Using a shapefile to determine the region in which a point lies

[Evan Carron-Kee]

Apologies, I posted this from a draft by accident - I've since found some relevant previous posts after using different search terms, so please disregard this post. It doesn't seem as though I can delete the post, so I thought it would be better to edit rather than leave it up.

[Andrew Musau]

Someone reading through your post will not find it informative. The best approach is to link the thread that you found helpful and explain how it resolved your issue. It's important to note that Statalist is not a helpline; instead, people learn from threads, just as you have.

[Sergiy Radyakin]

See e.g. GEOINPOLY:

Robert Picard, 2015. "GEOINPOLY: Stata module to match geographic locations to shapefile polygons," Statistical Software Components S458016, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 16 Aug 2015.

[Sergiy Radyakin]

See also:

gpsbound: A command for importing and verifying geographical information from a user-provided shapefile
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf...867X1501500211

[Evan Carron-Kee]

Someone reading through your post will not find it informative. The best approach is to link the thread that you found helpful and explain how it resolved your issue. It's important to note that Statalist is not a helpline; instead, people learn from threads, just as you have.

Thanks for letting me know, I didn't know this was the correct way to update the thread. As Sergiy has helpfully pointed out, geoinpoly and gpsbound are all solutions to the problem I was having. The trick as always was realising how to phrase my question, and then I came across plenty of older threads on these point-in-polygon operations, this thread started by Robert Picard covers all the important details.


I will attach my original question below for reference:

"Hey everyone,

I'm in the early stages of a research project on Airbnb and rents in Dublin's Local Electoral Areas (LEAs).

I have data from InsideAirbnb on every Airbnb listing in September 2023 and their co-ordinates, I have data on average rents in Dublin's 31 LEAs, and I have a shapefile of the LEA's in Dublin.

I'm not familiar with geographical or spatial data analysis, but I'm hoping to carry out some analysis using these data in Stata. At the minute, I'm trying to figure out how I can use the shapefile and the co-ordinates for each Airbnb listing to create a variable for which of the 31 LEAs that Airbnb listing is located in. I'm having trouble figuring out how to go about this in Stata, so I would really appreciate your guidance or advice on this!

All the best,
Evan"