Visualize geospatial data

Geospatial analytics lets you visualize geographic location data byusing the following:

• BigQuery Studio
• Looker Studio
• BigQuery Geo Viz
• Colab notebooks
• Google Earth Engine

BigQuery Studio

BigQuery Studio offers an integrated geography data viewer. When your queryresults contain one or moreGEOGRAPHY type columns, you can view the resultsin an interactive map.To view the map, in theQuery results pane, click theVisualization tab.

Visualization in BigQuery is ideal for quick inspections anditerative query development. You can visually confirm data alignment withexpectations, identify outliers, and assess the correctness of your spatialdata. It's also useful for ad hoc analysis to explore results and deriveimmediate conclusions from geospatial queries.

To see an example of how to use the integrated geography viewer, seeGet started with geospatial analytics.

BigQuery Studio limitations

• You can only visualize oneGEOGRAPHY column at a time.
• Performance is subject to browser capabilities and isn't intended forrendering extremely large or complex datasets. BigQuery rendersup to approximately one million vertices, 20,000 rows, or 128 MB ofresults.

Looker Studio

Looker Studio is a no-cost, self-serve reporting and data visualizationservice from Google Marketing Platform that connects to BigQueryand hundreds of other data sources. The service includes support for a varietyofgeographic field typesandchoropleth maps ofBigQueryGEOGRAPHY polygons. WithGoogle Maps-based visualization,you can visualize and interact with your geographic data just as you do withGoogle Maps: pan around, zoom in, and pop into Street View.

For a walkthrough of geospatial analytics in Looker Studio, seeVisualize BigQueryGEOGRAPHY polygons with Looker Studio.

BigQuery Geo Viz

BigQuery Geo Viz is a web tool for visualization of geospatialdata in BigQuery using Google Maps APIs. You can run a SQL queryand display the results on an interactive map. Flexible styling features letyou analyze and explore your data.

BigQuery Geo Viz is not a fully featured geospatial analyticsvisualization tool. Geo Viz is a lightweight way to visualize the results of ageospatial analytics query on a map, one query at a time.

To see an example of using Geo Viz to visualize geospatial data, seeGet started with geospatial analytics.

To explore Geo Viz, go to the Geo Viz web tool:

Go to Geo Viz

Geo Viz limitations

• Geo Viz supports geometry inputs (points, lines, and polygons) that areretrieved as aGEOGRAPHY column. You can use BigQuery'sgeography functions to convert latitude and longitude toGEOGRAPHY.
• The number of results that Geo Viz can display on a map is limited by browsermemory. You can lower the resolution and reduce size of geospatial datareturned from the query by usingST_Simplify function.
• Real-time, interactive analysis is handled locally by your browser and issubject to your browser's capabilities.
• Geo Viz supports sharing visualizations only with users authorized to executequeries in the same BigQuery project.
• Geo Viz does not support downloading a visualization for offline editing.

Colab notebooks

You can also perform geospatial visualizations in Colabnotebooks. For a tutorial on building a Colab notebook tovisualize data, seeBigQuery geospatial visualization in Colab.

To view and run a prebuilt notebook, seeBigQuery geospatial visualization in Colab in GitHub.

Google Earth Engine

You can also visualize geospatial data using Google Earth Engine. To useGoogle Earth Engine, export your BigQuery data to Cloud Storageand then import it into Google Earth Engine. You can use the Google Earth Engine toolsto visualize your data.

For more information on using Google Earth Engine, see the:

• Google Earth Engine developer's guide
• Google Earth Engine API tutorials