Hello,
Has anyone had any experience building map images from the U.S.'s TIGER/Line census data? I’ve been scratching my head on this one for awhile and am looking for a good place to get started.
Basically, what I want to do is build a regional map image using state and county boundaries (assuming that information is buried somewhere in those TIGER/Line files) in a Java2D Graphics context. I really want an image similar to this:
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/wwamap/png/phi.png
Alternatively, I’ve considered just capturing existing map image files (png, jpg, whatever) and trying to manipulate those in J2D instead. I figure it might be easier to build the maps from already-made images somehow rather than dealing with that census data.
I would like to be able to zoom on the map, scroll the map (like Google Maps), color particular counties, etc., so it’s not enough to simply display a static image file; I need to be able to manipulate it.
Any ideas to start me off?
Thanks,
John