Abstract
Realigning Historical Census Tract and County Boundaries
Track: Census and Statistical
Author
The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS), housed at the University of Minnesota's Minnesota Population Center (MPC), is a National Science Foundation-funded project to digitize and disseminate historical United States census data. We have created shapefiles that depict historic census tracts and county boundaries for the entire country for all censuses completed from 1790 to 2000. Due to improved mapping technology, the boundaries for these censuses tend to be out of alignment with each other. We are realigning these boundaries to the most accurate 2010 Census to benefit researchers that analyze historical spatio-temporal population trends and patterns. The MPC started the conflation processing in July 2008, and the project is scheduled to finish in 2011. Esri's ArcGIS software suite combined with the ArcMap MapMerger extension have provided the tools for aligning the historic census boundaries to the most recently updated census features.
David Van Riper
Minnesota Population Center
1053 Idaho Ave W
St Paul, Minnesota 55117
United States
Phone: 651-917-0880
E-mail: dvanriper@gmail.com
Stanley Dallal
ESEA
280 2nd Street
Suite 270
Los Altos, California 94022
United States
Phone: 650-941-4175
E-mail: dallal@esea.com