What are Census Summary Levels (SUMLEV)?

If you’re using Mara’s excellent instructions for working with Census 2010 data, you’ll need to know about Summary Levels or SUMLEVs in step 6. What are Census Summary Levels (SUMLEV)? Simple Answer: SUMLEV is a Census Bureau code to indicate geography type. For example, in the raw Census 2010 data, all states have a SUMLEV …

American Community Survey vs. Decennial Census: What’s the Difference

Photo by timothy muza on Unsplash This post explains the differences between the American Community Survey (ACS) and the Decennial Census and how those differences will impact your work. Background: Long Form and Short Form Remember back to the Census 2000 when some people were complaining about the Census form taking forever to fill out? …

National Land Cover Data Set: when there’s no Local Land Use GIS data

Co-written by Aaron Herman Finding land use land cover data is a pain. Unless your project is within an MPO/COG that has historic and current land use shapefiles that are easy for your GIS guru to access, you can be up a creek without a paddle when it comes to finding good land use data. …