Speaker
Abstract
Do you ever work with block-level data from the US Census Bureau and wish the block boundaries were more meaningful? Do you care about data quality and the accuracy of decennial census counts in your community? Would you like to see your local geography better represented in the 2030 census block inventory?
This webinar will discuss an ongoing opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed block boundaries for the 2030 decennial census. Administered by the Census Bureau, this program is known as the Block Boundary Suggestion Project or BBSP, and it offers county and local governments within Illinois and throughout the nation a chance to review prototype 2030 census block boundaries and add recommendations about which boundaries to keep and which to delete.
By participating in the BBSP, governments will be able to:
- Break up oddly shaped blocks and blocks with large housing unit counts
- Merge small or extraneous blocks
- Suggest blocks that best honor local geography like landmarks and institutions
The end result will be cleaner block boundaries and likely better census data quality for the 2030 decade for your community.
In this webinar, I will go over the basics of census blocks and the purpose of the Block Boundary Suggestion Project. I will then review and demo the Census Bureau’s Geographic Update Partnership Software (GUPS), the customized web-based GIS application that BBSP participants will use.
I will show how to work in GUPS to review prototype 2030 block boundaries, provide feedback on which boundaries to keep and which to delete, and how to submit your block boundary suggestions to the Census Bureau. This webinar is targeted at public sector GIS workers (county and local), who I strongly encourage to attend and participate in BBSP, but everyone who is interested in learning more about GIS and the decennial census is welcome!