In addition to datasets based on mercurial census tracts and census blocks, the U.S. Census Bureau will soon begin publishing datasets in a more reliable gridded format, an agency geographer said during an online event Thursday. Joshua Coutts, a geographer with the bureau’s geography division, told attendees of a National States Geographic Information Council webinar that in addition to the usual formats of data the agency publishes, it’s planning to publish gridded datasets — “geographic units of a regular pattern, repeated shapes, without gaps or overlaps that cover the entire nation.” He said the addition is intended to supply the public with datasets that — unlike oddly-shaped census tracts that are adjusted every 10 years based on new roads, rivers or other geographic changes — are of “uniform area, consistent, unchanging.”
