As places data becomes increasingly part of business analytics across industries, so does combining it with other data sources and types for deeper insights. The geospatial data ecosystem is continually evolving to include new types of data related to a physical place, and as organizations become more data mature, they are finding new ways to join and leverage multiple datasets.
Demographic data is fundamental to most geospatial analyses. Accurate representations of populations as they relate to physical space can reveal consumer behavior, identify areas of need, and inform strategic plans. Whether joined to points of interest (POI), communities boundaries, or any other type of geospatial data, demographics provide critical information to analysts in every industry.
The most well-known source of demographic data is often a country’s census. In the US, the Census Bureau collects and delivers over 7,500 demographic attributes related to gender, age, income, ethnicity, and other key socioeconomic traits through the annual American Community Survey (ACS). While the census occurs every ten years (you probably remember filling out the 2020 census pretty recently), ACS data is collected every year. Census and ACS data can be aggregated at various geographic levels of granularity, enabling analysis at the scale required by a particular project.
But this aggregation is not always easy or accessible for everyone who would like to use the data.
While US Census Bureau and ACS data is free to download on government websites, many users find it cumbersome and time consuming, especially for the increasing number of non-data scientist users.
To make census data more accessible and easily joinable to other geospatial datasets, like our places data, SafeGraph downloads and joins it to census block group (CBG) geometry. Our data download page is updated with ACS 5-year estimates from 2016-2019, along with associated CBG geometries, to provide free and easy access to essential demographic data.
SafeGraph offers open access to census data, specially designed to enable users, regardless of their level of expertise working with geospatial data, to easily access and incorporate key demographic data into their analysis. Our updated site gives users multiple options for downloading census and ACS data in GeoJSON format.
On our census data page, users can download:
With census and ACS data, users with varying levels of data science experience across industries can analyze how places relate to people, and how people interact with places. The analytics opportunities are endless, but at SafeGraph we often see places data joined to demographic data for improved:
To help you get started, we’ve created a new data science notebook that lets you enrich your POI data with census data.
Be sure to check out our other census data resources:
