It’s that time of year where members of the Tableau Community test out their Tableau Jedi skills in the annual Iron Viz design competition.  This weekend saw the deadline for the first of 3 contests to pick the finalists in the Iron Viz 2017 championship. The 3 x winners will be spending a nerve wracking 20 minutes in front of a crowd of thousands in Las Vegas – as a part of the Tableau Customer Conference this October.

I want one of those 3 folks to be ME!!!

So that is why I have spent the last week or so putting together a Tableau Viz using this contests theme: GeoSpatial.

The recent release of Tableau 10.2 added a much anticipated new feature to Tableau Desktop: A connector for Spatial files as a datasource.  I found the new feature really easy to use, and a real winner compared with the old workaround of blending massive polygon datasources.  One of the best things I found out (via The Last Data Blender) was that using two shape files in your datasource allows a dual axis viz showing both polygons and points without the background map disappearing! (sounds geeky I know)

My entry utilises a Tectonic Plates Shape file sourced from Nordpil, combined with historical earthquake data from the US Geological Survey and some further earthquake details from NOAA. I even used Alteryx’s spatial tools to further enhance the shape files, and even make my own earthquake shape file.

The dashboard tells the story of how the precise measurement of earthquake locations in the 20th century came to support and confirm the tectonic plates theory developed decades earlier.

But only if you can complete the Jigsaw puzzle first!

I learned a lot – and had great fun putting the viz together.

I have also put together a great ‘CraigsHacks for Tableau’ video blog showing how the viz came together, what I learned, and some of the tricks I used to give the final product something special.

The Tableau Public version of the workbook is available for viewing and download at this link.