Visit healthyregions.org to learn about our recent projects and team. Here on Github you can explore all of our open source projects, and access some general data resources that we use internally.
We maintain a pipeline that pulls geography files from the US Census FTP, merges, transforms, and exports it to a set of standardized location in S3. We use these files directly in multiple applications.
We maintain an extraction script that pulls "point of interest" data from the Overture Maps Foundation's Places dataset. We use these exports, which are uploaded to S3, directly in the Place Project Data Discovery application.
Below are summaries of some topics that are relevant across different projects.
HEROP_IDs
In some of our projects we use what we call a HEROP_ID to identify geographic boundaries defined by the US Census Bureau, which is a slight variation on the commonly used standard GEOID. Our format is similar to what the American FactFinder used (now data.census.gov).
A HEROP_ID consists of three parts:
- The 3-digit Summary Level Code for this geography. Common summary level codes are:
040-- State050-- County140-- Census Tract150-- Census Block Group860-- Zip Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA)
- The 2-letter string
US - The standard GEOID for the given unit (length depends on unit summary)
- GEOIDs are, in turn, hierarchical aggregations of FIPS codes
Expanding out the FIPS codes for the five summary levels shown above, the full IDs would look like:
| summary level | format | length | example |
|---|---|---|---|
| State | 040US + STATE (2) |
7 | 040US17 (Illinois) |
| County | 050US + STATE (2) + COUNTY (3) |
10 | 050US17019 (Champaign County) |
| Tract | 140US + STATE (2) + COUNTY (3) + TRACT (6) |
16 | 140US17019005900 |
| Block Group | 150US + STATE (2) + COUNTY (3) + TRACT (6) + BLOCK GROUP (1) |
17 | 150US170190059002 |
| ZCTA | 860US + ZIP CODE (5) |
10 | 860US61801 |
The advantages of this composite ID are:
- Unique across all geographic areas in the US
- Will always be forced to string formatting
- Easy to programmatically change back into the more standard GEOIDs
Convert to GEOID (integers)
The HEROP_ID can be converted back to standard GEOIDs by removing the first 5 characters, or by taking everything after the substring "US". Here are some examples of what this looks like in different software:
- Excel:
REPLACE(A1, 1, 5, "") - R:
geoid <- str_split_i(HEROP_ID, "US", -1) - Python:
geoid = HEROP_ID.split("US")[1] - JavaScript:
const geoid = HEROP_ID.split("US")[1]
Web maps and static site hosting
We have a system in place for using Github pages to host our work. One thing to consider when you publish your web app or map is what your want your URL to look like. Consider these approaches:
Example: maps.healthyregions.org/<myproject>
This is more or less the easiest way to integrate your project into our domain. Just create your Github repository with your app as an index.html file in the root, and ask that lab staff add your repo as a submodule in this repository: healthyregions/mapping-projects. No need to deal with Github pages on your repository.
Example: <myproject>.healthyregions.org
In this case you must publish your Github pages repository like normal, and then request that we update our healthyregions DNS to make a subdomain for your project. This will require some extra configuration in your Github pages settings.
Example: <username>.github.io/<myproject>
You can also just independently publish a github repo if you want--no need to integrate with our domain name or URL at all. Just follow the usual steps for getting started Github pages.
Example: <myproject>.com
Finally, you could always purchase your own domain myproject.com from a registrar like NameCheap or GoDaddy (there are a lot of them), publish your own Github repository with Github pages, and then connect the domain to Github pages. Keep in mind that you'll need to continue paying for this domain as long as you want your project to be online. Also, while there are a lot fun and cheap domains today (like $1/year for healthytime.store, as of this writing) prices can and will increase in the future.