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Setting Up a Region Mapping Server

Region mapping is the process of matching a value in a CSV file to a pre-defined boundary, such as a postcode, local government area or electorate. The allowed boundaries for a given TerriaJS instance are given in a file such as wwwroot/data/regionMapping.json.

This is the current method to create a new set of boundaries not currently supported by TerriaJS:

Prepare the shapefiles

  • One shapefile should contain all the polygons.

  • There should be a FID (case-sensitive) attribute, numbering each polygon starting from 0. If no FID attribute is present, use ogr2ogr to add it:

    ogr2ogr -f "ESRI Shapefile" precincts-fid.shp precincts.shp -sql 'select FID,* from precincts'

    If you have several files to process, use a line like this:

    for i in GCCSA IARE ILOC IREG SOS SOSR SUA UCL; do ogr2ogr -f "ESRI Shapefile" ${i}_2011_AUST_fid.shp ${i}_2011_AUST.shp -sql 'select FID,* from '"${i}_2011_AUST"; done

  • There should be an attribute containing the identifiers you wish to match against (eg, for postcode boundaries, a postcode attribute containing the 4 digit codes themselves).

  • The projection should be EPSG:4326 (unprojected lat/long on WGS84).

Set up GeoServer

  1. Install GeoServer. The instance used by National Map is on AWS, available at geoserver.nationalmap.nicta.com.au.

  2. Using the GeoServer web interface, create a data store of type Directory of spatial files (shapefiles).

  3. Upload the shapefile (.shp, .shx, .dbf and .qix) into the appropriate directory. For National Map's server, this is /mnt/data/region_map/shape_files/.

  4. Create a style called region_fid. Paste the contents of this Gist.

  5. Under Layers > Add a New Resource, find the new shapefile name and click Publish

  6. Set these properties:

  7. Declared SRS: EPSG:4326
  8. Click "Compute from data" and "Compute from native bounds" to set the bounding box.
  9. On the Publishing page, set region_fid as the Default Style

Configure the regions in your TerriaJS-based map

Modify wwwroot/data/regionMapping.json. Add a section like this:

    "SA4": {
        "layerName":"region_map:FID_SA4_2011_AUST",
        "server": "http://geoserver.nationalmap.nicta.com.au/region_map/ows",
        "regionProp": "SA4_CODE11",
        "aliases": ["sa4_code", "sa4_code", "sa4"],
        "description": "Statistical Area Level 4"
    },
  • "SA4": this identifier does not serve any machine-readable purpose outside this file.
  • layerName: the WMS layer of your new regions, including the workspace.
  • server: the URL of your GeoServer, up to and including /ows.
  • regionProp: the name of the attribute containing region identifiers that will be matched against (case-sensitive)
  • aliases: alias of CSV column header names that will be recognised as matching this kind of feature. Must be lowercase.
  • description: May be used in GUI elements and error messages.