I don’t have time to chase this just now, but it could be handy… Over the last few months, several of Alasdair Rae (University of Sheffield) Google Fusion Tables generated maps have been appearing on the Guardian Datablog, including one today showing the UK’s new Parliamentay constituency boundaries.

Looking at Alasdair’s fusion table for English Indices of Deprivation 2010, we can see how it contains various output area codes as well as KML geometry shape files that can be used to draw the boundaries on map.

On the to do list, then, is to a set of fusion tables that we can use to generate maps from datatables containing particular sorts of output area code. Because it’s easy to join two fusion tables by a common column, we’d then have a Google Fusion Tables simple recipe for thematic maps:

1) get data containing output area or constituency codes;
2) join with the appropriate mapping fusion table to annotate original data with appropriate shape files;
3) generate map…

I wonder – have Alasdair or anyone from the Guardian Datablog/Datastore team already published such a tutorial?

PS Ah, here’s one example tutorial: Peter Aldhous: Thematic Maps with Google Fusion Tables [PDF]

PPS for constituency boundary shapefiles as KML see http://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?dsrcid=1574396 or the Guardian Datastore’s http://www.google.com/fusiontables/exporttable?query=select+col0%3E%3E1+from+1474106+&o=kmllink&g=col0%3E%3E1