Using Shapefiles in Tableau

U T A with star in the center, used when staff photo is unavailable

by Peace Ossom Williamson
April 9 2020

I have been working to update and add more information to the COVID-19 Data Dashboard, which maps the number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus disease in Dallas / Forth Worth, and in Texas. The COVID-19 Dashboard was created for the UTA community to help inform those viewing it about where cases and deaths are present and how those numbers are changing.

Because of the focus on the UTA community, my hope was to find and share data as specific to the area as possible. Because public health agencies have to be mindful of HIPAA protections, data were broadly released at first. Data are now available at city level and public health agencies are now working to provide information at the zip code level. Dallas County recently released its first zip-code level map, and Tarrant County is working on doing the same.

Access the COVID-19 Dashboard

The more that people are aware of the status in their particular areas, the better they can make decisions around social distancing, getting tested, self-quarantine, and seeking help if experiencing symptoms, which are typically fever (can be low-grade), sore or painful throat, cough, body aches, fatigue, congestion, and shortness of breath.

Mapping City Data

As more data became available, I decided to add a map of city data to the dashboard. Cities in Collin, Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant counties were included. While Tableau does have latitude and longitude information for each city's center, it did not have the city boundaries. Therefore, in order to color the cities by the amount of cases, I needed to add that information to my dataset. These are widely available, and Texas city boundary shapefiles are available from the Texas Department of Transportation Open Data Portal.