A heat map is a geographical presentation of data in numerical values using colors. Such kind of map is heavily utilized to visualize the location-based data by highlighting trends and distributions across a geographic area. For example, a heat map can track the Swine Flu outbreaks throughout the world, to let people know how the disease is spreading so as to avoid visiting those places.

General Heat Map Setting

- Browse How to Import/ Export Data for Heat Map

- Browse How to Input Data for Heat Map

This function is available in iMapBuilder Registered Version.

1. Click Heat Map "Tick" button to enable heat map function on the left hand side. Click "Setting" Button to edit the heat map options. Or you can simply click button at the top menu bar.
   

   



2. Then, a heat map data window pops up.

   
   
   
   - Define Heat Map Style
   

   Heat Map	Enable or Disable the Heat Map function.
   Heat Map Type	- Continuous Color : The heat map is colored by continuous colors. It is not possible to add any other colors into the heat map using this type. - Discrete Range Color: Any colors can be used in the heat map using this type.
   Highlight Setting	Highlight color is pointing to the regions color that changed when there is mouse over or mouse click.

   
   
   

Heat Map Type- Continuous Color

The heat map is colored by continuous colors. It is not possible to add any other colors into the heat map using this type.

You can select the Start Color and End Color of the heat map. Start Color will be shown in the region which is assigned with lowest value while End Color will be shown in the region which is assigned with highest value.

 

Heat Map Type- Discrete Range Color

Any colors can be used in the heat map using this type.

1. Click Range and Color Setting Button. The setting window of discrete range color will pop up. Click "Add" to add your range limits.

2. Enter the range limits.

3. The range of color in different values will be listed in "Define Range Color"

4. After the range of color is defined, you can change the gradient colors using the gradient generator (lowest color and highest color) from the color picker. And Generate.

5. If you want to change some range of color, you can manually click on that range and select other color.

6. Click [OK] and [Apply] button, then the heat map will show up. Then you may need to change the heat map value to indicate the heat map color range.

You can see different levels of color gradient in different regions. As we use deep orange to represent maximum value and grey to represent -30 value, the region with the largest value (i.e., Middle East) is displayed in deep orange and Europe with -40 value shows grey color, while those in between are shown with colors that lie in between the two extreme colors.

Besides, as the South America and Oceania is value 5,6 which is included in the color range value 0-20, so the regions are color in blue.

How to Copy and Paste Heat Map Data from spreadsheet

1. Open your spreadsheet software (like Excel or OpenOffice)
2. Click Copy all to clipboard to copy the heat map data into clipboard
3. Switch to spreadsheet software and create a new blank spreadsheet
4. Paste the clipboard data into your spreadsheet
5. Edit the heat mapdata inside your spreadsheet software
6. Select the related cell in your spreadsheet and copy the data back into clipboard
7. Switch to the iMapBuilder Software, and click Paste from Clipboard to paste back the heat mapdata from spreadsheet
8. PS: Paste or Import should include the header title and with same number of rows and columns
   

How to Import and Export Data File

1. The data file is in Unicode Text (.txt), you can find this file format in Excel
2. Click the Export Data File to export the existing heat mapdata.
   
   
   
3. Open data file in spreadsheet like Excel or OpenOffice (For OpenOffice, we recommend you to rename the datafile to .csv extension because OpenOffice may default open the .txt in it's OpenOffice Docs)
4. Edit the heat map data in the spreadsheet software
5. Save the data file
   ** Click here to view steps of using Excel or OpenOffice to save datafile

Unicode Text Format (.txt)

• UCS-2 Little Endian (known as UTF16 LE)
• Each record is one line of the text file
• Each field value of a record is separated by a TAB
• And Text delimiter set as blank

Publish and upload the map to the server.