2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

68 Strengthening Communities with Neighborhood Data
on behalf of 13 foundations that fund projects in the area, developed
a baseline indicators report on the conditions along the corridor. To
develop these indicators, Wilder Research applied a range of datasets
from federal, state, and local sources while incorporating information it
generated itself through household surveys. The resulting Central Corridor
Tracker, which will be updated annually, is an innovative synthesis
of data types that is a hallmark of other Wilder Research work.
Trends in Applications
Over the years, CURA, HousingLink, and Wilder Research have each
worked to improve communities across the Twin Cities through their use
and dissemination of community data. A hallmark of their work has been
continual efforts to innovate in their application of these data: CURA
through its Community Geographic Information Systems program,
HousingLink through its hList and Streams web applications, and Wilder
Research through its community research projects. The emphasis on
innovation will continue. Several recent trends in the dissemination, presentation,
and application of community information provide a glimpse
of the future direction of data-oriented community development.
People who wish to connect directly to a data provider’s servers to
import and view spatial data can now do so through new data-access
options called map services, which obviate the need to download, store,
and update datasets. With map services, the entities providing the data
store the data files themselves and are responsible for updating them.
Users of these services can access the data through ArcMap (both the
desktop version and the online version) and open source GIS software
such as Mapserver. Two local entities in the Twin Cities area are currently
disseminating spatial data through this option: MetroGIS’s DataFinder
(discussed above) and Ramsey County, the home of Saint Paul. Some
current examples of map services include aerial photographs (with files
that are typically massive) and simple shapefiles for roads, land use designations,
and political boundaries.
In addition to providing direct links to spatial data files, some entities
have begun disseminating and presenting public information through
online web-mapping applications, such as ArcGIS Online. Although
users cannot access the underlying data, many of the mapping services
being provided by these online tools are highly customizable and can be