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Re: [CTPP] An Alternative to Access ACS 5-year Block Group Data

by GREENWALD Michael J

Hi Liang, Actually, yes I did use the Summary File Retrieval Tool for Block Group Level ACS data; I've had fairly good luck with it, actually. I take your point about the GEOID number being not that intuitive but, to be fair, it DOES follow a coherent pattern. That means the end user can o some work stripping out the Block Group FIPS code to make it match up with the way it is usually recorded in other databases (e.g., in an ArcGIS map theme). It's actually pretty easy to do in Excel, just obnoxious. Given what I've learned from puttering around with the Summary File Retrieval Tool, I've put together a little side project for myself where I'm building a master indices at the Block Group and Tract level which contains the record indices for both the SF1 and ACS datasets (anyone who might be interested can see my earlier posts to this list). Right now, I've only completed Oregon (i.e., the state where I work), but my eventual goal would be to do it for every State/Territory in the union. The only real difficulties are that the amount and size of the transitional working files limits me to working on one state, and level of geography, at a time (i.e., I can't download all the Summary File Retrieval Tool spreadsheets for each state into a single Microsoft Access database, where I could write a master query to do the GEOID parsing). If anyone is interested in discussing this pet project/idea with me, I'd be happy to talk off list. I can send a demo of what I've built for Oregon, and if people are interested, perhaps we might crowdsource the project on this listserve? Just a thought. Let me know if anyone is interested. Mike Greenwald Michael J. Greenwald Senior Transportation Planner Lane Council of Governments 859 Willamette Street, Suite 500 Eugene, OR 97402 Tel: 541-682-6595 Fax: 541-682-4099 mgreenwald(a)lcog.org -----Original Message----- From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net] On Behalf Of liang.long(a)dot.gov Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 8:36 AM To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net Subject: Re: [CTPP] An Alternative to Access ACS 5-year Block Group Data Hi, Mike Thanks for sharing your experience with the Summary File Retrieval Tool. I assisted a user to use the retrieval tool to get ACS block group level data a while ago. However the GEOID in the output spreadsheets were all wrong. I complained this issue to the Census staff during the ACS program Federal users review and probably they have fixed this issue. But I never got the chance to test it. Did you use the tool for the Block Group level data? If so, how did it go? Liang Long ________________________________________ From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net [ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net] on behalf of GREENWALD Michael J [MGREENWALD(a)lcog.org] Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2012 4:20 PM To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net Subject: Re: [CTPP] An Alternative to Access ACS 5-year Block Group Data Thanks to Liang for these links. I, too, have found FactFinder and DataFerrett to be less than intuitive. Building on Liang's message, in addition to ACS Alchemist, US Census also puts out a data retrieval tool that does a pretty good job of retrieving the 1, 3 and/or 5 year data sets. Look at the links for the Summary File Retrieval Tool under "Tools for Using the ACS Summary File" at the following link: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/data_documentation/summary_file/ The difference between something like ACS Alchemist or the Summary File Retrieval Tool is a matter of both task and personal preference. For example, some of my tasks involve dealing with both the ACS Estimate and the Margin of Error (two different data columns), so I like the fact that the Summary File Retrieval tool can be easily set up to consolidate both of those pieces of data. I also like the fact that the Summary File Retrieval Tool automatically loads the ACS table names and column definition in a Metadata tab, so you can easily turn to the documentation in the middle of your data assembly tasks. That said, it does take some extra steps to get the data into a nice, clean format that plugs into a GIS; ACS Alchemist may handle a lot of those tasks on the back end. So, it is a question of how one wants to access the data. I would be interested in hearing from others what experience they've had with the Summary File Retrieval Tool. Any thoughts? Mike Greenwald Michael J. Greenwald Senior Transportation Planner Lane Council of Governments 859 Willamette Street, Suite 500 Eugene, OR 97402 Tel: 541-682-6595 Fax: 541-682-4099 mgreenwald(a)lcog.org<mailto:mgreenwald(a)lcog.org> From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Liang Long Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2012 11:55 AM To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net Subject: [CTPP] An Alternative to Access ACS 5-year Block Group Data Hi, all If you are frustrated by getting the ACS 5-year block group level data via Census Bureau ftpsite or DataFerrett, ACS Alchemist may be a good alternative. I just tested ACS Achemist that was developed by Azavea & Temple University and I think it's easy to use. But keep in mind that only ACS 2005-2009 and ACS 2006-2010 data are available in the ACS Alchemist. If you are looking for 1-year or 3-year data, you still need Census Bureau data access tools including American Fact finder and DataFerrett. ACS Achemist is an open source tool that enables the extraction of ACS 2005-2009 and ACS 2006-2010 data on different level of geographic aggregation, i.e., counties, county sub-division, tracts, blockgroups, etc. . The user interface is very straightforward and is a simple step-by-step process. The thing I like most is that output is saved as the shapefile and you can process your data in the GIS. The think I like least is that uses will have to create a variable file to define which data they want to get. The sample of a variable file can be find in the readme document which is included in the software installation package, but I attached one here for your convenience. Here is the link to the ACS Alchemist home page: http://www.azavea.com/news/archive/2012/7/31/azavea-and-temple-universitys-… Here is the link to download the software package: https://github.com/azavea/acs-alchemist/downloads Enjoy! Liang Long Cambridge Systematics, Inc. 4800 Hampden Lane Suite 800 Bethesda, MD 20814 tel 301 347 9141 fax 301 347 0101 FHWA 202-366-6971 e-mail llong(a)camsys.com<mailto:llong(a)camsys.com> www.camsys.com _______________________________________________ ctpp-news mailing list ctpp-news(a)ryoko.chrispy.net http://ryoko.chrispy.net/mailman/listinfo/ctpp-news

12 years, 10 months

Re: [CTPP] An Alternative to Access ACS 5-year Block Group Data

by GREENWALD Michael J

Thanks to Liang for these links. I, too, have found FactFinder and DataFerrett to be less than intuitive. Building on Liang's message, in addition to ACS Alchemist, US Census also puts out a data retrieval tool that does a pretty good job of retrieving the 1, 3 and/or 5 year data sets. Look at the links for the Summary File Retrieval Tool under "Tools for Using the ACS Summary File" at the following link: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/data_documentation/summary_file/ The difference between something like ACS Alchemist or the Summary File Retrieval Tool is a matter of both task and personal preference. For example, some of my tasks involve dealing with both the ACS Estimate and the Margin of Error (two different data columns), so I like the fact that the Summary File Retrieval tool can be easily set up to consolidate both of those pieces of data. I also like the fact that the Summary File Retrieval Tool automatically loads the ACS table names and column definition in a Metadata tab, so you can easily turn to the documentation in the middle of your data assembly tasks. That said, it does take some extra steps to get the data into a nice, clean format that plugs into a GIS; ACS Alchemist may handle a lot of those tasks on the back end. So, it is a question of how one wants to access the data. I would be interested in hearing from others what experience they've had with the Summary File Retrieval Tool. Any thoughts? Mike Greenwald Michael J. Greenwald Senior Transportation Planner Lane Council of Governments 859 Willamette Street, Suite 500 Eugene, OR 97402 Tel: 541-682-6595 Fax: 541-682-4099 mgreenwald(a)lcog.org<mailto:mgreenwald(a)lcog.org> From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Liang Long Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2012 11:55 AM To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net Subject: [CTPP] An Alternative to Access ACS 5-year Block Group Data Hi, all If you are frustrated by getting the ACS 5-year block group level data via Census Bureau ftpsite or DataFerrett, ACS Alchemist may be a good alternative. I just tested ACS Achemist that was developed by Azavea & Temple University and I think it's easy to use. But keep in mind that only ACS 2005-2009 and ACS 2006-2010 data are available in the ACS Alchemist. If you are looking for 1-year or 3-year data, you still need Census Bureau data access tools including American Fact finder and DataFerrett. ACS Achemist is an open source tool that enables the extraction of ACS 2005-2009 and ACS 2006-2010 data on different level of geographic aggregation, i.e., counties, county sub-division, tracts, blockgroups, etc. . The user interface is very straightforward and is a simple step-by-step process. The thing I like most is that output is saved as the shapefile and you can process your data in the GIS. The think I like least is that uses will have to create a variable file to define which data they want to get. The sample of a variable file can be find in the readme document which is included in the software installation package, but I attached one here for your convenience. Here is the link to the ACS Alchemist home page: http://www.azavea.com/news/archive/2012/7/31/azavea-and-temple-universitys-… Here is the link to download the software package: https://github.com/azavea/acs-alchemist/downloads Enjoy! Liang Long Cambridge Systematics, Inc. 4800 Hampden Lane Suite 800 Bethesda, MD 20814 tel 301 347 9141 fax 301 347 0101 FHWA 202-366-6971 e-mail llong(a)camsys.com<mailto:llong(a)camsys.com> www.camsys.com

12 years, 10 months

[CTPP] An Alternative to Access ACS 5-year Block Group Data

by Liang Long

Hi, all If you are frustrated by getting the ACS 5-year block group level data via Census Bureau ftpsite or DataFerrett, ACS Alchemist may be a good alternative. I just tested ACS Achemist that was developed by Azavea & Temple University and I think it's easy to use. But keep in mind that only ACS 2005-2009 and ACS 2006-2010 data are available in the ACS Alchemist. If you are looking for 1-year or 3-year data, you still need Census Bureau data access tools including American Fact finder and DataFerrett. ACS Achemist is an open source tool that enables the extraction of ACS 2005-2009 and ACS 2006-2010 data on different level of geographic aggregation, i.e., counties, county sub-division, tracts, blockgroups, etc. . The user interface is very straightforward and is a simple step-by-step process. The thing I like most is that output is saved as the shapefile and you can process your data in the GIS. The think I like least is that uses will have to create a variable file to define which data they want to get. The sample of a variable file can be find in the readme document which is included in the software installation package, but I attached one here for your convenience. Here is the link to the ACS Alchemist home page: http://www.azavea.com/news/archive/2012/7/31/azavea-and-temple-universitys-… Here is the link to download the software package: https://github.com/azavea/acs-alchemist/downloads Enjoy! Liang Long Cambridge Systematics, Inc. 4800 Hampden Lane Suite 800 Bethesda, MD 20814 tel 301 347 9141 fax 301 347 0101 FHWA 202-366-6971 e-mail llong(a)camsys.com www.camsys.com

12 years, 10 months

[CTPP] Simple Census Retrieval tool

by Sam Ennis

Hello everyone, I recently finished a summer internship at the City of Cambridge MA Community Development Department doing web development and demographic data gathering. Much of of my job during July and August consisted of mining data from the Census Summary File 1 and American Community Survey 5-year estimates for use in a public profile of the city's neighborhood characteristics. To make this process easier, I wrote a simple utility to gather data using the census API. While much of its functionality overlaps with American FactFinder, it is also able to retrieve data from the block and block group level, making it useful for areas like Cambridge where neighborhood boundaries do not exactly align with census tracts. I'd like to release it open source to anyone who'll find it useful. Basic features: - .EXE file that runs out of the Windows or Linux terminal. Unfortunately won't run on Macintosh (but will work in parallels or boot camp) - Simple text-based interface - Search any available geography anywhere in the United States, down to the block/block group level (where available) - Retrieve up to 5 variables at a time for unlimited geographies at a time. The 5 variable limit is on the end of the census API, not this utility. - Automatically saves retrieved variables into a .csv file that can be opened by excel. - Can only search ACS 5-year for the time being. Adding SF1 functionality is fairly straightforward. The national use section of the utility is fairly narrow, but has potential for expansion. The most robust functionality is specific to the City of Cambridge, and I added national searches as an afterthought. The interface is divided into two modes, National and Cambridge specific search, and both work similarly. When you choose to conduct a national search of the ACS 5-year, you will be prompted with the following menu: [image: Inline image 1] Typing 10 will prompt you to enter the variable IDs (up to 5) and the geographies. Note that you can search as many geographies as you like, but they must be of the same type (the lowest in the hierarchy, so for *10: state-county-tract-block group *you can search up to 5 variables for any number of block groups in the chosen census tract. The format for entering a search for query type 10 would be: *tableID1,tableID2,tableID3 stateFIPScode countyFIPScode tractFIPScode blockGroup1,blockGroup2* For example to search ACS estimates B02001_002E and B02001_003E, (off the top of my head I think _002E is race: white and _003E is race: black / african american) in the state of Massachusetts (code 017) in Middlesex county (code 025) census tract 353500 block groups 1 and 2, you would enter: *B02001_002E,B002001_003E 025 017 353500 1,2* * * This isn't the most friendly format but it's nice for grabbing large amounts of information on several geographies at a time. For general ease of use I'd suggest using an external notepad program to assemble your queries and then paste them in so you don't have to retype it all in case of a typo. All queries follow this format of the table/variable IDs separated by commas followed by the geographies in the order they appear separated by spaces. The main functionality that I'd like to add in the future is the ability to create custom geographies. Since Cambridge has 13 neighborhoods that do not exactly line up with census tracts, I hard coded in each neighborhood's component tracts and/or block groups so the neighborhoods could be searched as a whole. This can be easily written to work dynamically for the entire country, allowing you to save custom geographies of multiple census tracts, counties, or any combination of counties, subcounties, block groups, etc. There is a half-written geoGroup class that is intended to do this. The program is written in C++ which is not the most user-friendly language, but the code is commented and fairly repetitive, so shouldn't be too arcane. I'll continually make changes and I'd invite anyone who's interested in this utility's use / potential uses to give me feedback or suggestions or make changes of your own. If there is interest in improving it, I would also like to, at some point, rewrite the utility in Java with a graphical interface and the ability to use custom geographies. I am in no way a professional programmer (I'm a 4th year sociology undergrad with a computer science minor) so I'm sure there are plenty of things in the code that could be cleaned up or improved. It was written in a Cygwin environment using a Cygwin version of LibCurl so C could read data from http, and is released this under the general public license (which is compatible with Cygwin's GPL and Curl's openBSD). The current source code can be found in a GitHub repository here<https://github.com/UpQuark/CensusRetrieverSource>. The compiled executable of the current version and its dependent libraries can be downloaded here <http://www.fileswap.com/dl/01ZiyjiDlY/>. Regards, Samuel Ennis

12 years, 10 months

[CTPP] Employment Status by Block Group

by Gemignani

Apparently, the ACS staff heard our concerns about the need for employment status by block group but forgot to tell us they did something about it.. In the 2011 ACS, there is a new Table B23025, which has simplified labor for data without the age/gender breakouts. This table will be available in the 2007-2011 ACS (5-year) file and will be available for block groups. But, I just stumbled across this table for block groups from the 2006-2010 ACS (5-year) file!!!!! Since I don't know if anyone else knows about this special file, I'm sharing. It is at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/laborfor/acs_employ.html. Nancy Gemignani California State Census Data Center Demographic Research Unit Department of Finance 915 L Street, 8th Floor Sacramento, CA 95814 (916) 327-0103 ext 2550 nancy.gemignani(a)dof.ca.gov<mailto:nancy.gemignani(a)dof.ca.gov>

12 years, 10 months

Re: [CTPP] Regional and Statewide Census Geodatabases

by John-Paul Hopman

12 years, 10 months

[CTPP] Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive: Request for Surveys

by Graham

Forwarded on behalf of Stephen Miller. Contact info below. From: 'Stephen Miller' <mill3315(a)umn.edu<mailto:mill3315(a)umn.edu>> Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2012 8:49 AM Subject: Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive: Request for Surveys To Whom It May Concern, Since 2003, the Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive (MTSA) has been cataloging and preserving travel surveys conducted by metropolitan areas across the United States. To date, the MTSA has collected and processed 80 travel surveys, provided a space for users to download the raw data and to utilize tools that can analyze the data through our website < http://www.surveyarchive.org/ >. We continue to seek any travel surveys that we don't currently have. Since the advent of the MTSA's website, over 8,500 users from around the world have utilized the webpage. For students at the University of Minnesota, the MTSA has been used as a tool to teach them how to understand and read surveys, analyze a wide range of U.S. cities, and learn key concepts in transportation studies. Yet the greatest value derived from the MTSA is its ability to allow users, whether they are academics or transportation study professionals, to conduct online analyses or to save time in accessing data: users can instantly download each survey, in either a raw or processed format, without having to ask each transportation agency for their data sets. As a corollary, this saves transportation agencies from having to provide their data to every individual asking for one. If you are willing to provide any travel surveys we don't currently have, we would greatly appreciate it. Please contact the Primary Project Contact at mill3315(a)umn.edu<mailto:mill3315(a)umn.edu> or the Principal Investigator at dlevinson(a)umn.edu<mailto:dlevinson(a)umn.edu> . Sincerely, Stephen Miller, David Levinson, and Elaine Murakami ________________________________ This email is intended to be read only by the intended recipient. This email may be legally privileged or protected from disclosure by law. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination of this email or any attachments is strictly prohibited, and you should refrain from reading this email or examining any attachments. If you received this email in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this email and any attachments.

12 years, 10 months

[CTPP] CTPP Transportation Profiles for all places above 5000 population

by Weinberger

Now Available at: http://download.ctpp.transportation.org/profiles_2012/transport_profiles.ht… CTPP Profiles using ACS 2006-2010 and Census 2010 These profiles include data from the 2006-2010 American Community Survey (ACS), the 2000 and 2010 Censuses, and the Census Transportation Planning Package (CTPP) 2000. The profiles are designed to give transportation planners a handy way to examine trends by including two time points. The profiles are available for the U.S. total; all states; all counties; and places with population 5,000 or more, based on 2010 Census counts. Each transportation profile has the following tables: Table 1 Selected Characteristics; Total Persons, Persons in Households, Total Households, Average Household Size, Average Household Income, Average Number of Vehicles per Households, Percent of Persons in Poverty, Percent Minority, Percent of Persons 65 and Over, Percent of Persons Foreign Born. Table 2 Mode to Work; Total Workers at Place of Residence, Mode to Work at Place of Residence and at Place of Work and Table 3 Mean Travel Time by Mode to Work. ATTENTION CHROME USERS: This application does not currently work well with Chrome. Please use another browser.

12 years, 10 months

[CTPP] Phillip Cox/D04/Caltrans/CAGov is out of the office.

by Phillip Cox

I will be out of the office starting 10/05/2012 and will not return until 10/08/2012. Andrew Chin will be Acting Branch Chief.

12 years, 10 months

[CTPP] Sept CTPP Newsletter now available

by Ed Christopher

The September issue of the CTPP Newsletter is now availble. The direct link to it is http://www.trbcensus.com/newsltr/sr0912.pdf. The HTML version of it will be posted on the FHWA website shortly. This issue will be of particular interest to those who will be working with the 5-year CTPP data since it describes the new "Extended Allocation" used to allow for the data to be geocoded to small areas (TAZs). When will the 5-year CTPP be available? See the newsletter. There are also articles the status of the NEW Commuting in America report and using journey to work data for Medicare. http://www.trbcensus.com/index.html -- Ed Christopher 708-283-3534 (V) 708-574-8131 (cell) FHWA RC-TST-PLN 4749 Lincoln Mall Drive, Suite 600 Matteson, IL 60443

12 years, 10 months

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