Help students across disciplines understand geographic data without having to take a specialized class.
Use PolicyMap to bring sophisticated data, mapping and analytics to fields beyond traditional GIS and planning departments. From public health to sociology and law, students can use PolicyMap to create maps, reports and analyses to enable a deeper understanding of crucial areas in their fields. Our vast data library contains thousands of data indicators from hundreds of resources and is always standardized and cleaned and eliminates digging for data from disparate sources.
Join hundreds of top-tier colleges and universities that already subscribe to PolicyMap.
Download: “Developing Data-Savvy Future Leaders”
Want to bring GIS insights without specialized classes to your college or university? PolicyMap empowers students, faculty, researchers and administrators with place-based data to answer research questions across disciplines. To learn more data sources and topics, download our brochure.
Simple, Secure Access Through Your University Library
Universities can make access to PolicyMap available to all library users via login, Single Sign-On (SSO), or IP authentication (no login required). Users can create their own accounts.
Download Data For Use In Other Applications
Download consistently formatted flat file data from PolicyMap’s library of over 37,000 indicators for use in your own statistical, mapping, and data visualization tools.
Interested in licensing data from PolicyMap’s library? Learn more here.
No Specialized Training Required
Spend less time learning a complicated GIS tool and gathering data. Instead, students and researchers can focus on visualizing and interpreting data immediately.
RECOMMENDED BY:
Request a Demo
Interested in learning more about PolicyMap, exploring our data warehouse, understanding our mapping capabilities, or getting a quote? Schedule a PolicyMap demonstration for faculty, staff and/or students.
Please share a bit about yourself, and we’ll be in touch in short order.
Get instant access to the web’s largest place-based data library
Explore maps and create custom reports of data related to demographics, real estate, health, jobs, the environment, education and more. Available data is continuously updated.
Gain simple, secure access through your university library
Colleges and universities can purchase enterprise licenses for their libraries and make access to PolicyMap available to all users via IP authentication or Single Sign On (SSO). No login required; library users may create their own individual accounts for storage of PolicyMap work products.
If your university uses a Single Sign On (SSO) tool to access its applications, PolicyMap can readily integrate with it. We have implemented SSO for many clients, using a variety of their SSO tools, such as OpenAthens, ADSF, Okta, and native SAML 2.0. We are happy to provide an implementation that will seamlessly integrate into the SSO system you use to manage your applications. Contact us for additional information.
Data Sources
Exclusive data sets include Social Needs, Medical Spending Estimates, Consumer Spending Habits, and Small Area Health Estimates. Contact us for complete list of our data on our website.
Demographics
Population, race and ethnicity, age, sex, languages, foreign-born, migration and immigration, households, families, homelessness, elections, religion
Incomes & Spending
Incomes, poverty, tax returns, federal benefits, bankruptcies, housing burdens, consumer spending, medical spending
Housing
Home sales, rents, building permits, residential & commercial vacancy, subsidized households, public housing, LIHTC
Lending
Mortgage originations, government-insured loans, refinance loans, mortgages by race, ethnicity, income, bank branches, credit unions, Historic Lending Boundaries
Quality of Life
Crime, broadband access, time to work, heating fuel types, food access, farmers’ markets, environmental hazards, libraries, museums, parks, disaster risk
Economy
Jobs, unemployment, wages, small business, employment, workforce characteristics, oil and gas production
Education
School enrollment, educational attainment, graduation rates, school performance, cost of college, student loan debt, school locations, college locations, head start locations
Health
Infectious diseases, opioid use, chronic conditions, access to health care, health insurance, health risk factors, federal health programs, health facility locations, food access
Federal Guidelines
NMTC eligibility & investments, Opportunity Zones, persistent poverty, CDBG eligibility, housing opportunity index, CRA eligible areas, SBA HUB Zones, Promise Zones
Data available through PolicyMap is authoritative and current.
University Libraries sought to provide faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students with a simple spatial analysis tool. PolicyMap was a practical choice to give our academic community access to demographic, health and economic variables. Student research utilizing this geographic tool will inform their subject knowledge as well as enhance their digital literacy and critical analysis skills.
Dr. John Buschman, Dean of Seton Hall’s University Libraries
Relevant Data Across Disciplines
Learn how colleges and universities of all sizes use PolicyMap across multiple disciplines. The platform allows students to visualize social, economic, and health factors, including social determinants of health; racial and ethnic disparities; computer and internet access; social problems; housing trends, and environmental justice without having to master a sophisticated software program.
Social Sciences
Sample Syllabus:
University of Delaware
Urban Studies
and Planning
Webinar:
University of Pennsylvania
Community and Economic Development
Sample Syllabus:
Columbia University
Customer Story:
NYU Furman Center
Public Administration
and Policy
Sample Syllabus:
University of Massachusetts Boston
Political Science
Assignment:
Bowling Green State University
Business
Master’s Thesis:
Drexel University
Marketing Research Course:
Penn State University Harrisburg
Geography
Conference Presentation:
UMass Boston
Real Estate
Student Paper:
University of Minnesota
Education
Environmental Studies
Published Paper:
Harvard University, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
Economics and Statistics
Student Paper:
Rutgers University
Journalism
Strengthening reporting through data.
Sample Syllabus:
University of Southern California (1)
University of Southern California (2)
Join Our Mailing List
Sign up to receive data-driven stories, insights, and updates from the PolicyMap team.
Using PolicyMap to Teach Environmental (In)Justice
Watch University of Delaware Professor Victor Perez demonstrate how to examine environmental justice issues using PolicyMap.
MORE RESOURCES
Features
PolicyMap’s improved platform allows for the easy creation of beautiful maps, trend charts, and reports. Users efficiently view data on our customizable maps of up to 5-layers or download social, economic, and health data. They upload their own place-based data and overlay it with layers from our comprehensive library of data indicators.
Make maps with your data and ours.
Visualize the impact of your organization or the needs of your community with our exclusive data.
Instantly run community profiles for your community or a custom area.
Use our unlimited self-service data loader to overlay your address-level data on top of PolicyMap’s.
Find areas with overlapping criteria.
Use our Multi-layer Maps for site selection, to find hot spots or target specific areas.
Use our data in your own research, mapping, and presentation tools.
Email, embed, and post on social media — or print maps with ease.
No training is required.
No special GIS training is required to start making maps, but we are available to help you at any time.
Stop Collecting. Start Analyzing.
Easily integrate place-based data into your website or application.
Consult with our Data Analysts.
Send us your data, and we’ll recommend how to effectively visualize it. We’ll standardize and clean it, too.