by Joey Grosso, Maps and GIS Assistant
A mini-project that I have been working on aims to highlight the ease and abundance of open source data. Earlier this year, I worked on a long-term project that had significant piece of information coming from the City of Philadelphia’s open source data site, OpenDataPhilly. I thought it would be interesting to find other cities that kept thorough and up-to-date open source data on a variety of subjects. One of the many cities that I stumbled upon was the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Open Data DC has a sleek and easy-to-navigate website that features both data exploration applications as well as simpler forms of data available for download. The Open Data DC site features a wide range of topics such as, business and economic development, public safety, and environment.
To demonstrate a simple GIS project that could be done using this site, I chose to focus on health & human services, more specially food access. The map I produced demonstrates low food access areas and their proximity to healthy corner stores. The areas in blue are low food access areas in close proximity to healthy corner stores while the orange areas are not as accessible to these corner stores. It is important to note that much of the western half of Washington D.C. is mostly suburban where people do not typical rely on corner stores as a food source. However, there are still some areas in eastern and more urban parts of D.C. that could use more healthy corner stores.
A simple exploratory analysis such as this one took a relatively short amount of time to complete from start to finish. I also think that it is worth to mention that earlier this month DC Office of the Chief Technology Officer won a Special Achievement in GIS award at ESRI’s GIS User Conference in San Diego, California. If you would like to start your own project using open source data, I would also recommend visiting the open data sites for Toronto, New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Philadelphia.
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