How to import a country map with counties and have Matlab recognize the various counties?

Hi,

I am working on a project and basically, I'm trying to import a map of US with the counties marked on it. my purpose is to add data about each county, specifically about the concentration of different ethnicities. Then, I want to give each county a certain shade of color based on the concentration.

Does Matlab have a feature which can detect the counties on a map? if so, can each element (county) store data and be assigned individual colors?

I am experienced in Matlab and have coded a lot of numerical analysis projects before. This is a side project, and I've never worked with image importing and detection in Matlab, which is why I'm asking.

Thank You

Answer 1

[Jonathan Sullivan]

Assuming you have the mapping toolbox, you could just import it via a shape file. They can be found below:

<ftp://ftp2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2012/COUNTY/tl_2012_us_county.zip>

help shaperead
doc shaperead

[Nathan Kamphuis]

Jonathan,

Thanks for the tip on shape files.

Here is the latest one I could find on the Census Bureau site: