High resolution multi-year compatible dasymetric models of US demographics with application to spatial distribution of racial diversity.
Since 2013 I was working on the project aimed at producing high resolution U.S.-wide grids of population (total and for each race/ethnicity groups separately) and of racial diversity/dominant race classification for 1990, 2000, 2010. These grids have been calculated from census blocks using dasymetric modelling technique. The main goal of this project was to provide easy and open access to U.S.-wide population/racial diversity data. This project has been developed in the Space Informatics Lab (sil.uc.edu) at the University of Cincinnati by dr Tomasz Stepinski, dr Anna Dmowska and dr Pawel Netzel. The project is now completed.
High resolution grids are available for download using SocScape - GeoWeb application or SocScape data website, which provide data for counties and MSA.
More information about the data used by SocScape is available here. Methodology to obtain demographic grids is described in Dmowska, Stepinski (2017) and Dmowska et al (2017).
For more information please see also the SocScape user guide and SocScape tutorial: "Working with demographic grids in QGIS."
Computation procedure
Dasymetric modeling was perfomed using the set of R scripts. This set of scripts use following R libraries: DBI, RSQLite, rgdal, rgrass7. Dasymetric calculation was performed using R, preprocessing of ancillary data was performed using GRASS GIS 7.0. The complete description of performing dasymetric modeling for the entire U.S using R is presented in paper "Dasymetric modelling of population distribution – large data approach." published in Quaestiones Geographicae 38(1) by A.Dmowska.
Download R scripts
Download paper "Dasymetric modelling of population distribution – large data approach." by A.Dmowska
Spatio-temporal changes in population distribution and racial diversity over the entire United States.
This project (in progress) aim at developing methods for visualizing and analyzing spatio-temporal dynamics of racial diversity in the United States based on high resolution grids. We give example of using maps in racial diversity studies. We also introduce new methods for analysing changes in racial diversity, for example by using indices developed in the field of landscape ecology. The results are published in Dmowska, Stepinski (2016), Dmowska, Stepinski (2017a), Dmowska et al (2017)
As a results of this project we also developed racial diversity change dataset, which show temporal change in racial diversity as a single map.