rick@hanauma (Richard Ottolini) (03/20/90)
Last summer there was a comp.graphics discussion of geographical databases. One bottleneck was datasets. I read in the San Jose Mercury News that the Census Bureau has a hierarchical geographical database of 106M households in the US and will be selling parts of it. It is in something called the TIGER format. (The Bureau cant release the raw it is collecting from each household for many decades for reasons of privacy. It aggregates the results over several thousand households in the report it releases at the end of the year.)
artm@phred.UUCP (Curmudgeon) (03/21/90)
In article <725@med.Stanford.EDU> rick@hanauma (Richard Ottolini) writes: > >I read in the San Jose Mercury News that the Census Bureau has a hierarchical >geographical database of 106M households in the US and will be selling >parts of it. It is in something called the TIGER format. > >(The Bureau cant release the raw it is collecting from each household for >many decades for reasons of privacy. The Census Bureau has been building a map database for several years that's detailed beyond street addresses down to apartment numbers. This contains no data on people--its purpose is to determine where to mail the questionnaires and send the census takers. The database was compiled using some sort of system called GUS running on Tektronix workstations. A friend of mine worked there for a while and never managed to figure out what the underlying OS was. One would of course suspect it to be some kind of Unix, but remember this is a system that was built to some government spec written nearly ten years ago ;-) Needless to say, whatever format it is, a map database this detailed for the entire US has to be really **huge**. One byproduct of this effort is that they've compiled some pretty fascinating lists of unusual street and place names. My friend gave me one for the Pacific Northwest. One of these days I'll have to submit it to rec.humor.funny. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Any opinions herein expressed are strictly my own and have nothing to do with my employers or associates. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Art Marriott Physio-Control (backbone)!dataio!pilchuck!seahcx!phred!artm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~