hsXX_dXX: U. S. Health Service Area Boundary Spatial Polygons datasets...

In SeerMapper: A Quick Way to Map U.S. Rates and Data of U.S. States, Counties, Census Tracts, or Seer Registries using 2000 and 2010 U.S. Census Boundaries

Description

This document describes the content and format of the 942 health service area boundary .rda datasets integrated in this package for 2000 and 2010 census years. The SeerMapper package contains a set of boundary ".rda" files for the health service areas for all 51 states and the D. C. sub-areas for both the 2000 and 2010 census year. The dataset name and object name convention used is hsXX.dYY, where "hs" indicates health service area (HSA) boundaries, XX is the state FIPS code and YY is the last 2 digits of the census year (00 or 10). Only three states have a different set of counties and boundaries: Colorado, Alaska, and Virginia. These states have two HSA ".rda" files in the package - one for each census year. All other states use the "00" version for both census years.

Usage

data(hs01_d00)

Format

Each dataset contains a SpatialPolygons structure representing the health service area boundaries in a single state. Each "polygons" item in the structure represents one HSA and all of the polygons required to define the HSA, including lakes, holes, etc. The HSA boundary files are based on the census tract boundaries used in the 2000 and 2010 Census. The coordinates system used in these rda files have been transformed from the census Long/Lat coordinates values using NAD83 to an Alber equal area projections for mapping.

Details

Each dataset (.rda file) represents the boundaries for the HSAs in one state for the 2000 and 2010 U. S. census. In the 2010 census the counties in three states, Alaska, Colorado, and Virginia changed in size and shape. In all other cases, the 2000 census county boundaries can be reused when mapping 2010 location IDs. The county boundaries were used to build the HSA boundaries. To handle the three exceptions, three additional HSA boundary datasets are included and used by the package when the censusYear is set to 2010 and HSAs in these states are referenced in the data (at the HSA, county or tract level.)

Based on the locations on the rate or category data provided by the user, only needed HSA boundary information is loaded by the package for the referenced states. The multiple state boundary data maybe accumulated by the package and used for mapping.

The data formats are the same for each HSA boundry .rda in this package, a single SpatialPolygons variable. The format of the dataset names is "hs", the two digit state FIPS code, "_d", the two digit census year (00 or 10), and ".rda". The SeerMapper package contains the set of boundary datasets for all of the U. S. 2000 Census HSAs as individual datasets named hsXX_d00 and the three additional boundary datasets for the three states where the counties changed in the 2010 census.

Each row.name of the SpatialPolygons is a polygons slot in the data structure and represents a set of Polygons that form the HSA. The row.names used are the the 3 digit HSA numbers assigned by NIH.

The HSA information that may normally be carried as a data.frame with a SpatialPolygonsDataFrame is stored in the hs99_d00 dataset in the package. This allows the package to all of the county information without having to load the boundary data.

The HSA boundary information has been transformed from the U. S. Census boundary data's lat/long coordinates under NAD83 to the Alber equal area cartisian coordinates.

The PROJ.4 projection used for transformation of these boundaries is:

"+proj=aea +lat_1=33 +lat_2=49 +lat_0=39 +lon_0=96W +ellps=WGS84"

All boundary data used by SeerMapper were transformed to this projection when the package is constructed.

All the ".rda" files are compressed using the "xy" method to reduce the disk space requirements.

All of the boundary shape file data was imported from the U. S. Census website on July 3, 2016 for the 2000 and 2010 census, processed by the urlhttp://www.MapShaper.org website version 01.15 using modified Visvalingam/weighted method with intersection repair enabled,prevent shape removal enabled, and a coordinate precision value of 0.0 to simplify the boundaries from 100 and disk space requirements by 90 a visually usable boundary image and edge alignments. The simplified boundaries were then downloaded and converted to SpatialPolygons variables for use by SeerMapper and transformed to the Alber equal area projection. The initial files were census tract boundaries. These files were aggregated into county boundaries. The county boundaries were aggregated into the HSA boundaries, Seer Registry, and State boundaries. The State boundaries were aggreated into the regional boundaries.

Source

The HSA boundary files were obtained from the Census.gov website for the 2000 and 2010 year census under the Map & Data category, cartagraphic boundaries. The census tract shapefiles used to create these boundaries were downlaoded for the U. S. Census website URLhttp://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/cbf/cbf_counties.html on July 3, 2016. The census tract boundaries were aggregated into county boundaries. The county boundaries were aggregated into the HSA, Registry, and State boundaries.

SeerMapper documentation built on Jan. 15, 2021, 3:16 p.m.