Monday, November 24th, 2008
Indicator Filtering Added to Beta.DataPlace.org
The development team at KnowledgePlex announces a new and powerful data filtering tool now available at beta.dataplace.org. Users can filter across all locations in the U.S. using any of the 2,300+ indicators on DataPlace.
This new feature can help you better analyze data by narrowing down large lists of locations using very specific criteria. Looking for loan amounts in a specific range? The example below shows how an original list of 791 cities in California can be reduced to 531. Click on the histogram to see the matching list of cities. You can also combine multiple filters and indicators to narrow your results even more.
Visit DataPlace to build your own data filter.
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Thursday, October 9th, 2008
Following up with our last issue on hot button topics affecting affordable housing, it’s finally time to let the data do the talking. As we watch the debates and the rancor, we thought it’d be fun to see what the data says about each candidate and his/her region represented. The reason why we are labeling this fun, as opposed to a serious exposition, is that comparing data between candidates’ regions is fraught with peril from any sort of scientific perspective. read special report
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Monday, September 15th, 2008
The DataPlace Team is excited to announce a new set of tools, called DataPlace Widgets, that make it easier than ever to share maps, charts, and ranked lists on your blog or Web site using DataPlace indicators. Available free to all registered users at beta.dataplace.org, widgets are simple to build and easy to customize. Just create the DataPlace view you wish to share, click the “Publish as Widget” button, adjust the widget to look the way you want, and then paste the resulting html code into your blog or Web site. And you’re done. The resulting widgets look and work great: map widgets, for example, are fast and can be panned and zoomed. Map bloggers, rejoice.
What do they look like? Below is an example of a chart widget. Notice that you can hover over the chart lines to see the values for each year.
Below is a sample map widget, centered on Galveston, Texas, and showing the same indicator as above. Notice that you can change the map view by clicking and panning the map, zooming in or out with “+/-” zoom buttons, and turning on and off the map legend by clicking on the Legend tab.
Widgets are available for maps, charts, rankings, and preview windows; wherever you see a “Publish as Widget” button near the upper-right corner of the page. Each widget view has different options and optimal sizing ranges. The chart widget, for example, gives you the option of displaying a chart, a table, or both. In each case the widget preview window will show you what the resulting widget will look like on your blog or Web site.
Give widgets a try and, as always, we would appreciate your feedback on how they work for you.
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About KnowledgePlex, Inc.
DataPlace.org and KnowledgePlex.org are owned and operated by KnowledgePlex, Inc. We are a not-for-profit organization that seeks to help transform disadvantaged communities and neighborhoods by creating and maintaining an innovative technology platform for information and data to serve a wide variety of sectors. Our goal is to provide a platform that allows the user to focus on developing data, information, and story, rather than IT and software. By providing information and technology that will empower communities and neighborhoods, KnowledgePlex, Inc. fosters accountability and impact-tracking at the community level. The best way to understand how DataPlace will benefit your organization is to see it in action. Call KnowledgePlex, Inc. at (866) 441-9249 to arrange a brief demonstration. To explore online visit http://www.kplex.org/
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Friday, September 12th, 2008
SPECIAL REPORT OFFERS
HURRICANE IKE DATA & COMMUNICATION RESOURCES
DatePlace and KnowledgePlex in Joint Effort To Facilitate Communication, Disseminate Information As Ike Heads for the Gulf Coast
As Hurricane Ike bears down on the Gulf Coast, DataPlace and KnowledgePlex are making our resources available via a Special Report (http://www.knowledgeplex.org/specialreport.html) to measure the potential impact for counties with hurricane warnings. Hurricane Ike was predicted to make landfall in Galveston, Texas, on Friday night. As of Friday morning, floodwaters began surging into Galveston Island, with forecasters warning of “certain death” for those who remain in their homes.
In all, six counties in Louisiana and 38 counties in Texas are at risk. The impact upon people and infrastructure is substantial.
For these combined counties, the impact is, according to 2005 estimates:
- 7,205,582 people at risk
- 2,866,150 housing units at risk
In 2004 alone, federal expenditures for housing-related assistance in the region totaled more than half billion dollars ($581,299,064 for grants and direct payments).
This is a highly diverse region, approximately one-third Hispanic, 50% non-Hispanic White, and 15% African American, 4% Asian.
Many of the people living in the likely impact zones are also among the more vulnerable populations in the region–measured by rates of child and elderly poverty, people without access to a car, and elderly who speak little or no English. Populations in Zip codes 77550 in Galveston, and 77640 in Port Arthur, for example, are especially vulnerable. Zip Code 77550 forms part of Galveston Island, a thin strip of land exposed to the Gulf, and likely to see a great deal of damage if storm surge predictions are on target. The last Census found more than 40% of the children in the zip area living in poverty, and nearly a quarter of households with no car available. Public schools in the area also report high poverty levels: 69.8% of students were eligible for free or reduced price lunches in 2006.
With the safety of Gulf Coast communities like these in mind, the Special Report on Hurricane Ike will be updated continuously. Sections include:
· Helpful Resources
· DataPlace Tools
· Articles
· KnowledgePlex Group Discussions
Using the mapping tools from DataPlace, readers will be able to chart the storm’s impact from a variety of perspectives. Readers can also communicate with each other through KnowledgePlex Groups to create community for sharing information. Group members can also upload their own data.
Readers can join the Hurricane Ike group, free of charge, by clicking here.
To view the Hurricane Ike Special Report, click here.
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About KnowledgePlex, Inc.
DataPlace.org and KnowledgePlex.org are owned and operated by KnowledgePlex, Inc. We are a not-for-profit organization that seeks to help transform disadvantaged communities and neighborhoods by creating and maintaining an innovative technology platform for information and data to serve a wide variety of sectors. Our goal is to provide a platform that allows the user to focus on developing data, information, and story, rather than IT and software. By providing information and technology that will empower communities and neighborhoods, KnowledgePlex, Inc. fosters accountability and impact-tracking at the community level. The best way to understand how DataPlace will benefit your organization is to see it in action. Call KnowledgePlex, Inc. at (866) 441-9249 to arrange a brief demonstration. To explore online visit http://www.kplex.org/
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Thursday, September 11th, 2008
The DataPlace Team has been working hard to bring you new ways to explore data about places, and is now proud to announce Neighborhood Metrics (http://neighborhoodmetrics.com). Neighborhood Metrics simplifies the task of finding how places rank across several measures. You select up to ten indicators, and the Metrics builder will generate a ranked list of places in the U.S. based on your indicator choices. You can then view the results on maps, charts, histograms, tables, and simple ranked lists. It’s easy to use, and powerful.
For example, if you are assessing risk of foreclosure in different neighborhoods in your county, you might want to look at more than one indicator at a time, perhaps high interest lending rates for both home purchase as well as for refinance. Instead of looking at the two indicators separately, Metrics allows you to select both indicators, and view the results on maps, charts, and more.
So, what is a “Metric”? Metrics are a type of index, but differ from a typical index in that Metrics can aggregate different years of indicators into a single indicator. For example, the Metric “Homeownership by Same Gender Couples” generates a single ranked list from loans made in 2004-2006. For now, this ability to lump together different years limits Metrics from automatically tracking change over time.
Behind the scenes, the metric builder creates a normalized value for each indicator based on a standard deviation between the lowest and highest value. The normalized value is multiplied by a weight that a user selects when he or she builds a metric. The weighted scores are then summed and divided by the total of all the weights. As you can see in the example below, the resulting scores range between 0 and 100; these are not percents, just scores between 0 to 100.
So, you want to rank places using multiple indicators? No problem. Give Neighborhood Metrics a try, and let us know what you think.
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Monday, September 8th, 2008
DataPlace™ Unveils New Partnership with the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy to Develop a New Web Site for New York City
SAN JOSE, CA, September 8, 2008 - DataPlace™ has teamed up with the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University to develop an enhanced and easy-to-use data Web site that will feature more than 1,000 data indicators about New York City’s neighborhoods. This effort updates and significantly improves on the Furman Center’s previous site—the New York City Housing and Neighborhood Information System (NYCHANIS). DataPlace™ will provide its innovative geospatial platform to update NYCHANIS and will include many new features with an emphasis on making better use of mapping technology and making it easier for the user to manipulate data for custom use. The site is currently being beta tested, and will be released to the public in the fall.
“We are excited to work together on this project to bring DataPlace.com’s history and investment in simple and straightforward web analysis tools to build an invaluable resource for New York City in NYCHANIS,” said Troy Anderson, CEO for KnowledgePlex, Inc. This free site will include several new features:
- Side-by-Side Maps to compare two indicators at the same time, or see the same indicator change over time
- A powerful Ranked List generator making it a snap to find places of interest for any New York City place & indicator combination.
- Simplified Search capabilities - now it’s easier than ever to find relevant data
- Preview Tools to provide quick snapshot views of data and locations
- Visualization Tools that create unprecedented simplicity and clarity when comparing statistics from one New York City neighborhood to another.li>
DataPlace™ technology is built on open source standards to allow for partner licensing arrangements that leverage our extensive investment in the platform. This allows partners to focus on content and data, not technology.
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About KnowledgePlex, Inc.
DataPlace is owned and operated by KnowledgePlex, Inc. KnowledgePlex is a not-for-profit organization that seeks to help transform disadvantaged communities and neighborhoods by creating and maintaining an innovative technology platform for information and data to serve a wide variety of sectors. Our goal is to provide a platform that allows the user to focus on developing data, information, and story, rather than IT and software. By providing information and technology that will empower communities and neighborhoods, KnowledgePlex, Inc. fosters accountability and impact-tracking at the community level. The best way to understand how DataPlace will benefit your organization is to see it in action. Call KnowledgePlex, Inc. at (866) 441-9249 to arrange a brief demonstration. To explore online visit http://www.kplex.org/
About the Furman Center
The Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy is a joint center of the New York University School of Law and the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU. Since its founding in 1995, the Furman Center has become the leading academic research center in New York City devoted to the public policy aspects of land use, real estate, and housing development. The Furman Center is dedicated to providing objective academic and empirical research on the legal and public policy issues involving land use, real estate, housing and urban affairs in the United States, with a particular focus on New York City. More information on the Furman Center can be found at: http://furmancenter.nyu.edu
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Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
While this election season has focused primarily on the economy, the war in Iraq, and who is best qualified to lead, there has been relatively little mention of one issue that has great bearing on many of the other crucial topics that will come up for debate – affordable housing.
Invariably, when I tell people outside the field that I work in affordable housing, their response is either “Habitat for Humanity?” or “What affordable housing?!” I suppose it’s all right that people don’t know the intricacies of how the housing market is made to serve the needs of our communities and our neighbors. It is understandable that people may not always identify the many advocates and organizations working in their communities to get loans made and homes built for working families, rentals affordable, homeless housed, and blight torn down. However, we should all understand the effects of this work.
First, there’s the “where” factor.Where you live determines the caliber of public education that kids in your neighborhood receive. It impacts your family’s safety. Where you live relates directly to the quality of the air you breathe, the price of gas you will pay, and the language people will speak at restaurants, gas stations, and voting booths.
Then, there’s “how.” How much money you have saved is often determined by your home equity and the distance you travel to work. Don’t get me started on who, what, and why — you get my point. Your home, your neighborhood, your savings, and your pursuit of happiness all directly inform numerous issues that our leaders will need to address. Ironically, many of these issues are relegated to the back pages rather than the national spotlight.
Housing does benefit from the work done on such critical matters as health, education, transportation, jobs, and other “big ticket” election issues. However, housing can also help solve some of the challenges of these issues. Thus, if the benefits from housing extend to other areas, perhaps a little more focus is warranted. With the hypothesis, we at KnowledgePlex asked Lora Engdahl, our stalwart Week in Review editor, to work on a summary piece on affordable housing, with the goal of getting people up to speed on the topic before the election. We knew the task would be big but, now, after reading it, it seems even bigger. Not only is foreclosure and subprime lending just one part of the affordable housing issue, it might not even be the biggest challenge before us.
In November, you will have the chance to determine the focus of this country’s next leadership on affordable housing and its wide-reaching implications. In the KnowledgePlex Special Report, we hope to provide you with some questions – and answers – to ponder before making your voice heard.
Troy
CEO, KnowledgePlex, Inc.
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