In this practical webinar, we'll walk through some of the key location intelligence functions that are now available in BigQuery with our Spatial Extension.

1. CARTO Cloud Native – An
introduction to the Spatial
Extension for BigQuery
Follow @CARTO on Twitter

2. CARTO — Unlock the power of spatial analysis
Introductions
Margara Tejera
Product Manager at CARTO
Miguel Álvarez
Data Scientist at CARTO

3. CARTO — Unlock the power of spatial analysis
Agenda
● Introduction to the Spatial Extension and vision
● Overview of the functions available in the Spatial Extension for BigQuery
● Demo: cluster, polygonize and spatial indexes
● Tiler + feature preview.
● Demo: solving a complete spatial analysis
● Spatial Extension for Snowflake
● Q&A

4. CARTO — Unlock the power of spatial analysis
POLL 1
Data Analyst ………..…………………………………………………………….
Data Scientist ………………….……….………………………………………..
Developer …..…………………………………...………………………………..
What’s your current role?
Other …..…………………………………………………………………………….

5. CARTO — Unlock the power of spatial analysis
Intro

6. CARTO — Unlock the power of spatial analysis
CARTO is going cloud native

7. CARTO — Unlock the power of spatial analysis
The CARTO Spatial Extension is
a suite of user defined
functions (UDFs) and
procedures to perform spatial
analysis natively within the
cloud data warehouse
environment.
What’s the Spatial
Extension?

8. CARTO — Unlock the power of spatial analysis

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● Scalable and serverless spatial analytics
● No more ETLs: everything happens within the data
warehouse
● Security compliance!
Some key benefits

11. CARTO — Unlock the power of spatial analysis
Status in BigQuery

12. ● 60+ core functions
● 12 advanced
functions and
procedures
* Full list in the Documentation

13. CARTO — Unlock the power of spatial analysis
● Spatial Extension: BigQuery
project called bqcarto.
● Module: BigQuery dataset, e.g. h3,
quadkey, tiler, etc. Organises the
functionality of the Spatial Extension in
categories.
● Function / procedure:
BigQuery UDF functions and
procedures.

14. CARTO — Unlock the power of spatial analysis
POLL 2
Only CARTO ……………………………………………………………………….
Only BigQuery ………………………….………………………………………..
Both CARTO & BigQuery…..………………………………………………..
Do you use CARTO and/or BigQuery ?

15. CARTO — Unlock the power of spatial analysis
Examples & new
CARTO Cloud Native

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CARTO Cloud Native
Workspace

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Cluster and polygonize

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Weather stations
coverage using Voronoi
diagrams
New police stations based
on Chicago Crime
locations

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Spatial Indexes
H3 · Quadkey · S2

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What are they?

22. CARTO — Unlock the power of spatial analysis
Spatial indices = scalable spatial analysis
Enable to partition the space at different resolutions [viz]

23. CARTO — Unlock the power of spatial analysis
Spatial indices = scalable spatial analysis
Expensive spatial operations like intersections become table JOINS

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Example

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Tiler

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BigQuery Tiler is a solution to visualise
massive datasets hosted in BigQuery
through the transformation of the original
data into vector tiles.
What is it?

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How it works
● Converts tables into tilesets: z, x, y, data (MVT), carto_partition
● Metadata stored in z/x/y -1/NULL/NULL (JSON)
● 4000 partitions using carto_partition: improve speed
● Uses procedures: reads query twice (get metadata, generate tileset)
z x y carto_partition data
16 45340 24576 3605 H4sIAAAAAAAA/5Py52JPdt3eyCLEwM (…)

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1. World Population (Worldpop)
2. New American Atlas (CDRC)
3. Night time lights (Colorado School of
Mines)
Examples
Publicly available in BigQuery
project carto-do-public-tilesets

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● No configuration needed
● Smart tile memory
management
Feature preview:
Smart Tiler
ST_GENERATETILESET(
input_sql STRING,
output_table_name STRING,
--OPTIONAL
options)

30. CARTO — Unlock the power of spatial analysis
CARTO offers a complete toolset
1. Create tilesets with BigQuery Tiler
2. Serve tiles through the Maps API
3. Visualise tilesets
○ In the Dashboard / Cloud Native Workspace
○ In custom apps through CARTO for deck.gl and CARTO for
React

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Point Aggregation
Tileset
● Encodes the original features
(points, lines, polygons) and
their attributes.
● Only for points or data that can be
converted to points.
● Encodes the aggregation of the
points’ attributes.
Simple Tileset

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It’s time for a real world example!

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Getting access

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1. Create BigQuery connection, OAuth type.
2. Choose any billing project
3. Check that you have access running this in BQ:
bqcarto.tiler.VERSION()

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Other data
warehouses

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Status in
Snowflake
● Same functionality as
in BigQuery, except
Tiler and Data module.
● Installation through the
Snowflake Data
Marketplace.
* Full list in the Documentation
Coming soon!

37. CARTO — Unlock the power of spatial analysis
Q&A

38. Thanks for listening!
Any questions?
Request a demo at CARTO.COM
Miguel Álvarez
Data Scientist at CARTO // malvarez@cartodb.com
Margara Tejera
Product Manager at CARTO // mtejera@cartodb.com