00mjk / sicilian-monastic-orders-choropleth-map

Choropleth map for Sicilian monastic orders location quotients

Norman Sicily Monastic Order Location Quotients Choropleth Map

This is an example Choropleth map showing the location quotients for Norman Sicilian monastic orders.

Location Quotients

In economics, a location quotient is used to determine areas where employment in a specific industry may be over or under represented. In this example, the location quotient concept is applied to the number of monastic foundations by order in Norman Sicily. Hopefully, location quotients will identify concentrations of orders in certain provinces of Sicily. In the model, the monastic order replaces the concept of industry. For regions, the boundaries of the modern provinces are used for convenience, while the reference area is the whole of Sicily.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, "A location quotient (LQ) is an analytical statistic that measures a region’s industrial specialization relative to a larger geographic unit (usually the nation)".¹

Location quotients are calculated by a three step method:

1. Divide the local employment for a specific industry by the sum of employment in all industries for the local area.
2. Divide reference area industry employment by the sum of all employment in all industries for the reference area.
3. Divide the local ratio by the reference area ratio.

Normally, "local" denotes a state or region while "reference area" denotes a nation.

A location quotient of greater than 1.0 indicates the industry has a greater share of local employment than does the reference area.² In this model, a location quotient of greater than 1.0 indicates that a particular monastic order has a greater concentration of foundations in a specific modern province of Sicily.

Data

The data comes from the The Norman Sicily Project's data dump GitHub repo.

The Norman Sicily Project mined most of the data about Norman Sicilian monastic foundations from Lynn White's Latin Monasticism in Norman Sicily³. In it, White gives a list of monasteries founded in the Norman period of Sicilian history (1060-1194 CE). Dawn Marie Hayes has assigned each of these foundations a location in one of the modern provinces of Sicily.

Files

• index.html - modified version of Leaflet's example of an interactive choropleth map
• it_sicilia_provinces.geojson - geojson file containing modern provinces for Sicily. From https://github.com/Dataninja/geo-shapes.git (italy region 19).
• places-20191009.geojson - GeoJSON file containing raw data about Norman Sicilian monastic foundations. Copied from The Norman Sicily Project data dumps
• app.js - main application script
• app.css - styles for application
• config.js.sample - edit this file to add your MapBox access token. Save and rename it to config.js. IMPORTANT! DO NOT COMMIT THIS FILE!

License

Copyright © 2017-2019 Joseph P. Hayes

Released under the MIT license.

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NOTES

1. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, FAQ: "What are location quotients (LQs)?" (Jan. 11 2008)

2. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Help & Tutorials: "Location Quotient Calculator" (June 21, 2013)

3. White, Lynn Townsend, Latin Monasticism In Norman Sicily. Cambridge, Mass.: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1938.