GEOSPATIAL DATA REPORT : Finding and Using GIS Data

http://www.cmap.illinois.gov/LandUseInventory2005.aspx

This is one of the most popular datasets among urban planning students! It’s a land use dataset of the seven-county region of northeastern Illinois. Northeastern Illinois is comprised of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will County. The data is available both in shapefiles and ArcGIS personal geodatabase formats. Land use is aggregated to 49 categories, and was created using black and white orthorectificed aerial photography that was captured in April, 2005.

Additionally, CMAP (formerly known as NIPC & CATS) released a revised (Version 2.1) 2001 Land-use Inventory, which can be used for any comparative studies with the 2005 Inventory.

On this site, find a link to their FTP site – registration is required (but free!)

For more sources for landuse data, see under Landuse & Landcover, US category.

http://www.woodstockinst.org/

Woodstock Institute is a nonprofit organization and a strong advocate of housing issues in Chicago. The organization has been collecting foreclosure data in the Chicago metropolitan area. The foreclosure data is now accessible through the Woodstock Institute’s website and also through Everyblock Chicago website (http://chicago.everyblock.com/foreclosures/).

The NU Library owns the Woodstock’s Chicago Area Community Lending Fact Book data on CD (1999-2004, tract level.)

[Image on the left: Foreclosure rates per 10,000 mortgageable properties in 2007 - click on the image to enlarge.]

http://acct.multi1.cps.k12.il.us/cps/accountweb/

This office provide CPSs (Chicago Public Schools) with table data and analysis, such as drop-out rate and performance – goal achievement rate. To access the data, click on “School and Citywide Reports” and then click on “Download Data” which includes publicly available data for the Chicago public schools and the district.

[Image left: Chicago Public High Schools attendance areas showing drop-out rates in 2006 - note: boundaries data files are not available from this site, just numeric data only.]

Note: On June 14th, 2009, Chicago Tribune reported on a questionable practice where CPS school officials manipulated school attendance records to keep the number of dropouts low. So, be aware of potential pitfalls of the “official” CPS records! Reference: In Chicago high school: Class attendance or numbers game? (06/14/2009); Dropouts on attendance books at Chicago school (06/14/2009)

Access to individual health related data is restricted as you can imagine – personal data must be protected/kept confidential. Hence public health data are generally available as aggregated data. Here are some public health data available for Illinois.

Typically, public health summary reports like the ones below contain: vital statistics, chronic disease cases such as cancers, and various community health indicators, such as asthma, (teen) pregnancies, infectious diseases, suicide/homicide rates, accidents & injuries.

County level data

• IPLAN (IL) http://app.idph.state.il.us/
  
• Cancer registry (IL) http://www.idph.state.il.us/cancer/statistics.htm (generate a table and copy and paste in Excel)
• More statistics and reports by type (IL) http://www.idph.state.il.us/health/statshome.htm (once generating a report, scroll down to the end/bottom, and click on “download” to get the data in comma delimited format.)
  

Municipality/community level

• [Note: the following data needs to be transcribed to data table format.]
• Cook County suburbs data reports http://www.cookcountypublichealth.org/programs-services/community-epidemiology-health-planning/community-profiles
• Chicago community area profiles:  http://www.cchsd.org/cahealthprof.html
• … check your local community’s public health offices

[Image above: EPA Superfund sites (worst hazardous wastes sites) over Illinois counties map showing pediatric cancer rates (per 100,000) ]

http://gis.chicagopolice.org/

Chicago Police Department’s GIS web tool based on the CLEAR (Citizen Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting) system developed by the department for use by its police officers. Downloadable GIS data files (Police beat boundaries, etc.) and interactive mapping tools are available from this site.

http://www.greenmapping.org/

Click on MAP DATA ARCHIVE to download a variety of geospatial data files for the metropolitan Chicago area from this very comprehensive data clearinghouse. This is a collaborative effort by non-profit organizations and local government to share the natural resources related spatial data for anybody who is interested in environmental analysis.

http://www.uic.edu/depts/lib/documents/services/Neighborhoods1978.zip

1978 Chicago neighborhood boundaries was created based on a map published by the City of Chicago Planning Department in 1986. This is my fist digitization project.. now I am much better at digitization – I am digitizing Chicago historical wards boundaries.

The file is also available from GOS – Geospatial One Stop (http://www.geodata.gov).

http://www.library.northwestern.edu/govinfo/resource/regional/ChicagoCommunityAreas_Tracts_Relate.csv

Since a couple of people have asked – I created a crosswalk table (comma delimited) showing the relationship between Chicago community areas (Chicago’s defact & statistical neighborhoods) and the Census tracts.

http://www2.census.gov/cgi-bin/shapefiles/national-files

(or http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2008/)

School district boundaries can be found from the Census cartographic boundary files sites for most, but not all, states. However, the levels of boundaries are kind of limited. For example, in Chicago, we have a large school district, Chicago Public Schools (CPS). However, within the CPS district, there are so called “attendance” areas or zones which determine which “neighborhood school” a child should attend, and such “attendance” zone boundaries determined by a local school district (this case, CPS) aren’t available from the Census site (I believe – but I haven’t checked all school district files, so I could be wrong!)

So, if you need more detailed school boundaries within a district, like the attendance/neighborhood school boundaries in Chicago, you need to obtain data from a local school district. In Chicago, CPS has developed a very nice interactive mapping site, School Locator (http://schoollocator.cps.k12.il.us/), where parents can find a neighborhood school and special schools, and small boundary/zone data can be obtained from the site (or ask them.)

http://www.cityofchicago.org/gis

City of Chicago GIS dataset, printable maps and interactive maps are available from this site. To access GIS data files, click on “GIS Data” or select categorized datasets.

Note: Come back often to this site to get the latest data – the City of Chicago GIS irregularly updates data files – and you cannot tell which files were updated until you download data and compare!  For example, well sought after geocodable Chicago streets shapefiles, TRANSPORTATION_DSLV_1.zip, are now available from the site. Still, no metadata comes with the files..

Datasets available from the site area are categorized into the following groups:

• Base data
• Boundary data
• Incentive programs
• Points of interest
• Transportation Data