By CAST
Downloading US Bureau Census shapefiles for use in ArcGIS (page 1)
- How To Download Census Data In History
- How To Download Census Data System
- Download Census Tract Data
- How To Pull Census Data
- How To Download Census 2011 Data
- How To Download Census Data To Arcgis
- Requirements for this tutorial:
- Access to the Internet
- ArcGIS 9x
Contents:
- Background on census data
Downloading census data from ESRI - Add census data to ArcMap (new page)
Coordinate Systems: defining - Joining the table to the shapefile (new page)
- Exporting your census data to its own shapefile (new page)
NOTE: This is tutorial has lots of images, so has been divided into 3 pages so that it doesn't take forever to load. You are on page 1 - Downloading census data from ESRI |
Getting Census Data into ArcMap or ArcView 5 6) Once you have added your shapefile and data into ArcMap, it is now time to make a join so that your census data can be displayed in ArcMap. This first step in this process is to Export your census data. Right click on the census data in the layers area, hit data, then export. 1990 Census Data by Zip Code, County, Census Tract and Block Group Download Data Files. See Data Source for decription of data fields. How to download the TIGER/Line Shapefiles. See the “Joining Census Data to TIGER/Line Shapefiles” brochure for instructions on. Downloading Data from American FactFinder to use with TIGER/Line® Shapefiles. Working with TIGER/Line® Shapefiles. GETTING STARTED. Data Tools and Apps Developers Infographics & Visualizations. Census 2010 datasets Download datasets. Direct File Access: Census OUTGOING File Directory (HTTP). These interactive pages present key statistics from the Economic Census with per capita ratios using data from Population Estimates for a selected industry. International Database. Oct 3, 2017 - This is a short how-to guide for accessing and using the TIGER/Line Shapefiles as well as joining data from the US Census Bureau to the.
Background Information on Census Data:
Census data is very useful for EAST projects. It can show where people live of certain ages, races, sex, plus much more. This tutorial is going to show you how to download census data from ESRI's website, who have very graciously organized the census data into shapefiles and made them available to download free!
When you use Census data from ESRI's website you need to download 2 data sets. 1) the boundary relative the level of detail that you want to look at population and 2) table of data containing population information (demographic).
![Census Census](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58d2c04d5016e1e3e3fd104a/t/5a8faee2e2c483a511e7276e/1519365866501/ex1.png)
- Note: The United States has been divided up into States and Counties. To explore population patterns on a more detailed scale counties need to be divided up into smaller sections. So counties are divided up into census tracts, which are then divided up into census blocks.
- Census blocks are the smallest areas dividable by polictical boundaries (counties, cities, etc), roads, railroads & rivers. In the urban areas, these are city blocks. In more rural areas census blocks are bigger. See the map below showing census blocks and tracts of Greene County in Arkansas. In downtown Paragould you can see that the census blocks are much smaller than in the more rural areas.
click to view larger image - Every census block in the United States has its own unique identifier - a 15 digit number which contains information on State (SS), County (CCC), Tract (TTTTTT) and Block (BBBB) SSCCCTTTTTTBBBB. For example this identifier for one of the blocks in the above map is 050559801003102, where 05 = Arkansas; 055 = Greene County, 980100 = Tract & 3102 = Block
Downloading Census Data:
- Using any internet browser, navigate to http://www.esri.com/data/download/census2000_tigerline/index.html. Look at the data information: make a note of the Coordinate System (Geographic, NAD83; NAD27; or Old Hawaiian Datum). On the left hand side of the page click on Preview and Download.
click to view larger image - An interactive map allows us to select our state on the next page. Either click on your state or use the drop-down box to select your state and click Submit Selection .
- Select the county that you live in from the drop-down list and click on the Submit Selection button below.
- The next page shows us all the data that is available for your county. Available Data Layers has a list of boundaries that are available. These are downloaded as shapefiles and can be added directly to ArcMap.
However, these shapefiles don't have any demographic information associated with them (in their attribute table). This has to be downloaded in a separate table and 'joined' to the shapefiles (more on this later). Available Statewide Layers has the tabular information can be joined to the boundaries. The table below illustrates which boundaries (shapefiles) go with which table (State Wide Data Layer).State Wide Data layer (join to shapefiles)
Census Block Demographics (SF1)
Block Groups (less detailed)
Census Block Group Demographics (SF1)
Census Tract Demographics (SF1)
County Boundaries
Census County Demographics (SF1)
- If you're not sure what you want, I recommend downloading the Census Blocks 2000, and Census Block Demographics (SF1). Put a check mark in the boxes next to your selections and click on Proceed to Download .
click to view larger image
How To Download Census Data In History
- It may take a moment, but the next window should say that your data file is ready to download. Click Download File and you will be prompted to save the file. Save the file to a location that you will be able to find again.
- Now open up My Computer and navigate to where you have saved the file. The name of the file will start: at_tigeresri... You will need to unzip, or extract this file to get your data. If you do not have a program to unzip the files, you will need to download and install one before you can go any further. You might want to try www.ultimatezip.com/download.htm . (You'll have to be logged on as administrator to do this.)
- Once you have unzipped the at_tigeresri ... file you will see that it actually contains a zip file for each layer that you downloaded
- If you downloaded Census Blocks 2000 and Census Block Demographics you will have two zip files called blk00ssccc.zip & sf1blkss000 (where ss = state code & ccc = county code).
- You will have to extract each of these files - extract them to a location that you will be able to find them again.
- If the code names are confusing for you then you can open the readme.html file contains information about the census data (metadata) - including a table explaining the codes.
- Once you have extracted your files you'll probably have two folders with the names of the zip files that you extracted
The folder that begins blk00... has the shapefiles for the Census Blocks and the folder beginning sf1blk contains the table with demographic data (for your entire State). Look in these folders - you will notice that a shapefile actually consists of three files - SHP, DBF, & SHX (you need these three files for you to be able to add it to ArcMap). The table is just a DBF file, and we will join it to the shapefile in ArcMap.
How To Download Census Data System
- If you would like to know more about the file names you can download a *.pdf that explains the Census Feature Class Codes (CFCC) codes for all of the Census data. http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/rd_2ktiger/tgrrd2k.pdf, or you can look at the readme.html file that was delivered with your data from ESRI.
The next step is to add the data to ArcMap and define its projection - Visit Page 2 |
Provided by your Geospatial Support team from:
Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST)
University of Arkansas
Tableau seems to be very hot right now. At least I seem to see it listed frequently when I’m looking through job postings. From my perspective, Tableau takes a lot of the presentation power of Excel (not so much the high power modeling features of Excel) and moves it into a more contemporary platform, by which I mean it is browser-based. I’ve developed many, many scorecards, charts, visualizations, reports, and analytical tools within Excel and it makes perfect sense to adapt these kinds of deliverables into a browser-based tool.
Tableau has a public version that you can download for free and use to create and publish workbooks to Tableau Public for everyone to see. I’m still learning the features, and there are a lot of learning resources on the web if you search around.
![How to download census data in history How to download census data in history](https://images.techhive.com/images/article/2016/09/cacensusplot-100682760-primary.idge.jpeg)
One thing I wanted to do was to tap into a great, diverse data source and create some Tableau workbooks to play around with. My commute map used US Census data from the American Community Survey, and when it was making the rounds back in June I was contacted by the Census Bureau asking if I was aware of their API. I wasn’t, though I wasn’t surprised to learn of one. I decided to tap into this data as I learn Tableau, because the Census Data has great breadth of information but also has a terrific multi-tiered geographic component.
Tableau has the ability out of the box to accept data from a wide variety of data sources, but it also has a way for developers to build a conduit into Tableau from any data source. This standardized data conduit into Tableau is called a “Web Data Connector” and a number of organizations have built these to enable Tableau users to import data. I looked for a Web Data Connector (WDC) for the Census API, but wasn’t able to find a working version. Always one to support scope-creep, I decided to build one myself and I did. It connects to the ACS Profile data for the five year estimate ending in 2014.
Unfortunately, I built it based on their WDC version 1.1 just as they were transitioning to a new version (2.0) with more features. If this gets any real use, I’ll look at upgrading the connector to 2.0. Below is a step by step on how to retrieve Census Data into Tableau using my WDC:
Importing Census Data into Tableau
Obviously, in order to use the WDC, you have to have Tableau loaded and if you do and you start a new workbook, you should see that you can choose “Web Data Connector.”
Download Census Tract Data
When you do choose “web data connector”, you’ll see a screen that asks for the WDC’s URL. To use my Census Data WDC, you’ll want to enter:
bigbytes.mobyus.com/tableau/censuswdc11.aspx
Once the data connector interface loads, you can choose a Geography (State, County, SubCounty, Tract, Zip Code, etc.) that you would like to retrieve and choose which variables you would like to include. The variables are one of the harder things to manage here. There are lots of them (about 2,500) and the names are cryptic. The list of variables for this particular Census dataset can be used as a reference.
How To Pull Census Data
You can use the hyperlinked text just above the variable list to include or exclude variable types. For example, if you want to include only “Estimates” then unselect the other three types “MarginOfError”, “PercentEstimate”, and “PercentMarginOfError”.
“Estimate” is the nominal value you’re probably most interested in. For example, if the variable is “population”, then the “estimate” would be the estimated number of people living in the selected geography.
Once you’ve selected your criteria, click on the “Retrieve Census Data” button at the top of the web data connector interface. The system will then retrieve the data from the Census API and convert it into a format that Tableau can readily accept. You can then click on “UPDATE NOW” when the data is returned to finish creating the data table inside your new Tableau workbook.
How To Download Census 2011 Data
Many of the geography types provided by this WDC are supported for mapping in Tableau so you can create heat maps and other visual representations quickly and easily once you have the data imported. Some of them work automatically, others need a little help. Feel free to email me or post a comment if you have questions on this.
How To Download Census Data To Arcgis
I also created a shapefile web data connector for the US Census Tracts, a geography that isn’t natively supported within Tableau. I’ll be posting on how to use this to map Census data by Census Tract.
If this tool gets any significant use, I’ll consider adding a dropdown at the top to allow users to choose data from other US Census datasets (10 year full census or other ACS datasets.) Let me know if you have any suggestions on how to extend this functionality. Here’s a link to a quick map I put together using this data. It shows Census Tracts in Washtenaw County, Michigan by percentage of residents with graduate degrees. The bluer regions have higher levels of the population with grad degrees and the greener areas have lower levels. Can you guess where the University of Michigan is on this map?
Thanks!