Overview

We live in a three dimensional world. A spatial or geographic element is ubiquitous among the wide spectrum of business activities. In most instances, these geographic aspects fall into certain patterns instead of being randomly distributed. The identification and understanding of these patterns would offer invaluable insights for more effective strategic planning and management.

We need to see something first before we can act on it. Business Geography is no exception. Unfortunately, data in conventional tabular format prove almost helpless to reveal location patterns. Imagine the situation where you face a bunch of database reports on regional demographics, store locations and competitor locations. All you see are endless rows, columns and cells of data. Conventional database software can help you summarize or query the source data but it does not address your real demand - a coherent and concise visual perspective through which you can examine the inherent spatial relationships between component datasets. This is where location intelligence system like China infoMap comes into play.

The following China infoMap screen shot shows a region map at the background with its color variation pattern tied to the value of a chosen demographic data field. Overlaid above the region map are point objects of different symbols representing Points-of-Interest ( POI ) placed by the end-user for a particular analysis.

The mapping interface is supplemented by a data table browser and an Object Info tool for easy viewing of the data embedded in map objects. The POI layer is completely editable by the user.