Hudson Block Boundary Suggestion Project (BBSP)
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  Hudson Block Boundary Suggestion Project (BBSP)
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Author Topic: Hudson Block Boundary Suggestion Project (BBSP)  (Read 5515 times)
jimrtex
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« Reply #50 on: May 21, 2016, 05:21:40 AM »

I need something emailed to me with larger areas, that gives one an idea of what you are proposing. If I don't get it, I will need to take the existing census block, and draw the lines that I really care about, and tell them, hey, at the very least do this. Pigs get fat, and hogs get slaughtered. I fear without doing what I suggest, we might end up in the hog category. I am concerned, that I may need to get the mayor's blessing to get this done, and I don't want to frighten her. The latfor guy, basically asked who the F are you and the Jimrtex guy? Telling him that I may be a future mayor of Hudson, and you are this obsessive dude in Houston who shares with me this very odd fascination with all things Hudson,  I don't think will cut it. Smiley
I've contacted the senator and assemblyperson who represent Hudson asking how to contact LATFOR (which is a legislative agency). Incidentally, both have a Hudson office.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #51 on: May 21, 2016, 06:58:17 AM »

Hudson Narrative Items 57-59





Item 57: Delete driveways at high school.



Item 58: Delete driveways at Firemen's Home.



Item 59: Delete driveways at middle school.


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jimrtex
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« Reply #52 on: May 23, 2016, 05:01:18 AM »
« Edited: May 23, 2016, 10:03:42 AM by jimrtex »

Hudson Narrative Items 60-66





Item 60: Use Clinton Street west of N 6th Street and its extension to Harry Howard Avenue as a block boundary, as was done in 1990.



Item 61: Use northern shore of Underhill Pond as part of block boundary.



Item 62: Use stream between Underhill Pond and Oakdale Pond as part of block boundaries.



Item 63: Use northern shore of Oakdale Pond as part of block boundary,



Item 64: Use stream from Oakdale Pond to railroad tracks near Power Springs as block boundary.



Item 65: Use stream from Underhill Pond to Paddock Place as block boundary.



Item 66: Delete footpath from N 6th Street and Glenwood Boulevard to middle school playground.
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Kevinstat
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« Reply #53 on: May 23, 2016, 09:20:51 PM »




Item 61: Use northern shore of Underhill Pond as part of block boundary.



Item 62: Use stream between Underhill Pond and Oakdale Pond as part of block boundaries.



How will those two connect?  You might want to specify something so somebody doesn't leave a non-closed polygon.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #54 on: May 23, 2016, 11:48:14 PM »




Item 61: Use northern shore of Underhill Pond as part of block boundary.



Item 62: Use stream between Underhill Pond and Oakdale Pond as part of block boundaries.



How will those two connect?  You might want to specify something so somebody doesn't leave a non-closed polygon.

The ponds are being treated as linear, while they are depicted as areal.

One way would be to collapse them a statistical lines that connect the inlets and outlets. That for Underhill Pond would have to fork for the two inlets.

A second way would be to shift to a single shore, which in this case would include the short between the inlets.

The third way would be to use the ponds as zero-population blocks.


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jimrtex
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« Reply #55 on: May 24, 2016, 06:57:17 AM »

How will those two connect?  You might want to specify something so somebody doesn't leave a non-closed polygon.
If you'd like, I can send you the shapefile with my suggested changes.

It may help you understand QGIS and also the BBSP.

send me your e-mail address.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #56 on: May 27, 2016, 06:34:55 AM »

How will those two connect?  You might want to specify something so somebody doesn't leave a non-closed polygon.
If you'd like, I can send you the shapefile with my suggested changes.

It may help you understand QGIS and also the BBSP.

send me your e-mail address.
I've sent you the shapefiles.

The process that I used was to make a copy V2 edges file for Columbia County. This way if I made a mistake, I could always go back to an original.

I then deleted all edges outside of Hudson, just to cut down the amount of data. Plus Hudson is so small I could zoom to the layer, and still be at a fairly large scale. I tried to do the same for Kennebec/Augusta but it seems like some of the boundaries of Augusta were being lost. There is probably a way to do it, but it wasn't obvious.

I then edited the file. Finally I created a shapefile that only had changes in it, which is what I  have sent to you.

I don't know if you saw this or not. But it will enable display of Google satellite and raster files in QGIS.

Open Google Earth or Bing as a Layer in QGIS (Youtube Video)

You can create a new project, open Google Earth as a layer and drag the shapefile on top of it.



I have equivocated on how to suggest the ponds be used. Logically I am treating them as fat lines (lines have no width, so "fat" is more like using a very thick crayon as opposed to a sharpened pencil). I'm not coloring-in the line.

The number of census blocks increased by somewhere around 30-40% between 2000 and 2010, most of them zero population. I'm not sure of the exact causes. One may be the availability of high quality satellite images available to the census bureau and general public, along with line detection software that could detect roads in images. So there appears to be an effort to reduce the number of blocks.

For 2010, there were 165 census blocks in Hudson. The census bureau proposes to reduce that to 121, mainly by eliminating driveways and lanes in the cemetery as block boundaries. It appears that their algorithm takes into account whether a street has a name or not.

I can eliminate seven by deletion of non-existent features that are used as block boundaries. This gets us to 114.

+3 for missing alleys.
+2 for division of Hudson Terrace
+8 for division of north side blocks.

For a new total of 128 (130 if ponds are kept as blocks)



The internet is a wondrous thing. Google has indexed the census block file maps (PDF with readable text). That is how I found Nellman Pond. By the way sometimes map companies will put errors in their maps. The underlying data (where a street is, etc.) is not copyrightable, but the presentation is. If the pond is actually Wellman, and someone copies "Nellman" you have evidence that they copied the presentation.

If you select the edge of Nellman pond, you will see that the CBBFLG = 9 which means it is not eligible for use as a block boundary, or at least it is not intended to be used as one by the Census Bureau. If you compare the 2020 prototype blocks to those used in 2010, you can see that Nellman Pond is not slated as being a block boundary.

Directory of Prototype block files. Maine is state 23, Kennebec is county 11. The zip file is for the entire state, but I haven't found a shortcut to get county specific files.

Other changes in Kennebec include eliminate some blocks around the airport and interstate interchanges.

In the V2 files, the house boundary looks OK - District 80 is Windsor, and then comes into Augusta from the northeast. District 85 includes the Augusta portion  of the pond. I don't know how Maine communicated their district boundaries to the census bureau - it might not be by the statute text. Someone might have corrected it as part of transmission.

A curiosity is that the block numbers are quite similar across the Windsor-Augusta border.



After you have dragged the shapefile into work area, you will want to set a project. Census data is in Lat/Long and thus is stretched in the east-west direct which causes me to have nausea.

In the lower right corner, you will see an icon that looks like a globe with a couple of loops (I'm not sure what it actually looks like, but click it anyway.  It probably says EPSG:4269 next to it.

When you get a menu with a large number of projections, check mark the Enable on Fly at top left.

In the second box, locate

Projected Coordinate Systems
    Azimuthal Equidistant
        World Azimuthal Equidistant

In the third box cut (Ctrl-C) the text that begins "+projd".

Click on Cancel (we were just after that text string)

On the menu bar, select Settings > Custom CRS, and click on the Green + sign.

Paste (Ctrl-V) the text into Parameters. Edit it to say:

... +lat_0=42.25 +lon_0=-73.75 ...

Enter a name (eg Hudson)

Click on OK.

Go back to the CRS Projection Properties.

Click on "Enable on the Fly"

Enter "USER" in the Filter Box, and find the projection you just defined. It should show up as selected CRS at the bottom. Click Apply and OK.

You can also bring in the Google Satellite view as a raster layer. You can change the display order by dragging the layer order.

If you right click on the layer name, select Properties and Style.

Select Single Symbol, and you can select the color, and the line thickness. By default.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #57 on: May 27, 2016, 12:56:03 PM »

I've started a new topic called "Hudson QGIS" which is focused more on use of QGIS.
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Kevinstat
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« Reply #58 on: May 27, 2016, 09:13:02 PM »

I've started a new topic called "Hudson QGIS" which is focused more on use of QGIS.
I saw that and completed the tasks before I checked to see if this thread had any new posts (so before I saw your last two posts here).
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Kevinstat
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« Reply #59 on: May 27, 2016, 09:37:18 PM »
« Edited: May 28, 2016, 09:24:00 AM by Kevinstat »

Directory of Prototype block files. Maine is state 23, Kennebec is county 11. The zip file is for the entire state, but I haven't found a shortcut to get county specific files.

1) Go to http://www.census.gov/rdo/ .
2) Under "Recent News", click on "2020 Census Program Phases"
You probably have been to this page, which has a lot of information about the BBSP and guides for using both their GUPS (the one you said was built over QGIS) and your own software.  But anyway, ...
3) Under "Phase 1 - Block Boundary Suggestion Project", under "Geographic Files", click on "Partnership Files" (note the "(use 2016 Partnership Files)" right after that hyperlink).
4) Select your preferred vintage (2015/V1 or 2016/V2 (I did what they said to and downloaded the the 2015 shapefiles for Maine, but only the statewide ones and those for Kennebec and Aroostook because of how big it all was; I had already downloaded the prototype block shapefiles for every Maine county).
5) Select your desired state and click "GO".
6) You can batch download up to five counties' shapefiles at a time.  For each batch download of 1-5 counties there will be a folder for both Maine and each county in that batch download.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #60 on: May 28, 2016, 03:18:44 AM »

Directory of Prototype block files. Maine is state 23, Kennebec is county 11. The zip file is for the entire state, but I haven't found a shortcut to get county specific files.

1) Go to http://www.census.gov/rdo/ .
2) Under "Recent News", click on "2020 Census Program Phases"
You probably have been to this page, which has a lot of information about the BBSP and guides for using both their GUPS (the one you said was built over QGIS) and your own software.  But anyway, ...
3) Under "Phase 1 - Block Boundary Suggestion Project", under "Geographic Files", click on "Partnership Files" (note the "(use 2016 Partnership Files)" right after that hyperlink).
4) Select your preferred vintage (2015/V1 or 2016/V2 (I did what they said to and downloaded the the 2015 shapefiles for Maine, but only the statewide ones and those for Kennebec and Aroostook because of how big it all was; I had already downloaded the prototype block shapefiles for every Maine county).
5) Select your desired state and click "GO".
6) You can batch download up to five counties' shapefiles at a time.  For each batch download of 1-5 counties there will be a folder for both Maine and each county in that batch download.

The Prototype file is different than the Partnership files.
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Kevinstat
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« Reply #61 on: May 28, 2016, 09:39:31 AM »

Directory of Prototype block files. Maine is state 23, Kennebec is county 11. The zip file is for the entire state, but I haven't found a shortcut to get county specific files.

1) Go to http://www.census.gov/rdo/ .
2) Under "Recent News", click on "2020 Census Program Phases"
You probably have been to this page, which has a lot of information about the BBSP and guides for using both their GUPS (the one you said was built over QGIS) and your own software.  But anyway, ...
3) Under "Phase 1 - Block Boundary Suggestion Project", under "Geographic Files", click on "Partnership Files" (note the "(use 2016 Partnership Files)" right after that hyperlink).
4) Select your preferred vintage (2015/V1 or 2016/V2 (I did what they said to and downloaded the the 2015 shapefiles for Maine, but only the statewide ones and those for Kennebec and Aroostook because of how big it all was; I had already downloaded the prototype block shapefiles for every Maine county).
5) Select your desired state and click "GO".
6) You can batch download up to five counties' shapefiles at a time.  For each batch download of 1-5 counties there will be a folder for both Maine and each county in that batch download.

The Prototype file is different than the Partnership files.
Oh, okay.  Is there data that the county specific prototype files (if they exist) might have that the state ones do not?  (That is the case for the partnership files)  Or is it just a matter of having to download more than you might need?  The prototype files, which I actually downloaded before I downloaded any partnership files, just seem to show block lines with no different lines for streets, city limits, etc. (there's only one shapefile (.shp) per county, just with four other "supporting files" for each .shp file; more supporting files resulted when I uploaded the shapefiles in ArcGIS explorer which I was using at the time, but there was still just one .shp file per county).

(I got rid of the false quote from a post of yours on May 24 that caused misattribution of quotes in our last couple posts - that was my bad).
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jimrtex
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« Reply #62 on: May 28, 2016, 11:33:02 AM »

Directory of Prototype block files. Maine is state 23, Kennebec is county 11. The zip file is for the entire state, but I haven't found a shortcut to get county specific files.

1) Go to http://www.census.gov/rdo/ .
2) Under "Recent News", click on "2020 Census Program Phases"
You probably have been to this page, which has a lot of information about the BBSP and guides for using both their GUPS (the one you said was built over QGIS) and your own software.  But anyway, ...
3) Under "Phase 1 - Block Boundary Suggestion Project", under "Geographic Files", click on "Partnership Files" (note the "(use 2016 Partnership Files)" right after that hyperlink).
4) Select your preferred vintage (2015/V1 or 2016/V2 (I did what they said to and downloaded the the 2015 shapefiles for Maine, but only the statewide ones and those for Kennebec and Aroostook because of how big it all was; I had already downloaded the prototype block shapefiles for every Maine county).
5) Select your desired state and click "GO".
6) You can batch download up to five counties' shapefiles at a time.  For each batch download of 1-5 counties there will be a folder for both Maine and each county in that batch download.

The Prototype file is different than the Partnership files.
Oh, okay.  Is there data that the county specific prototype files (if they exist) might have that the state ones do not?  (That is the case for the partnership files)  Or is it just a matter of having to download more than you might need?  The prototype files, which I actually downloaded before I downloaded any partnership files, just seem to show block lines with no different lines for streets, city limits, etc. (there's only one shapefile (.shp) per county, just with four other "supporting files" for each .shp file; more supporting files resulted when I uploaded the shapefiles in ArcGIS explorer which I was using at the time, but there was still just one .shp file per county).

(I got rid of the false quote from a post of yours on May 24 that caused misattribution of quotes in our last couple posts - that was my bad).
I think that the prototype files may be intended for communication with the redistricting liaison, and thus cover all the counties of a state.

The partnership file has two census block files:

PVS_15_V2_tabblock2010_ssccc
PVS_15_V2_tabblock_ssccc

The first is the census block file from 2010. Since our target is the block boundaries for 2020, it is useful to know what was used in 2010.

In Hudson, I don't see any difference between the two partnership file. In places that have had new streets added, there might be new blocks, but I don't know for sure.

The prototype file is

bbsp_2015_block_ssccc

It reflects what the blocks would be based on current census planning. In effect it is saying, if you don't offer any suggestions, this is what we are going to do.

In Hudson, they have added a boundary around the prison to the edges file, which they intend to use as a block boundary. So that shows up as a new block. Unnamed streets appear to be downgraded, so that eliminates blocks, etc.

Incidentally, the "companion files" are also known as sidecar files. When you drag the .shp file into the map area (this movement is communicated by Windows between Windows Explorer and QGIS) QGIS knows to go get the sidecar files.

The .shp shapefile contains the actual coordinates of the points, edges, faces, etc.
The .dbf Dbase file contains the attributes of the edges (eg streetnames, etc.). You can open a dbf file, read-only in Excel.
The .prj file has the projection used for the points in the shapefile. It is a text file. The .prj file for all census files is the same, but QGIS doesn't know that a particular file is a "census file".
The .cpg file has the character set used for text. ASCII was historically used for computerized text. It is limited to the 26 upper case and lower case English letters. UTF-8 permits encoding of letters used in other languages. In the case of the US Census, this would be particularly to handle Spanish for Puerto Rico.
The .shx file is an index file for the shapefile. Because lines can have differing numbers of vertices, the .shp file has variable length records. This is efficient for storage, but inefficient for random access. The .shx file helps provide quicker access to the shapefile.


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