Powering New Orleans Economic BenchmarksAlicia BrownApril 13, 2016hacking the Census API via FME

The Team

Data AnalystSocrata

Data AnalystSocrata

Program ManagerSocrata

Alicia Brown Daniella Kuttner Chris Rieth

New Orleans Mission● Develop & Track performance goals● Benchmark Progress against comparable

cities● Validate findings using federal and 3rd party

data● Use FME to automate indicator data retrieval

Census API● Census publishes American Community Survey

yearly● API provides data from 2011 - 2014● Example for Travel Time to work:

http://api.census.gov/data/2014/acs1?get=NAME,B08303_001E,B08303_002E,B08303_003E,B08303_004E&for=place:55000&in=state:22&key=YOUR_API_KEY

Let’s look at the Workflow

Python Caller Transformer

Attribute Renamer

Calculate & Aggregate

Socrata Writer → data.nola.gov

Voila…. https://data.nola.gov/d/qwed-53qf

Parameters to handle future years

Lessons Learned● There is a limit of 50 variables for single call● Need to handle missing data for some

variables & geographies● The type of ACS year (1,3,5) is dependent on

the population size of a geographical area so that sample is representative of it

● Categorical measurements may change over years

Thanks to Melissa with the City of New Orleans for giving us this amazing task!

Resources● ResultsNOLA● github.com/socrata/connectors/cen

sus● ACS 1 YR API documentation● census.gov/developers

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