MATLAB: Dealing with thematic maps, how to read a shapefile and giving him an additional data array

Mapping Toolboxshapefilethematic map

Hello to everybody, i'm trying to learn how to build rapidly a thematic map of several parameters that i have to represent but, following the guidelines (<http://www.mathworks.it/it/help/map/thematic-maps-1.html>) i could not get totally the point. This is the matter: i have to represent with a thematic map the variation of the Production Price of the Wheat across the world in 2011. First of all i have loaded a shapefile of the world (that is TM_WORLD_BORDERS-0.3.shp). It has all the informations to create a map of the world and to recognize the boundaries of the nations.
world=shaperead('TM_WORLD_BORDERS-0.3.shp')
By reading the suggestions in the tutorial it has been easy to make a thematic map according to one of the parameters that is already inside the shapefile (the shp has already inside NAME AREA POP2005 REGION SUBREGION LON LAT) by using
maxdensity = max([world.POP2005]);
fall = flipud(autumn(numel(world)));
densityColors = makesymbolspec('Polygon', {'POP2005',[0 maxdensity], 'FaceColor', fall});
geoshow(world, 'DisplayType', 'polygon','SymbolSpec', densityColors)
title ({'density population of nations in 2005'})
but i did not understand how to arrange a thematic map according to a column array coming from outside the shapefile . for example, the production price that i have just downloaded from FAOSTAT website.
thanks a lot

Best Answer

If you're comfortable with the geoshow/symbolspec combo, the easiest way to do this would be to add your additional data as new fields to the structure:
pth = '~/Documents/Research/Data/TM_WORLD_BORDERS-0.3/'; % change as appropriate
world = shaperead(fullfile(pth, 'TM_WORLD_BORDERS-0.3.shp'), 'usegeocoords', true);
mystat = num2cell(1:246);
ss = makesymbolspec('Polygon', {'mystat', [1 246], 'facecolor', jet(64)});
[world.mystat] = deal(mystat{:});
geoshow(world, 'DisplayType', 'polygon','SymbolSpec', ss);
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