Presentation made by Benjamin Hennig based on a tutorial given at the University of Sheffield for the MSc in Social and Spatial Inequalities, Module GEO6016 Data, Visualisation and GIS, October 2010. http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/

1. Israel & the Palestine Territories
GIS Tutorial by Benjamin Hennig
For the MSc in Social and Spatial Inequalities at the University of Sheffield
Module GEO6016 Data, Visualisation and GIS | http://sasi.group.shef.ac.uk/

2. The following tutorial will talk you through the main steps
necessary to create a basic grid-based population cartogram for
a selected area.
The main data preparation is done using ESRI ArcMap, the
cartogram transformation is performed in ScapeToad which uses
a simplified approach of Gastner/Newmans density equalising
cartogram algorithm.
For technical details and further reading see:
Hennig, B.D., Pritchard, J., Ramsden, M., and Dorling, D. (2010).
Remapping the World’s Population. Visualizing data using
cartograms. ArcUser 2010 (1), 66-69.
Article as PDF at http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/?p=701

3. Data
Population
• Gridded Population of the World
(GPWv3, http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/gpw/)
 provided as raster image worldpop2015.img
Country Shapes
• ESRI Sample Data or
 provided as vector data world.shp
• Global Administrative Boundaries (http://gadm.org/)
• ...

4. GIS works I
Preparing the area of interest: Extracting features
Open world.shp
Select Israel and the Palestine Territories
via the selection menu (or the tools bar)
Right-click the world layer and choose the
Data – Export data option to create a new layer
with the selected polygons

5. GIS works II
Preparing the grid: Creating a 2.5‘‘ fishnet
ArcToolbox:
 Data Management Tools
 Feature Class
 Create Fishnet

6. GIS works II
Preparing the grid: Creating a 2.5‘‘ fishnet
ArcToolbox:
 Data Management Tools
 Feature Class
 Create Fishnet
Converting grid lines to polygons
(ArcToolbox  Data Management Tools
 Features  Feature to Polygon)

7. It should work…but it doesn’t?
Check the extent –
Is it what you want?

8. GIS works IV
Adding and adjusting basedata:
• population raster (worldpop2015.img)
• ArcToolbox:  Data Management Tools  Raster  Raster Processing  Clip)

9. GIS works IV
Adding and adjusting basedata:
• population raster (worldpop2015.img)
• ArcToolbox:  Data Management Tools  Raster  Raster Processing  Clip)
Converting the population raster:
ArcToolbox:
 Conversion Tools
 From Raster
 Raster to Point

10. GIS works V
Assigning population values to grid:
ArcToolbox:
 Analysis Tools
 Overlay
 Spatial Join

11. GIS works VI
Cutting out the area of interest:
ArcToolbox:
 Analysis Tools
 Overlay
 Intersect

12. Creating the cartogram using ScapeToad

13. 1, 2, 3 – as easy as that!

14. …well done 
http://www.worldpopulationatlas.org