Has anyone figured out how to Map US Census FIPS codes

tgb417

I'm looking at some NYC Times COVID-19 data that provides US Census FIPS codes.

https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data

I'd like to Map this data using DSS.

It has a FIPS code. No GeoPoints of Lat Lon.

SO it looks like I have to do some Geo Location work here.

It looks like the Census might have an API to geocode the FIPS codes.

I see this discussion. https://www.dataiku.com/product/plugins/us-census/

Has anyone worked this out.

Is there a Python or R library that would make this easy?

seanmcg23

Hi Tom,

I see that you posted this a while ago but, I just became aware of it. I also used the NYTimes git data to create a few dashboards on the number of deaths and infections from COVID-19 as well as the infection and death rates per 100,000 population. I just recently added a few dashboards using the "2019_Gaz_counties_national.txt" file from Gazetteer Files to provide the lat/long that I used to create geopoints.

The link between the NYTimes data and the gazetteer file is the fips code but, it's not readily apparent. The fips code is buried in gazetteer file as the first five digits of the "GEOID" column. The first two digits are the state, the next three are the county and the last six dig deeper into cities, hamlets, and smaller entities. Because the the filled map only requires any point within the county, I selected the last lat/lon associated with the fips code and used that to create the insights for the dashboard. I attached a screenshot of the California insights below.

The data is updated from the NYTimes git daily.

If you're still working on this and have questions, let me know, happy to help.

--Sean

nicog

Hi Tom,

The US Census plugin won't be useful in your context since it enriches data with US Census data not performing reverse geocoding. I believe what you are looking for is here in in the gazetteer files, spot the US Counties : https://www.census.gov/geographies/reference-files/time-series/geo/gazetteer-files.html

Best

Nicolas.

tgb417

Thanks for the suggestion.

In looking at this several times, I've not found a connection between the fips, codes in the NY Time data and the census data that tells something about the location of the areas.

Maybe I don't really know what a fips code is. (in the case of the NY times data this looks like it is somehow connected to a county.

tgb417

@seanmcg23

Thanks so much for this insight. The Census has some really interesting data. However, they DO NOT make it easy for one to figure out how to gather and use this data.

Thanks for part of the rosetta stone.

--Tom

tgb417

@seanmcg23

Here is what I've been able to do with this data.

“Data from The New York Times, based on reports from state and local health agencies.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html.

nicog

Nice!

tgb417

After a bit of work. I've been able to get this animation pulled together on New Cases of COVID-19 by the week of the year. This is at the US county level of data. (NYC's 5 counties are not part of this visualization.)

It's clear that this thing is not over.

The next step would be to get county population and present the numbers as cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

--Tom

“Data from The New York Times, based on reports from state and local health agencies.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html.