Angeles GeoHub	Datasets based in Los Angeles	USA	https://geohub.lacity.org/
Government of Australia	Boundaries in Australia	AUS	https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/geoscape-administrative-boundaries

We also have a blog to help you convert Shapefiles to Parquet files. If that is of interest, you can find that here: Get Your Data into Location Intelligence with Shapefile to Geoparquet Conversion.

One final tip before you go:

When looking at data, you may not realize you have spatial data to hand.

Customer	Address	Postcode / Zipcode
Customer A	Location A	Postcode A
Customer B	Location B	Postcode B

This data, when its local postcodes, can be geocoded into actual locations – such as latitude and longitude on a map very easily utilizing our spatial data packs within Alteryx. Just reach out to your account team to find out more.

We also have a handy video series for you to learn more about spatial data and how you can utilize it in Alteryx today here: Building Geo-Insights with Alteryx.

I am a massive believer in paying it forward, so if you have an open dataset or website you would like to recommend or be added to this list, let us know in the comments.

Spatial for All series.

Putting spatial back to the heart of analytics because everything happens somewhere!