MapInfo Pro

I came across a blog post by Alasdair Rae, from the University of Sheffield in the UK:

http://www.statsmapsnpix.com/2017/12/population-density-in-europe.html

I thought I would give the EUROSTAT a run in MapInfo Pro too.

Getting the data

First you need to download the data which can be quickly done from this page: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata/reference-data/population-distribution-demography/geostat

As you can see there is two datasets: one covering 2006 and one covering 2011.

The dataset comes as a grid in Shape format which I opened into MapInfo Pro and saved into a native table.

It also comes as a CSV file with the population data. One of these files was using comma as a separator and the other one was using semicolon.

Also note that the table structure of these two datasets (2006 and 2011) isn't the same.

Mapping the Data

Next you need to map your population data to your grid data.

Do remember to save a copy of the CSV files into a native table. You can do this quite easily if you check the Save Copy in MapInfo format for Read/Write.

See Attachment

To map the population data against the grid, I added two columns: Pop_2006 and Pop_2011, both as Integer, to the grid table.

I then used Update Column to populate these new columns with the population data from the CSV files.

PS: If you forgot to save your CSV files into a native format, it will take a lot longer to get the grid table updated. From a native table it took just around a minute, maybe a bit less for each update process.

Thematics

And now you are ready to show the population data on a map, for example using a thematic.

I used some custom intervals to make a map similar to the one in the article.

With MapInfo Pro 16.0, you can use the new THEME tab to assign a nice looking color template to the intervals afterwards.

Here's a look at most of Europe (or more precisely EU)

See Attachment

Here is how Denmark looks:

See Attachment

And just for the fun of it, I use ScreenToGIF to create a GIFF where I turn the individual bins of one at a time.

See Attachment

How you ever worked with Population Density maps?

Nice one @Peter Horsbøll Møller?  Has Alasdair seen this??

I don't think so, @John Ievers?. Do you know him? I follow him on twitter but I don't think I ever have met him. Feel free to share. 

It is a nice insight on population data coverage. I did similar one for india with our powerful MI Pro V16. Will share it to the forum soon :)

Hmmm - I couldn't open the shape file. Did you have to make any special settings @Peter Horsbøll Møller? ??

John, maybe I used the MapBasic window to save it into a NativeX table - I can’t recall if the files did cross the 2GB mark

Yes, v17 opens the shape file? but not 15 or 16 or UT. I wonder what is different about that file?

I think it might be using UTF-8 and you needed to do some tweaks to open such a file in earlier versions.

See Attachment 2.1 million grid squares

Thematic See Attachment

You are getting there, @John Ievers?  😁