Google Fusion Tables and KML Polygons

Google Fusion Tables (Fusion) makes it easy to visualize relatively simple data on a Google Map, assuming some portion of your data is or can be geocoded.

Recently, I needed to visualize California county level data on a Google Map.  My requirements were pretty simple:

1. Outline the counties
2. Fill county polygons with a color representative of the data
3. Provide an informational pop-up when a county is clicked

Since the requirements were pretty simple I decided to give Fusion a shot.  Fusion allows you to import a Google Docs Spreadsheet as a datasource, so that's the route I took.  

In order to outline the California counties I turned to Fusion's ability to process KML.  Using the KML polygon I was able to provide standard polygon coordinates (derived from Census data), which ended up being my "location" source for my data.

Fusion offers several options for formatting polygons on the map.  In my case I used a number in my import file to color the counties/polygons creating a semi choropleth map.

Finally, Fusion allows you to format your informational popups using a combination of data from your datasource and HTML.

If interested, I've created a sample Google Docs spreadsheet that contains polygons for California's 58 counties.  Note: The county_name in the sample_data sheet is being used to lookup the kml_polygon in the ca_counties sheet. 

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