About the 2010 Census Geodatabases on WAGDA
| This page contains narrative metadadata. Metadata has been created for each of the individual geodatabases in XML format according to Dublin Core standards, and can be viewed on the Download page. In addition, each of the geographic features have been assigned metadata based on FGDC standards by the State of Washington OFM, which can be viewed from within the ArcCatalog.
All data within the WAGDA geodatabases is within the public domain. When publishing maps or data from the geodatabase, the U.S. Census Bureau should be cited as the source. |
| Census Data Source | ||
| Compatability |
The Census SF1 (Standard File 1), also known as short-form data, is based on a 100% count of the entire population. It contains basic demographic information that includes total population, urban vs. rural population, race, gender, age, households, families, housing units, occupancy status, and tenure. Data from SF1 is available at all geographic levels down to census blocks (the smallest census unit).
The Census SF3 (Standard File 3), also known as long-form data, was not collected for the 2010 Census. This information collection has been moved to the American Community Survey which now samples a small subset of the population to obtain more indepth information on a yearly basis.
Census data is compiled and distributed by the U.S. Census Bureau, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Each county-level database contains all of the SF1 data for all geographic summary levels within the county. The data is in its original form and has not been modified in any way. The state-level geodatabases only contain data at the county, metropolitan area, place, tract, and 5-digit ZIP code tabulation area levels.
Boundary files included in the database are originally from the Census Bureau’s TIGER Line File Extracts for Washington State. WAGDA obtained these files from US Census in ESRI shapefile format.
WAGDA reprojected the files to NAD_1983_HARN_StatePlane_Washington_North_FIPS_4601_Feet and imported the shapefiles into a geodatabase. Technically, two of the counties (Thurston and Pierce) are actually located in the Washington State Plane South zone, but for the sake of consistency WAGDA has projected all of the boundaries in State Plane North - users can always reproject the data using the Projection Tools in the ArcToolbox. WAGDA also created additional versions of each of the census geography files (tracts, block groups, and blocks) where the boundaries do not incorporate water. This was achieved by clipping each of the census boundaries based on water boundaries. The water boundaries were obtained from the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) from USGS.
The geodatabases are in ESRI File geodatabase format. Geospatial processing was conducted using ArcGIS 10.0.