Making Sense of Census Data With Google Earth

mikemuch writes "Imran Haque has developed a mashup of Google Earth with data from the U.S. Census Bureau, called gCensus. The app uses the XML format known as KML (Keyhole Markup Language), which can create shapes and colors on the maps displayed by GE. Haque had to build custom code libraries (which he's made available as open source) that could generate KML for the project. He also had to extract the relevant data from the highly counter-intuitive Census Bureau files and store them in a database that could handle geographic data. gCensus lets you do stuff like create colorful overlays on maps showing population ages, race, and family size distributions."

Comments

Exciting!

[Prysorra]

Imagine what applications you cook up with this .....

Perhaps there's a way to fuse the presentation possibilities with Gapminder?

Re:Exciting!

[the_greywolf]

Incidentally, I worked on a project that used the same data to a very interesting end: (Fortunately, my NDA has expired by now.)

In our project, we needed to know exactly where and what coverage was needed on which FM channels where we could get away with putting in an FM translator station. We imported the census data in Access (which was surprisingly straight-forward), and used the Manifold System initially - and later MapInfo - to visualize the areas we could sneak in without interfering with existing (and future) stations.

We developed several Access apps that allowed us to build a list of new sites to set up translator stations: Over 17,000, if memory serves. In the March filing of 2003, a couple Perl scripts pushed 4,221 applications to the FCC, nearly all of which were automatically generated.

Over the course of the next 5 months, we went over each application by hand (again, using our custom software, combined with software originally designed for this purpose), while a couple of us developed our own series of scripts and programs to perform interference studies in MapInfo.

In the August filing, we withdrew several applications and improved nearly 2,000 others.

I left in March 2004, but last I heard, they had nearly 2,000 construction permits, and had actually built 5 or 6 of them. A few of the other permits have been sold for upwards of $500,000.

All in all, I can't say I really approve of their methods, but I can't really say I'm not proud of what we achieved, either.

Talk about public service...

[jthill]

The real goal of the project is to democratize information by making data (such as political and environmental data) that's currently publicly accessible in name only, truly accessible to the people.

I'd like to see maps of the disparities between exit-poll and actual vote tally numbers, one map per election. This will make it possible, and not just "possible": once someone has putatively done the work, it'll be easy to check, because the raw data are available from trustworthy sources (cue cynicism in 3) so anyone can redo the map to check for distortions.

This makes whole classes of questions easier for mere mortals to answer, and simultaneously makes their answers easier for mere mortals to understand. It's huge.