• 1.  48,709  Maricopa, AZ
• 2.  35,772  Los Angeles, CA
• 3.  29,866  Clark, NV
• 4.  21,029  Miami-Dade, FL
• 5.  20,465  Broward, FL
• 6.  17,405  Riverside, CA
• 7.  15,786  San Bernardino, CA
• 8.  14,382  Cook, IL
• 9.  14,352  Wayne, MI
• 10. 13,766  Palm Beach, FL

Also, home sale data for all of 2010 will be arriving on PolicyMap shortly. Stay tuned!

Users now can change Add Data Layers and Add Sites from the menu at the top of the map. All unique features of the widgets are still there; users can pan and zoom around, click to open an info bubble with more data, add both thematic and address level data, print maps, and much more.

For our current widget clients, it is a simple matter of adding a small piece of code (&altLayout=true) to the end of the URL in your iframe, and your widget will have the new layout. Contact us today for help updating your widgets. For users looking to add a fully interactive map which can access our complete library of data and also any data you send to us, there is now another way to display the PolicyMap Widgets.

Learn more about other ways to customize your widgets here.

If you would like more information on the widgets, please contact us at pmap@policymap.com or call us at (866) 923-MAPS. We would be happy to give you a demo of PolicyMap and show how others are using data to drive their websites.

• (01/12/11) Set Location bar is now dynamic depending on the width of the embed map or widget
• (02/03/11) Rankings in a widget now has the option to print
• (10/14/11) Alternative widget layout

What is a widget? Widgets are customizable instances of PolicyMap maps with dynamic features such as the ability to zoom into or pan across a map, click on an area to view the underlying data or toggle between additional data layers and points of data.

Each widget is completely customized to our users’ needs. Users can decide the default location, type of datasets to display, and boundaries to overlay. Within the URL of the PolicyMap widget, there are commands which allow some basic customization of the widget, and outside the URL are customizations for the frame of the widget. Some of these customizations are only available if the widget was originally designed to have the feature.

We will use the free Unemployment Widget offered by PolicyMap (www.policymap.com/blog/?p=3395) to demonstrate the options to edit the widget.

<div style="text-align:center">
<iframe src="http://www.policymap.com/widget.jsp?userid=892&wid=4&height=500&i=9841103&btd=4&search=true&nomenus=true" width="100%" height="700px" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0" name="PolicyMap"></iframe>
<div style="font:13px arial,geneva,helvetica,sans-serif">Powered by <a style="text-decoration:underline" target="_blank" href="http://www.policymap.com">www.policymap.com</a>, an <a style="text-decoration:underline" target="_blank" href="http://www.policymap.com">online mapping tool</a> and data warehouse.</div></div>

Within the <iframe …> </iframe> and anything outside the URL will customize the frame which contains the map. The iframe is the window that contains the map. Customization to the iframe are HTML options.

• width=”value” – The width of the frame that contains the widget. Values can be in percentages or pixels
• height=”value/px” – The height of the frame that contains the widget. Values can be in percentages or pixels (Note: the “height=” should be greater than the “&height” inside the URL)
• scrolling=”value” – Choose yes or no to add vertical and horizontal scroll bars around the widget
• marginwidth=”0″ – Side margins between the map and frame
• marginheight=”0″ –> Top and bottom margins between the map and frame
• frameborder=”0″ – You can add a border around the entire frame
• name=”PolicyMap” – Give a widget a customized title

Within the <iframe …> </iframe> but adding these options to the URL will customize the widget interface. Any customization in the URL is changing how the map looks and interacts.

• &altLayout=true – Moves the Add Data Layer and Add Sites menu above the map. This is one of the most unique customization to the widget, which gives an alternative view.

• &hideleg=true – Hide the legend as a default
• &nomenus=true – Remove Add Data Layer and Add Sites from the widget
• &search=true – Add a search function onto a widget. Please note that if your width is less then 770px, the Set Location bar will resize to a simple search bar without options for searching by pre-define geographies like census tract, school districts, metro areas, etc.
• &nobounds=true – If a widget starts at a certain location on the map, add this to show the boundary for the starting location
• &hideimenu=true – Hides the indicator menu
• &hidepmenu=true – Hides the points menu
• &mlon=true – Makes the map layer on as default
• &ranking=true – Adds the ability to show the ranking of a location selected on the map

Add these options with a value to the URL will further customize the widget

• &nb=value – Values from 2 to 8 are accepted. This sets the number of breaks used for the thematic data.
• &rmp=color ramp – Changes the thematic colors. When this parameter isn’t set it uses the default purple colors. The options available for color ramps are: blue and olive.
• &height=value – The height of the map in pixels, cannot be in percentages (Note: the “&height” should be less than the “height=” outside the URL).
• &rstyle=value – Values from 1 – 3 are accepted. Changes the different styling for the rankings feature. Default style and color are shown if code is not added.

If you have questions about the widgets or want to learn more, please contact Phil Vu (phil.vu@policymap.com or 215-574-5896).

Did you know the custom region feature for subscribers gives users the ability to draw right on top of the map to create their own target areas. Once a custom region is drawn, users can then open a custom region in the Tables feature to see aggregated counts or list of geographies that make up the custom region; or open in Reports to get aggregated numbers.

A custom region can contain any geography and cross multiple geographic boundaries and boundary types; we decided to create a blog series and review some of the unique rules for custom regions to make sense of how data is aggregated and how custom regions display data.

The Geography Steps – The geography used to aggregate data for a custom region is determined by the size of the custom region, which in turn determines the zoom level the custom region displays at. When you open a custom region, the location of the zoom bar will determine what geography by default will be used to aggregate data. This is also called the default zoom level.

The Zoom Bar on the right shows the numerical scale used for identifying the current zoom level on the map. The zoom level of zero (0) at the bottom is the farthest zoomed out (usually displaying the US and data by states) and 15 at the top is the closest zoomed in (this will show street level and data at blockgroups). 2 is the default zoom level when you first open PolicyMap.

GeoSteps is a term used to determine what geography data can be downloaded at using See Values or what default geography is used for aggregation in Reports. The chart below shows the GeoSteps used for 2000/2010 Census and American Community Survey data. Between zoom levels 12-15 (the top most zoom levels of the Zoom Bar), blockgroups will be used to aggregate data as a default. After the zoom level of 12, census tracts would be the default geography, then counties will be the default at level 8, and finally state level data after zoom level 5.

• 12: Block Group
• 08: Census Tract, Block Group
• 05: County, Census Tract, Block Group
• 00: State, County, Census Tract, Block Group

In the first example on the left, the custom region’s default zoom level is at 12 which would mean that the green highlighted census tracts will be used as the default geographies when aggregating data in reports or shown in Tables.
   
The second example on the right, the custom region is much larger in geographic size encompassing many counties near Chicago, IL so the default zoom level when loading the custom region is 6. This means that counties will be the default geography used to aggregate data and the green highlighted counties will be used for aggregation in reports and tables.

A couple of the reasons for the GeoSteps:

• To make PolicyMap fast and responsive to users, we needed to scale the amount of resources used when aggregating data so the GeoStep allowed the program to select larger geographies that covered more area to aggregate by. (For example, it’s faster to aggregate data for the 67 counties of Pennsylvania than the 10,387 blockgroups)
• Another reason was to help users make sense the geographies that make up a location. (For example, it’s easier understand a list of data for the 50 states that make up the US, than a list of the +200,000 blockgroups in the US)

On the latter point, keep an eye out for our upcoming releases as we plan to give users the ability to choose the geography used to aggregate reports and eventually choose to the geography to download in the Tables feature also.

In our final Custom Region blog entry, we will talk about the unique rules accompanying the ability to assemble custom regions.

To read a full guide on all features on PolicyMap, please look at our Primer available here. If you wanted to know more about a feature or topic, send your request to info@policymap.com subject “Did you Know…”

Sincerely,
The PolicyMap Team

Did you know the custom region feature for subscribers gives users the ability to draw right on top of the map to create their own target areas. Once a custom region is drawn, users can then open a custom region in the Tables feature to see aggregated counts or list of geographies that make up the custom region; or open in Reports to get aggregated numbers.

A custom region can contain any geography and cross multiple geographic boundaries and boundary types; we decided to create a blog serie and review some of the unique rules for custom regions to make sense of how data is aggregated and how custom regions display data.

The 50% Rule – For a geography to be included in the aggregation of a report or table, at least 50% of a geography must be contained by a custom region. This is a helpful rule for creating a radius custom region or radius report. PolicyMap will only use the geographies that have at least 50% of its area contained within the radius boundary for aggregation in a report or table. The 50% Rule also helps when drawing a custom region, since users do not have to be fully accurate in the borders. As long as the drawn border does not cross to contain more than 50% of a geography, it will then not be included in the aggregation.

In the first example on the right, only the green shaded census tracts (38.02, 38.03, 37.02, 35.01, & 34.01) would be used when aggregating data. Tracts 37.01, 35.02, and 34.02 do not have at least 50% of their area contained within the radius custom region.

In the second example below, we have drawn a custom region following streets but these streets do not correspond to the underlying census tract boundaries. Because of the 50% Rule, our custom region will use the green highlighted census tracts (37.02, 34.01, 33.01, 34.02, & 33.02) when aggregating data, while 36.01, 38.03, and 35.01 are not included since at least 50% of their area are not contained within the custom region.

Because there is not a logical or accurate way to divide the data for a geography that is divided by the border of a custom region, we feel that the 50% Rule identifies the areas that a user most likely wanted to collect data for.

In our next Custom Region blog entry, we will talk about the geography rule which determines what geographic boundary is used when aggregating a custom region.

To read a full guide on all features on PolicyMap, please look at our Primer available here. If you wanted to know more about a feature or topic, send your request to info@policymap.com subject “Did you Know…”

Sincerely,
The PolicyMap Team

We wanted to review some of the unique ways subscribers can use the Analytics features.

Sometimes when working with data, you are looking to find places that meet a certain criteria or range of a data layer. The Analytics can be used to query a data layer to find any location or locations that meets a specific range. For example, do you want to find all the school districts in Oregon that had over 75% of students participating in a Free and Reduce Lunch program? To create this query:

• Go to Analytics on PolicyMap
• Set Oregon as your location in the Set Location bar
• Load the data under Money & Income > Free and Reduce Lunch
• In the legend, set the range on the left of the map to 75% to 99.59%
• This will show all school districts that have more than 75% of students in the program
• Select the Download Place List option and choose Oregon, and give the list a custom name
• This will generate a list of the 10 school districts that meet the set threshold.  See list of Oregon School Districts

Would you want an example which queries a smaller geography size? How about looking to find tracts that have housing prices within a median home sale range of $150,000 to $175,000 in the Suffolk county Boston area. The Analytics is a quick way to query and find these tracts. To create this query:

• Go to Analytics on PolicyMap
• Set Suffolk, MA (county) as your location
• Load the data under Real Estate Analysis > Home Sale Data > Quarterly > Home Sales
• In the legend, change the default variable from number (or count) to median
• Set the median price range to $150,000 and $175,000
• Select the Download Place List option and select Massachusetts, give the list a custom name
• This list will generate the 4 tracts in Suffolk county that meet the range of median home sale price. See list of homes in Suffolk County

As you can see, the Analytics can be a very unique tool that allows users to find a list of locations that need to meet just one data indicator. In our next blog post on Analytics, we will review how users can use the feature to query addresses that fall into locations that meet an Analytic.

To read a full guide on all features on PolicyMap, please look at our Primer available here. If you wanted to know more about a feature or topic, send your request to info@policymap.com subject “Did you Know…”

Sincerely,
The PolicyMap Team

Did you know when a data layer is added, the Legend will display specific information about the current data layer (e.g. Year, Variable, Range Values, etc) and the range for each color on the map. The legend also gives you the ability to fully customize the map by; changing the year, how the data is displayed by changing the variable, making your own custom ranges, and host of other features.

Depending on the data layer added, you can toggle between available years, quarters, or even months. Some years are only available to subscribers and trial users.

Changing the variable will change what data is displayed on the map. Each data layer might have specific and unique variables. You can toggle between different variables, including the number (#), median value ($), percent (%), or even the change across years (%Ch) depending on the data layer displayed.

PolicyMap displays data at different geography levels; the zoom level determines what geography the data on the map is shaded by. For example, when looking at the nation, data is shaded by state. As you zoom in, the geography the data is shaded might change to the county, zip code, census tract, and finally block group level as you zoom further in; this also depends on the availability of the data at that geography for each data layer. A great place to see what geographies each data layer is available at is the Our Data page.

The “shade by” pull down menu gives you the ability to change the geography at which the current data layer is shaded. For example, you can create maps of Philadelphia County by zip code or city, instead of the default shade level of census tracts.

The legend will contain the data source for the data being displayed. Whenever possible, the source is a presented as a live link to our Data Directory with more information about that source.

The Clear Data Layer option will remove the current thematic data layer but keep you zoomed at your current location and keep any point dataset from Add Site on the map.

Subscribers and trial users have the ability to create custom values for each range. To customize click Edit Ranges, and define the values for each range. When you are done editing your ranges, click Apply to show the custom ranges on the map. Restore Defaults will revert cut points back to default.

This unique feature allows a user to define their own ranges for how data is shown on the map. The Edit Ranges can be used for any variable in PolicyMap. Users can create custom ranges for income, percentages, percent changes, and much more. For example, do you want to find

Subscribers or trial users can also change the color spectrum used on the shaded map. If you do not like our default purple color palette, then you can choose the olive or blue. We will have more added soon.


Another great feature for subscribers and trial users is the ability to increase or decrease the number of ranges shown on the map using the pull down menu. This is helpful if you want to simply the ranges of data or if you need to show more complexity in the shading. Also, 2-3 color ranges are good for printing in black and white.




Just remember, when you initially load a thematic data layer on PolicyMap, you will see the default settings so make sure check the legend for other options to customized the data layer. To read a full guide on all features on PolicyMap, please look at our Primer available here.

If you wanted to know more about a feature or topic, send your request to info@policymap.com subject “Did you Know…”

Sincerely,
The PolicyMap Team

As the article continues, “The possibilities for data mapping are endless. A bank grappling with foreclosures could mashup loan and foreclosure data with maps to see hot spots and trends by neighborhood. This could help the bank understand when and where to offer proactive interest-rate-reduction programs to avoid new defaults. A tax authority could overlay revenue information from a SAP app with Google Maps data to see income by state and county, or county, city, and township, making the largest and smallest parts of the tax base readily visible. Telecommunications providers could map data on dropped calls, revealing the biggest capacity and antenna reception problems.”

PolicyMap was built to help handle those possibilities listed, as well as other unique ways to interact with data. Users can upload their data using the Data Loader or working with our GIS team, and then the addresses can be displayed on top of thematic indicators in PolicyMap related to topics like housing, demographics, lending, or health.

One of PolicyMap’s client, IFF, was able to show their investments in the St. Louis area and give users the ability to see how those investments sit within areas of poverty or types of school enrollment.

Read the complete article by Doug Henschen on Information Week here.

Did you know you can now search for specific locations to address level datasets from Add Sites? With Add Sites, users can display locations for a variety of datasets including schools, libraries, grocery locations, hospitals, health care locations, and much more. You can read more about all of our available datasets on our blog (Add Sites 2). Each dataset will display as unique icons on the map and users can click an icon to open the Info Bubble and learn more information for that point.

We have just added the ability to search for the name of any location. After you load a point/address level dataset, select the radio button (circle) for each dataset to open the search bar. Simply enter the name of the location that you are searching for and select GO. This will zoom to the point/address and open the Info Bubble for more information.

The search feature also uses predictive text, so entering the first 3 letters of a location will display a list of all locations the start with the 3 letters. This is a very helpful if you are not familiar with the exact name of a location.

Please note, the search function will only work on one dataset at a time (the dataset which has the radio button selected). If you have multiple datasets loaded, just select the radio button for the dataset you wish to search in.

Do you have a widget with your data on it? Subscribers that have datasets already loaded onto PolicyMap can have this feature added. Please contact us to update your widgets today.

If you wanted to know more about a feature or topic, send your request to info@policymap.com subject “Did you Know…”

Sincerely,
The PolicyMap Team

We are straying from our usual data related blog posts to write about a question that often comes up as organizations look to PolicyMap to help with their data and mapping infrastructure. It’s familiar in many worlds – “Is it better to build a system yourself or buy a solution from a vendor?” While every department, organization or company situation is unique, there are several key advantages to using a cloud-based, online application, like PolicyMap:

Save Money: First and foremost, licensing an existing, road-tested product like PolicyMap costs a lot less than trying to build, host, maintain, fix and update it yourself. You leverage the expertise we’ve gained in servicing hundreds of clients who are successfully using our online application.

Save Time: Second, you can access PolicyMap – or provide access to others – overnight. The product is already widely in use, and all we need to do is “turn on” your permissions.

Use Your Team for More Interesting Work: Third – and this one is perhaps the most important in our opinion – you can use your staff time that would be spent building a similar tool for other mission critical work, where they’re not duplicating an existing application. They can also spend their time analyzing data rather than collecting it, and exploring other valuable datasets that your organization needs to do its work.

Leverage Other Data in the Platform: Fourth – and this one is also very critical in our minds – we load data for customers all over the nation and have a team dedicated to finding, cleaning and loading new and wide-ranging datasets. You leverage all of that data in your own work, as it’s fed directly into the application. For instance, you don’t need to find the resources to keep updated transit stops, tax data, education attainment, home sale stats, mortgage data etc. in your own platform. We do that for you.

Piggyback on the Demands of Others: Fifth, we hear from customers everyday about additional tools they need or features they’d like us to improve and we roll these improvements into the platform. Demand from our users is what drives our platform enhancements, such as the Analytics tool, the initial data loader, improved printing, new ways to build custom regions and more. As a PolicyMap customer, you benefit from these improvements at no additional cost.

No Maintenance, Hosting or Uptime Worries: Sixth, as a customer, you are licensing a platform that is someone else’s job to worry about. We address the maintenance, pay for the hosting and make sure the platform is running as quickly as it can.

Stay Ahead of the Technology: Finally, we have a team whose singular purpose is PolicyMap. As a result, we stay abreast of all new technologies that can make our platform faster, more interactive, mobile, more connected, more real time. It is our business to do that. As an organization with your own business goals, why would you want to take these challenges on too?

All good stuff to keep in mind as you think through your online data and mapping needs. As always, call with any questions! (866) 923-MAPS or info@policymap.com