Problem with mapping enclaves with spmap

[Daniel Kreft]

Dear Statalist members,

I currently working with Stata SE 12.1 (64B) and the latest versions of the "spmap" and the "shp2dta" routines. Recently, I noticed a problem with the correct mapping of the values of enclaves (regions that are totally surrounded by one other region). Attached you can see the problem with displaying the cluster ("high") of the enclave. I have done some tests and it seems to be both, a problem of shapefile conversion (no holes in a polygon) and of spmapping (regions of higher categories are laid on regions of lower categories).

Does anybody has a suggestion or even a solution for that problem?

Thank you in advance!
Daniel

[Maurizio Pisati]

Dear Daniel,
in most cases, the problem you mention can be solved by adding an indicator variable called _EMBEDDED to the basemap dataset. This variable should take value 1 if the corresponding polygon is completely enclosed in another polygon, and value 0 otherwise. For details, please see the spmap help file ("Spatial data format").
Best wishes,
Maurizio

[Daniel Kreft]

Dear Maurizio,

thank you for the quick and helpful response!

Best wishes
Daniel