data-raw/Processing-data-for-parks.acs-app.md

In Metropolitan-Council/regionalparks.acs: Regional Parks and the American Community Survey

Processing data for parks.acs app

Ellen 09 July 2021

• Overview
  • Park and trail geography
  • ACS data
  • Create the tabular weighted average ACS values
  • Create the spatial ACS data
  • Create population estimates
  • Create transit layer
  • Only keep final files
• reproject
• create nice names for app selections

Overview

This markdown file walks through the creation of all the data files necessary to run the parks.acs app.

You must connect to the N drive to run this script

Park and trail geography

First a single file containing the geographies of the regional parks and trail units needs to be created from files which are published to the MN geospatial commons. Note: this is a single, long sf file because the buffer map parses all combinations of agencies * status * type. All code has been updated so that the leaflet map works with the long data as well.

Running this script produces: - park_trail_geog_LONG.rda.

As an aside, if any parks/trails need to be reassigned to different agencies and/or statuses, this is the place to do that.

Park amenities produces park entrance locations and public water access locations.And rivers/lakes.

ACS data

ACS data at both the tract and block group levels needs to be processed for the 7 county core, as well as collar counties. We want to include the collar counties within this processing step because the buffer area for some parks and trails extends into areas beyond the 7 county core region.

Running census_tract_raw.R produces:

• county_outlines.rda (leveraging the fact that we have to load the tigris package anyways)
• census_tract_raw.rda

Running block_group_raw.R produces:

• block_group_raw.rda

If acs variables need to be added, this is one place where that should be done.

Create the tabular weighted average ACS values

And this is also done at the block group and tract levels. In some cases demographic variables are suppressed at the block group. We must process those variables at the tract level.

Running weighted_avs_bg.R produces:

• agency_avg_bg.rda (the average acs values within an implementing agency’s jurisdiction)
• long_buffer_data_bg.rda (acs values for each park/trail unit at each buffer distance for the variables which exist at the block group level)
• agency_planned_existing_avgs (agency-level averages for each variable including existing and planned units)
• buffer_geo.rda (the buffer geometries at 1, 1.5 and 3 mi radii. these will be plotted)

Running weighted_avs_tracts.R produces:

• long_buffer_data_tract.rda ()
• agency_planned_existing_avgs_tract.rda ()
• agency_avg_tract ()

and then we will join the 2 geographies together to create one cohesive weighted average dataset.

Create some helper functions

Download small area estimates:

Create the spatial ACS data

We only want to plot the block groups/tracts within the 7 county core region or within the collar counties if the bg/tract intersects with a buffer

Running this produces:

• collar_filter.rda
• block_group.rda
• census_tract.rda

Create population estimates

This script doesn’t depend on inputs from any other script.

Running this produces:

• est_pop.rda

Create transit layer

Only keep final files

reproject

create nice names for app selections

Metropolitan-Council/regionalparks.acs documentation built on Feb. 20, 2022, 2:10 p.m.