In many countries cultural regions or features are subject to change, debate, or dispute. This article provides some details on how Spotfire handles this.

• “Natural Earth Vector draws boundaries of countries according to de facto status. We show who actually controls the situation on the ground.”

Spotfire allows the use of custom geographical map and custom shapes (or geocoding tables) with your own cultural features. For instance, Natural Earth provides a shape built specifically for breakaway disputed areas (https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/50m-cultural-vectors/50m-admin-0-breakaway-disputed-areas/) and can be added to a Spotfire analysis and saved in a Spotfire library for reuse.

For the worldwide geographical map, third-party map services with your own cultural features can be added as a TMS Layer or WMS Layer.  Options include Mapbox, TomTom and HERE.

• www.naturalearthdata.com
• www.openstreetmap.org
• www.mapbox.com
• www.tomtom.com/en_us/
• www.here.com