30 Days of Maps Day 4 - Hexagons

Today is day 4 of the #30DayMapChallenge.

The theme for today's map is hexagons - Maps using hexagonal grids. Step away from square grids and try mapping with hexagons. A fun way to show density or spatial patterns..

Given our logo, this challenge could have been made for us! Icon Map Pro has the in-built capability to index point data (longitudes and latitudes) into Uber's H3 hexagon grid system - as well as providing support for data already indexed. For this challenge we're going to use open data from data.police.uk and examine every crime committed in England in September 2024. It turns out there were over 435,000 crimes committed in England in September that had their location recorded. In fact there were nearly different 200,000 locations in the dataset.

This report is sending all 435,000 crimes into the map to be converted into hexagons - well beyond the data limits for the "out of the box" visuals. The report allows you to select the resolution for these hexagons using a Power BI slicer. Pick a higher number for smaller hexagons when zooming in an looking at a smaller area. The hexagon cells are coloured according to how many crimes were recorded within that area - from white being the lowest through blue to red being the highest (with more time available I'd have added a legend). Two Power BI bar charts allow you to filter the map by type of crime and region, and a slicer is provided to drill into specific Local Authorities. You can also click on a cell to see the breakdown of crimes within each cell.

If you'd like to see how the report was built, you can download it here.

Includes data from data.police.uk and ONS GeoPortal. All the data on this site is made available under the Open Government Licence v3.0.