Map Geocoded data with Gephi

The mixture between network and geographic data has a fantastic potential and didn’t completely reveals its power yet. Alexis Jacomy, a student member of the Gephi community just released a new Plugin named GeoLayout, which aims to bridge this gap. Congratulations!

The Plugin use latitude/longitude coordinates to set correct nodes position on the network. Several projections are available, including Mercator which is used by Google Maps and other online services.

The Plugin is available from Gephi Plugin Center. The author is looking for feedbacks, please visit the plugin page.

I wanted to try with the classical USA Airline Routes network dataset, and detail the experience.

Install Plugin

In Gephi, go to the Tools menu and then Plugins. In the Available Plugins tab check the GeoLayout and click on Install. The plugin is installed and you are asked to reboot Gephi. Click OK.

Open Dataset

Download the airlines-sample.gexf (Save As…) dataset and open it with Gephi.

The network is an undirected graph with 235 nodes and 1297 edges. For each node there are two additional data latitude and longitude, expressed in degrees.

You should see the graph opened like this.

Use GeoLayout

Go to the Layout module and choose Geo Layout in the list. And then just click the Run button.

Result

You can see the result immediately. Analysis and aesthetics refinement can be done now. Please visit the Quick Start Tutorial for a step by step introduction to Gephi.

16 Comments

  1. Does gephi or this plugin allows importation from google earth? for example a KMZ or KML file, with places we’ve selected.
    The idea was to have world map and all the places connected to each other.
    thank you
    hugo.

    Reply

  2. Has anyone built a code that can interact with Geolayout to calculate
    1. the average distance between nodes?
    2. the sum of the magnitude/directional (SW, NW… can be expressed in degrees) of the edges?

    Reply

  3. Hi,
    Don’t you face any trouble with your own lat/lng coordinates ?
    I have a csv with coordinates in degrees and also in decimals, decimals one load but are not acknoledge by geolayout algorithm, degrees one doesn’t load (I use this format type : 46° 18′ 53″).
    It’s kind of weird cause it indicates “double collumn in degree”, whereas arlines gmfx project test got coordinates in decimal.
    Any idea ?
    By the way thanks for the tuto.
    Cheers, Jérémi.

    Reply

  4. Thanks for this gexf file.

    @Amparo : As per my findings we cannot set background image of the world map in Gephi, but we can export the plotted graph from Gephi as .KMZ file format using “Export to Earth plugin” ; Then we can open it in Google Earth application with the latitude and longitude values. I tried and it worked.

    Best,
    Arunraja

    Reply

  5. Does this plugin work at smaller levels of geography? I’m having trouble displaying the netowrk at a city level, all of the nodes cluster together in one space.

    Reply

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