Hi, all
If you are frustrated by getting the
ACS 5-year block group level data via Census Bureau ftpsite or DataFerrett,
ACS Alchemist may be a good alternative.
I just tested ACS Achemist that was
developed by Azavea & Temple University and I think it's easy to use.
But keep in mind that only ACS 2005-2009 and ACS 2006-2010 data are
available in the ACS Alchemist. If you are looking for 1-year or
3-year data, you still need Census Bureau data access tools including American
Fact finder and DataFerrett.
ACS Achemist is an open source tool
that enables the extraction of ACS 2005-2009 and ACS 2006-2010 data on
different level of geographic aggregation, i.e., counties, county sub-division,
tracts, blockgroups, etc. . The user interface is very straightforward
and is a simple step-by-step process. The thing I like most is that
output is saved as the shapefile and you can process your data in the GIS.
The think I like least is that uses will have to create a variable
file to define which data they want to get. The sample of a variable
file can be find in the readme document which is included in the software
installation package, but I attached one here for your convenience.
Here is the link to the ACS Alchemist
home page:
http://www.azavea.com/news/archive/2012/7/31/azavea-and-temple-universitys-center-for-security-and-crime-science-announce-the-release-of-acs-alchemist-an-open-source-software-tool-to-access-census-data/
Here is the link to download the software
package:
https://github.com/azavea/acs-alchemist/downloads
Enjoy!
Liang Long
Cambridge Systematics, Inc.
4800 Hampden Lane
Suite 800
Bethesda, MD 20814
tel 301 347 9141
fax 301 347 0101
FHWA 202-366-6971
e-mail llong@camsys.com
www.camsys.com