How TIBCO Spotfire maps handles areas with disputed boundaries

Created
October 08, 2021 23:13

Date Posted: 2021-03-12
Product: TIBCO Spotfire®

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In many countries cultural regions or features are subject to change, debate, or dispute. This article provides some details on how Spotfire handles this. Spotfire worldwide geographical map and geocoding tables include data from Natural Earth (www.naturalearthdata.com) and OpenStreetMap (www.openstreetmap.org) “as-is” and defers to the Natural Earth policy regarding disputed borders (https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/50m-cultural-vectors/50m-admin-0-countries-2/) which reads:

“Natural Earth Vector draws boundaries of countries according to de facto status. We show who actually controls the situation on the ground.”

Spotfire allows the use of custom geographical map and custom shapes (or geocoding tables) with your own cultural features. For instance, Natural Earth provides a shape built specifically for breakaway disputed areas (https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/50m-cultural-vectors/50m-admin-0-breakaway-disputed-areas/) and can be added to a Spotfire analysis and saved in a Spotfire library for reuse.

For the worldwide geographical map, third-party map services with your own cultural features can be added as a TMS Layer or WMS Layer. Options include Mapbox, TomTom and HERE.

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