March 10, 2010

March 2010 Updates

Posted under: Monthly Updates — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , by Phil V. @ 2:16 pm
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    • “This is yet another step forward in data transparency and availability … and we all benefit.” – Jim Duncan of Real Central VA
    New for March on PolicyMap!New tools and datasets are now available! Whether you are a city official managing a housing or foreclosure program, a student conducting research for course work, a community lender looking to better understand your portfolio in this market, or a foundation making decisions with limited resources, these new tools and data allow you to visualize and incorporate market information into your work in simpler, more efficient ways.
    New Ways to Create and Use Custom Regions: PolicyMap subscribers have always had the ability to draw custom areas on a map – on the fly – as a means of generating a picture of life in the area through maps, tables and reports. Quickly find out, for example, how many people live in an area, what types of jobs they have, the vacancy rate, or what the housing stock looks like.Now, you can create these regions in two new powerful ways:

    • Assemble a Region: You can select and save a specific set of geographies, like block groups, census tracts or counties to create a custom region. The geographies can be next to each other to create a specific neighborhood – or across town if your region is not contiguous.
    • Create a Radius Region: You can create a radius region by either typing in an address or clicking on the map to specify the center, select the size of the radius and save the radius for future work.

    Assembled Custom Region.jpg

    Also new is the ability to layer more than one custom region onto your map!

    Go to our custom region tutorial to learn more about how to use these new custom region features or contact our help desk at any time.
    Generate Lists of Properties that fall in Your Target Areas: The Analytics tool allows subscribers to find places on a map that meet up to 3 criteria. For some cities dealing with foreclosure issues, this means looking for areas where foreclosure risk is high, but neighborhoods are stable when it comes to schools, vacancy or other neighborhood conditions. Now, by overlaying point level properties on the map, users can generate a list of only those properties which fall into targeted areas. You could load in points like sheriff sales or foreclosure filings and then generate a list of only those that fall in your target areas. To learn more about how this works, sign up for one of our online demos or give us a call.
    NEW! Building Permits: Annual and monthly building permit data is now available dating back to 2000. This data, from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Residential Construction Branch Data, includes both the number of buildings and units for which building permits were issued, total dollar value and change over time. Data is available for counties and MSAs nationwide. PolicyMap updates this data every month.You can see this data for free under the Real Estate Conditions tab in the Add Data Layer menu.

    NEW! Cars and How People Get to Work: Data on how people get to work, how long it takes them to get there and how many cars the average household owns is now available. Data from 2000 comes from the Census and is available to the public. Current year estimates and 5-year projections are available to subscribers from Claritas, Inc. You can see this data at a national level, but more importantly you can drill down into the neighborhoods you care about to see information at a block group or census tract level.

    Travel Time Map.jpg

    Find this data in the Commute to Work section under the Neighborhood Conditions tab in the Add Data Layer menu.

    NEW! Obesity, Diabetes, and Food Related Assistance: You’ll find some of the health statistics recently made available by the USDA through its Food Environment Atlas, mapped and available in tables on PolicyMap. This data includes statistics on obesity, diabetes and the availability of assistance under the SNAP (formerly Food Stamps) or WIC programs.

    SNAP Map.jpg

    You can find this data for free under the Health tab in the Add Data Layer menu.

    UPDATED! Monthly Unemployment from the BLS: Check out the latest November and December 2009 employment, unemployment, and labor force data for states, counties, metropolitan areas, and many cities, by place of residence. This data is updated monthly on PolicyMap and is available as far back as 2000…

    Find this data for free under the Jobs & Economy tab in the Add Data Layer menu.
    NEWS The Widget: Did you know that our widget – the iframe code that allows you to quickly and easily embed interactive maps on your own website – can be customized on your end? You can change the color of the map; change a boundary name and much more. Read our blog posting to learn how.

    To see some widgets in action on other pages, check these out:
    Adecco Group
    Stats Indiana

    The beautiful part about these widgets is that as soon as new data is available, PolicyMap updates it for www.policymap.com and the new data is automatically updated in your widget. Learn more.

    Library Licenses: The University of Pennsylvania Library is now a subscriber to PolicyMap. This means that if you are an authorized user of the library system, you now have unlimited access to PolicyMap for your school and research work. If you know of a library that might be interested, have them contact us.
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    March 9, 2010

    Did you know… (Updated Custom Regions)

    Posted under: Did you know... Series — Tags: , , , , , by Phil V. @ 5:11 pm

    Welcome to our series on helpful tips for PolicyMap. With over 10,000 data indicators and many online features, we hope our series can help users better utilize PolicyMap. For a complete training, please join a free online session here: Click Here


    Build Custom RegionDid you know    , building a custom region in PolicyMap gives subscribers the ability to create their own unique areas on the map, and then build reports for those areas. Subscribers have always had the ability to draw a custom region right on top of the map; these custom regions can cross predefined geographic boundaries like census tracts, zip codes, and counties.

    Now users can draw a radius around an address or assemble a grouping of boundaries – like block groups, census tracts or zip codes – to create a custom region. To use these features, click the “Build Custom Region” in the bar along the bottom of the map and choose one of the three (3) types of custom regions: Drawn, Assembled, or Radius.
    (more…)

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    February 8, 2010

    Did you know… (Island Printing)

    Posted under: Did you know... Series,Support — Tags: , , by Phil V. @ 1:27 pm

    Welcome to our series on helpful tips for PolicyMap. With over 10,000 data indicators and many online features, we hope our series can help users better utilize PolicyMap. For a complete training, please join a free online session here: Click Here

    Did you know you can print a map of just your target area shaded and have the surrounding area clear?  We call this feature "island printing."  To use island printing:

    1. Search for your default location.  Your searched location will be the area the map will shade by. (i.e. searching for Chicago will only shade the city of Chicago when you choose "island printing.")
    2. Create a map as normal with a data layer and  Add Sites.
    3. When you are ready to print the map, choose "only shade selected region."

     

    		 Print "only shade selected region"

    (more…)

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    January 27, 2010

    January Updates

    Posted under: Monthly Updates — Tags: , , , , , , , by Phil V. @ 12:33 pm
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    PolicyMap is a CNET Webware Winner! | January 2010

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    "This is pretty cool. PolicyMap is a new site by The Reinvestment Fund (TRF), a national not-for-profit organization that finances neighborhood revitalization.

    It’s a Google Maps mashup on steroids." – Joel Burslem of Future of Real Estate of Marketing

    New for January on PolicyMap! PolicyMap rolls out new features and datasets this month and next. See what is new for January and what to expect in February.

    Features and Tools

    The Widget: Already we’ve improved our widget – the iframe code that allows you to quickly and easily embed interactive maps on your own website – by giving your visitors the ability to search for a location. This new Search feature allows your visitors to take the map to an address, census tract, zip code, city or county, congressional district, school district, MSA or other local political district quickly – and then overlay data onto the map. Our free widget – the national unemployment map – now comes with this search feature. The code to embed on your website is here and can be found, along with more information, on our blog.

    <iframe src="http://www.policymap.com/widget.jsp?userid=892&wid=4&height=500&i=9841103&btd=4&nomenus=true&search=true" width="100%" height="635px" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0" vspace="0" hspace="0" name="PolicyMap"></iframe>

    As soon as new data is available, we update it for www.policymap.com and for all subscribers’ widgets.

    "Smart" Polygons: A number of subscribers send us data related to a particular community, not just an address. These can be investments a foundation is making in a neighborhood or areas being targeted for intervention through the NSP. We load these areas in as "polygons" so the area being served is outlined and clickable (just like an address) revealing what the subscriber is undertaking in that community. These polygons are now "smart," meaning a subscriber can generate a report for that area simply by clicking See Report in the info bubble.

    Smart Polygons
    SmartPolygons.jpg

    Library Licenses: We are about to sign on our first University Library as a subscriber to PolicyMap! This subscription gives all authorized library users unlimited access to PolicyMap for their school and research work. If you know of library that might be interested, just have them contact us at pmap@policymap.com.
    Recent data updates include:

    Home Sale Statistics: PolicyMap now contains home sale statistics through June 2009 (Qtr 2). This home sale data allows you to drill down into neighborhoods across the country and see how many homes sold and the median sales price for every quarter starting in 2007. Annual home sale data is also available as far back as 2000.

    This data is only available to subscribers and can be found under the Real Estate Analysis tab on the Add Data Layer menu.

    Monthly Unemployment from the BLS: Check out the latest October and November 2009 employment, unemployment, and labor force data for states, counties, metropolitan areas, and many cities, by place of residence. This data is updated monthly on PolicyMap and is available back through the year 2000.

    Users can find this data for free under the Jobs and Economy tab in the Add Data Layer menu.

    Coming in February!

    You’ll find new ways to create custom regions, gain the ability to see multiple custom regions on a map at the same time (or compare those areas in a single chart), save points that interest you in Analytics and see national numbers in both the tables and maps.

    New:  Non-contiguous custom regions Non-Contiguos Custom Region.jpg


    New:  Custom Region by Radius     Custom Region by Radius.jpg

    You’ll also see some new and interesting data in PolicyMap including single-family and multi-family building permits (updated monthly), drive times to work, population per square mile, religious affiliations and presidential voting patterns.
    These are features we’ve built and datasets we’ve loaded because of the feedback we receive from you, our users, so please keep the comments coming! We’ve done an increasing number of webinars for funders or trade associations who want to share PolicyMap with grantees or members and we are happy to do them. Contact us at info@policymap.com or 866-923-6277. Be in touch.
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    August 3, 2009

    Did you know… (Custom Regions)

    Posted under: Did you know... Series,Support — Tags: , , by Phil V. @ 10:45 am

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    Welcome to our series on helpful tips for PolicyMap. With over 10,000 data indicators and many online features, we hope our series can help users better utilize PolicyMap. For a complete training, please join a free online session here: Click Here

    Did you know subscribers can draw custom regions to aggregate data in reports and tables, and then quickly share those custom regions with any other subscribers? Custom regions allow a subscriber to draw their own boundaries that might not fit with pre-defined geographies.  Custom regions can cross county lines, zip codes, census tract, and more.  Users can aggregate data within a custom region in reports and tables, or add custom boundaries to maps and Analytics.
    (more…)

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    April 14, 2009

    New on PolicyMap for April

    Posted under: Monthly Updates — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , by Phil V. @ 3:49 pm

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    New on PolicyMap for April
    In this update:

    • 30-Day free trial
    • CNET Awards
    • Public Transit Rail
    • Rankings Function
    • Data Downloading
    • Updated Data

    Visit our Blog

    Did you know? You can overlay geographic boundaries like zip codes, census tracts, or block groups. Click “Map Options” on the bottom right of the map. This will open a panel with boundary choices. Your zoom level will determine which boundaries are available to overlay. Learn more in our series: Did you know.
    Take a moment to vote for PolicyMap for the CNET Awards and explore new functionality. Not a subscriber? Sign up for a 30-day free trial! (Click Here)


    NewsletterLogoS.jpg    If you haven’t heard, PolicyMap has been nominated by CNET as one of the top Webware sites in 2009. Help us win one of the top 100 spots by voting for us now. Just click the button to submit your vote.

    Functionality:

    • Rank data by any geography. Subscribers can now see where a geography ranks for any variable and print the list. Explore Rankings in the Tables page in PolicyMap. Enter a location, add a data layer, and click “See Rankings”.

    • Data Downloading now available! Subscribers can now
      download data through PolicyMap. Downloading is available on the Tables page. Select a place, add a data layer, and click “See Values”. You’ll see the option to either print or download the values to a csv file for Excel. Read more on about Data Downloading here.

    • Custom Region Reporting is now easier then ever. Pull up a saved custom region or create a new one, then click on the orange icon. You’ll see the opportunity to go directly to a table or a report.

    For more on how to use any of these new functions, visit our blog. Or sign up for one of our online tutorials. Check out the new Help button at the top the map.

    Map Options:


    Public Transit Rail Lines and Stops now in PolicyMap. Subscribers can now add public transit rail lines for most metro areas to their maps, see the actual lines, and click on transit stops for more information. Transit lines are from Urban Mapping and allow you to see each stop, and if a stop is accessible, has parking, and more. To overlay these transit lines on a map, select Map Options at the bottom of the map and check off “Public Transit Rail Lines”. Coverage: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and many other cities

    RailLines001.jpg

    Public Data:

    • Updated prenatal care and pregnancy data from the CDC. Now available for 2000 to 2006.

    • Postal Service Vacancy data is now available quarterly on PolicyMap and updated through December 2008.

    • Updated cultural vitality indicators from the Urban Institute – now available at the metro level.

    • Updated HUD multifamily sites – the new list has greater coverage and more information about each site. Find these in the Add Sites menu under Federal Housing.

    New HMDA Calculations from the FRB of Philadelphia:

    As you know, subscribers have the ability to either keep their data password protected or make it available to the public. Thanks to a new subscriber, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, asked us to run some unique calculations of HMDA data, those calculations are now available to the public in the Mortgage Originations tab under Add Data Layer.

    Later this Month…

    Want to overlay three data layers on the same map? Coming soon, we’ll be releasing the new Analytics feature.
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