Zdena DOBEŠOVÁ, Jan PIŇOS

Automatic creation of chart map with population pyramids

Dobešová, Z., Piňos, J.: Automatic creation of chart map with population pyramids. Kartografické listy, 2018, 26 (1).

Abstract: Population pyramids are used in demographics and they are part of almost every atlas dealing with socio-economic phenomena. The population pyramid (sometimes also an age pyramid) is a type of columnar rectangular chart, namely a paired histogram (Voženílek, Kaňok et al., 2011) showing the distribution of the population into age groups and the age structure of the population. Using the population pyramid, it is possible to express and compare the age structure of two groups, for example, men and women, or age structure of two states, etc. Other, more complex, population pyramids such as structural age pyramid can be used to present more detailed phenomena in each age group. Automatic creation of the population pyramid can be done using MS Excel, R Studio or directly in ArcGIS. In these cases, a single chart is created, which can be used as a supplemental part outside the map. In order to automate the creation of a chart map with several population pyramids located in the regions of the map, the team at the department of Geoinformatics at Palacký University in Olomouc developed a program named Population Pyramid. This program is freely available as a toolbox for ArcGIS v. 10. 3. The program solves both automated pyramid creation and automated creation of the corresponding legend. The possibilities and uses of this tool are presented in this article.

Keywords: population pyramid, chart map, Python, script, ArcGIS