Help (2)
If you want to get deep into using our new mapping platform we recommend you browse our tutorial here or for a quicker start watch our intro video here.
To find quick tips on how to do the following just select from the list below.
1. Getting around- How to navigate in our mapping tool
2. Find quick stats/data for a certain area
3. Create a map with local data
6. Change the layers that are shown on the map (add streets, parcels, banks etc)
7. How to examine OUSD attendance patterns
8. Make changes to your map- get creative!
9. Add your own data to this system
11. Request new data for this system- what are we missing?
1. Getting around- How to navigate in our mapping tool
Moving windows:
InfoAlamedaCounty's mapping system operates more like a desktop application than most websites- you can drag windows around and resize them like on your computer. If something is in the way or too far out of the way just click and drag on the grey area anywhere in the window to move it.
Opening Tools:
If a tool you used has closed, you can reopen it simply by clicking on the icon on the right of any small grey box. To close a tool temporarily just click on the small _ button on the top right corner. To get rid of a tool window hit the X button- you can reactivate them from the main tools menu bar up top.
Zooming in:
If you have a wheel mouse you can use the wheel to zoom in and out like in Google maps.
If you don't you can use the zoom slider on the left side of the map window. The zoom in/out buttons on the slider make the map zoom in closer or out further.
If you select one of the lower zoom in/out buttons below the hand panning tool your mouse will now perform a zoom function if you click and drag- this is great if you want to zoom in on a certain area of the map quickly- be sure to reselect the hand/pan tool when you're done or you'll keep zooming rather than sliding around after this!
Moving Around in the map:
If you need to move the map around you can left click anywhere and slide the map across the screen anyway you need.
You can also use the arrows on the world symbol to pan the map left/right/up/down.
Recenter the map:
To go back to the overall County view click on the GLOBE symbol above the zoom slider. You can also CLEAR THE MAP using the button on the tool ribbon up top.
Advanced zooming:
For two-handers, if you hold down the Shift key and left click and drag you will be selecting an area to quickly zoom into.
2. Find quick stats/data for a certain area
This is the tool you want if you're just looking for quick stats on a specific city or census tract (more region types coming soon).
a. Clicking this tool brings up the Identify window, pick the boundary type you want data for and then click on the area you're interested in on the map- the relevant boundaries will be drawn for you to select from.
b. The tool window will update with the stats on your chosen area- a select set of variables are included that are the more commonly requested data.
c. Click on the vertical sector tabs to see other data for this region- there may be different tabs available depending on the area type you selected.
d. If you wish to make a map or chart of a certain data point just click on that row and hit the MAP or CHART buttons.
3. Create a map with local data
You can begin mapping data when the system first loads or by clicking on the EXPLORE the DATA button on the ribbon.
a. Select the first option: Create a Map
b. Select the Category that fits your needs
c. Select from the SubCategories on the next screen
d. To pick a particular indicator or variable select the folder that describes your needs best and then click on the indicator in the list that appears.
e. The window on the right now shows you the options for this data: some data is available at many different levels- from cities (called Census Designated Places) to Zip Codes to Census Tracts. Pick which suits and if multiple years are available pick the year you want.
f. To map it now hit the DISPLAY DATA button in blue.
g. You're off and running! Explore, create, analyze and don't forget to tell us how this platform is useful to you- we need to know who gets what from this system so we can keep it alive!
4. Make a chart from our data
You can begin charting data when the system first loads or by clicking on the EXPLORE the DATA button on the ribbon. You can also create a chart from the Thematic Legend at any time.
a. Select the third option: Create a Chart
b. Select the Category that fits your needs
c. Select from the SubCategories on the next screen
d. To pick a particular indicator or variable select the folder that describes your needs best and then click on the indicator in the list that appears.
e. The window on the right now shows you the options for this data: some data is available at many different levels- from cities (called Census Designated Places) to Zip Codes to Census Tracts. Pick which suits and if multiple years are available pick the year you want.
f. Create your chart by hitting the DISPLAY DATA button in blue.
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If you need to get high quality outputs from this site use the PRINT icon on the top right of your Thematic Legend. - All the text is editable in the print window- create your own title and map description by selecting the text and typing over it.
- The map view for your print is dynamic- you can use the zoom and pan tools as normal to get the perfect fit for your map.
- When you're done preparing your output select the best method:
i. Print Map will give you a PDF document to save to your computer of the map, title and legend.
ii. Export Just Map will give you a PNG image file of JUST your map
iii. Export Just Legend will give you a PNG file to save of just your legend- this is perfect if you want to insert the map and legend in a Word document or report- the map is larger on the page this way, you can just insert the legend below the map instead of squashing them all across a page!
6. Change the layers that are shown on the map
We have a huge amount of local data built into this platform. To add new content to the map you can either make a thematic map or you can simply turn on our boundary or feature layers.
Click on or just hover your mouse cursor over the MAP LAYERS button on the top right of the map:
- If you want to see where liquor stores, grocery stores, banks, libraries etc just click on the arrow next to BUILT ENVIRONMENT and then click the layers you want to see. The map will update automatically. (You may have to zoom in more for these to turn on- they won't show up at the whole county view- overload!)
- To see various political or administrative boundaries turn on the group for POLITICAL BOUNDARIES and then select the boundaries of interest to you.
- To see local initiatives from the public sector and philanthropic select the INITIATIVES layer, turn it on and select the initiative you are interested in- from redevelopment areas to violence prevention projects to promise neighborhoods.
- To turn on city boundaries, tracts, zip codes, voting precincts and more turn on the BOUNDARIES and PLACES group.
To make more advanced changes to these map features click on the LEGENDS & CHARTS button on the tool ribbon and select MAP LAYERS- from here you can change the transparency of a layer and turn it on/off also.
7. How to examine OUSD attendance patterns
For school district planning and for parents we've developed a tool that allows you to see where students reside from every public school in Oakland (more districts coming soon!).
To begin with select the school you're interested in from the drop down list and a map will appear showing the census tracts shaded light to dark indicating the number of school students who live in each tract from the school you selected. You can show this as a solid fill or just using the outline of each tract. The school chosen will show as a black dot on the map- clicking on this will popup the school name.
To select a new school to map just click on the Choose a Different School button or the list symbol up top and select again. The map will automatically update.
If you'd rather see the attendance data on a graph, just hit the pie chart button to chart the count of students per tract. Hover over a bar on the graph to see the tract name and the student count- click on the tract to see it on the map.
8. Make changes to your map- get creative!
Once you've created your map you may want to change the look and feel to suit the data and your intended use. There are some easy ways to improve and tailor your map that you activate by clicking the CHANGE MAP button in the Thematic Legend window below:
- You can change the number of categories or ranges the map shows- for less variation use a lower number, for more variation go high.
- If your map looks very even- you have most areas with the same color - you can change the classification method from the default. Experiment with this, our health data in particular works best when used with the QUANTILE method.
For example many health related data look like this when they load- not very helpful:
If you alter the Classification method from the default of EQUAL INTERVAL to QUANTILE and hit APPLY CHANGES:
The map is much more useful now and shows better variation:
- If you hate the default colors you can change them by clicking the color swatch.
- You can also show more of the information (streets, city names) behind the thematic map by changing the transparency- just drag the slider to see this change in real time.
- Once you are happy with your changes hit the APPLY button and you'll jump back to the main map and legend windows.
- If your chosen data are provided in multiple years you can select a new year (or range of years) to view and map- just click on the drop down arrow, change the years and hit the GET NEW DATA button- the change will update immediately on the map.
Backgrounds
If you want to see aerial photography as your backdrop or a topographic map you can select them from the buttons on the top right of the map window. To get a very clean background try our new Canvas option courtesy of ESRI- great for printing clean maps from our system!
9. Add your own data to this system
With our initial release we've built in a tool that lets you upload an excel or CSV file of your data (with addresses of course) and map those points with our preloaded data. We're working on the ability to let you save your work and your maps to a user account so you can more easily share them and reuse them over time.
10. Show a travel time map
[In the CUSTOM TOOLS dropdown] This tool will draw a set of boundaries around an area that represents how far you can travel by car in a set period of time. The default will let you plot out three concentric areas with different time intervals- 1m, 3m and 5m by default.
To change this default just use the up/down buttons, to create the network map click on the green selection dot button and then click at the map where you want the origin to be and hit the SHOW SERVICE AREA button.
The red shaded area represents your first time interval (1m), the orange represents the middle range and the yellow region shows how far you can travel from the chosen point in the last time period selected (we think this model is very optimistic and will be improving this in time!).
11. Request new data for this system- what are we missing?
We've spent years begging, requesting, buying and scraping the data we're now making available to the world for free in this system and for download, but we know we don't have everything to meet the needs of everyone. There are three options if you want/need more data than we have here.
a. You can use the POST COMMENT button to tell us what we're missing and why you would like it in InfoAlameda.
b. You can search the web and hopefully find it and use it offline or elsewhere, or geocode it in InfoAlameda. Or;
You can try our Geocommons connector to search through thousands of user loaded datasets, many which have great content for Oakland and Alameda County. You'll find this search tool on the bottom of our CUSTOM TOOLS menu on the ribbon bar.
Maybe you're new here, maybe you're just wondering what sorts of information, visualizations and data are contained in InfoAlamedaCounty... Either way this is a quick reference to the things you can do with this platform, the data available and how you can use what we have in your work/community and life.
Our platform consists of three main resources:
- Professionally prepared maps and reports on specific topics and issues of relevance to our work - you can read these, download them, use them as references or whatever you can imagine..
- Interactive map room: our flagship tool for democratizing data. In our map room you can discover a huge variety of public data that we have painstakingly cleaned, prepared and published in an easy to use system so you can make your own custom maps, create dynamic charts or graphs of the data and print or save your work for later. We will have a set of video tutorials available soon to help get you started with this toolkit!
- Download clean, reliable, non-confidential data for use in your own work/reports/analysis/mapping. Our data warehouse will be turned on soon after launching our main map room tools. This will allow any nonprofit, community group, government agency or advocacy organization to gain access to very powerful data that can be used for data driven decision making, grant applications, university project analyses or anything you can come up with. We believe that information is power, and data is the rawest, most flexible form of information. With our download system you will have access to many datasets previously unavailable to the general public.
Our map room and downloads (were legally allowed) will contain data on the following issues and phenomena:
- Population demographics
- Health issues: disease rates, mortality rates, births, vaccination and STD occurence as well as primary care usage
- Crime and Safety: reported crimes at an address level along with grouped crime data to show changes across the city
- Reentry Populations: data on the populations of probaitoners and parolees
- Foreclosures: a range of information on the foreclosure activity throughout the county
- Housing: data ranging from housing characteristics to mortgage origination and property assessments
- Education: primarily for the City of Oakland, these data will cover acedemic performance, disciplinary actions, attendance and more
- Community Initiatives: many different organizations are investing heavily in our communities- we will show the various communities being targeted for this work to help coordinate efforts across agencies
Funded by:
