Finding and Importing Geographic Data into Mathematica 7

Last year, SlashGeo and Ogle Earth reported that Mathematica 7 imports geographic data. Now, you can import such data to Mathematica 7 directly from Finder!

So if you are searching for geographic data to use with Mathematica 7, try Finder.

Once you’ve found data (for example, an earthquake feed from USGS) just right click on the “Shapefile” Button at right of the layer page to “copy link location.” Then you can paste this directly into Mathematica 7:

View the map:

Import["http://finder.geocommons.com/overlays/12193.zip", "Graphics"]

List data elements:

Import["http://finder.geocommons.com/overlays/12193.zip", "Elements"]


Import elements from the data:

Import["http://finder.geocommons.com/overlays/12193.zip", element name]


If you have an idea for analysis you’d like to see using data from Finder, please feel free to share it here.

Also keep in mind that you can use finder to convert simple spreadsheets with addresses to Wolfram 7 usable data using the same steps above.

The same goes for KML, GeoRSS (such as the earthquake feed above), and even text files or websites (via Metacarta).