This webinar was held on December 12, 2012 and provided an overview of free and low-cost tools for cleaning and preparing data and building useful and beautiful data visualizations.

1. Exploring Data Preparation and Visualization
Tools for Urban Forestry
340 N 12th St, Suite 402
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215.925.2600
info@azavea.com
www.azavea.com/opentreemap

2. About Us
Deborah Boyer
OpenTreeMap Project Manager
dboyer@azavea.com
215.701.7506
Jeremy Heffner
Product Manager
jheffner@azavea.com
215.701.7712

3. About Azavea
• Founded in 2000
• B Corporation
• 30+ people
• Based in Philadelphia
– Boston office
• Geospatial + web + mobile
– Software development
– Spatial analysis services
– User experience

4. Agenda
• The Ideal: Gathering Organized, Perfect Data
• The Reality: Cleaning and Preparing Your Data
• Adding Context
• Exploring, Preparing and Sharing Data Visualizations
• Questions

5. Gathering Data

6. An open source tree data management system
for collaborative, geography enabled urban tree inventory

7. Main Features
• Search and Explore Tree
Data
• View Ecosystem Benefits
• Add New Trees
• Edit and Update Trees
• Upload Tree Photos
• Track Stewardship Activities

9. Data Quality Checks
• Remove duplicate
trees during data
upload
• Tree watch list
• Drop down lists
• User groups
• Reputation points

10. Cleaning and Preparing Data

11. Data Cleaning: Your Questions
• At what point in the data maintenance
process do you find yourself cleaning data?
• Are there ways that you would like to
improve the workflow?

13. Cleaning & Preparing Data
• Making sense of data starts at the point of collection
– Define what you want to measure / track
• Clearly define schema and fields
– Have a shared meaning for values
– Data validation on entry
– Collect your data
– Examine results
• Are there common mistakes you could prevent?
• Are there different interpretations of fields?
– Close the feedback loop & iterate

14. Cleaning & Preparing Data
• Common data quality issues
– Combined fields
• Address: “340 N 12th St, Suite 402 , Philadelphia, PA 19107”
– Invalid entries
• ZIP code: 1234 (length check, is number)
• Age: 204 (reasonable range check, is number)
– Format variations
• State: PA vs. Pennsylvania (drop down or scrubbing rules)
– Duplicates
• CRM: John Smith with old and new addresses

15. Cleaning & Preparing Data
Not a reasonable option

16. What does this have to do with trees?
• We track things - tree inventories, potential planting
sites, community groups, people who requested
trees, etc .
• Data comes from lots of places - web forms,
collected by various staff, submitted by community
groups.
• None of it matches.
• Good data makes our lives easier.

17. Cleaning & Preparing Data
• Tools to clean tabular data
– Excel (or open source equivalent)
• Pros:
– Broad features
– Widely utilized / common skill
– Formulas / sorting / flexible
• Cons:
– Doesn’t understand record concept
– Mass changes can be tedious

18. Cleaning & Preparing Data
• Tools to clean tabular data
– DataWrangler
• http://vis.stanford.edu/wrangler/
• Pros:
– Focused on transforming data into relational format
– Live previews
• Cons:
– Alpha quality version
– Data size limits / online tool
– Can be difficult to figure out what set of transforms are needed

19. Cleaning & Preparing Data
• Tools to clean tabular data
– Google Refine
• http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/
• Pros:
– Understands record concept
– Formulas / Facets
– Undo capability
– Windows / Mac / Linux
• Cons:
– There is a learning curve
– Unusual type of app
» Download, unzip, run exe file, access through browser

20. Demo

21. Assembling Data and Building Context

22. Context: Your Questions
• What challenges have you faced putting your data
in context?
• Are you struggling to identify what “context” means
for your organization?
• Do you know what data you’d like to use, but have
trouble finding it?

23. Your Data in Context
• Your data is essential!
• But it is more meaningful in context…
– Ratios & rates
• Service level
• Market penetration
– Indicators & trends
• How you compare
– Targeting
• Key demographics Juice Analytics
• Custom summaries

24. What does this have to do with trees?
• Trees don’t exist in a vacuum.
• Contextual data = more effective outreach.
• More info gives you new insights.

25. Making Sense of the Census
• American FactFinder
• http://factfinder2.census.gov
– Decennial Census
• Every 10 years
• Full population survey
• Just 10 questions
– American Community Survey (ACS)
• Monthly sample
• Aggregated over different time periods (1-, 3- and 5-year)
• Extremely detailed questions
• Subject to sampling error

26. FactFinder Frustrations

27. Helpers: Social Explorer
• http://www.socialexplorer.com/
• Data Dictionary
– Survey
– Dataset
– Table
– Variable
– Formula
– Population

28. Helpers: Social Explorer
• Background
– Key Terms
– Collection Methodology
– Uses & applications

29. Helpers: ACS Alchemist
• https://github.com/azavea/acs-alchemist
• Retrieval of block group-level data
• Custom variable selection
• Delivery in spatial data format ready for mapping
This tool was developed by Azavea in collaboration with Jerry Ratcliffe and Ralph Taylor of Temple
University Center for Security and Crime Science. This project was supported by Award No. 2010-DE-BX-
K004, awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.

30. Helpers: ACS Alchemist
As easy as 1-2-3
1.Create a document with your selected variables

31. Helpers: ACS Alchemist
As easy as 1-2-3
1.Create a document with your selected variables
2.Pick your geographies

32. Helpers: ACS Alchemist
As easy as 1-2-3
1.Create a document with your selected variables
2.Pick your geographies and geolevels
3.Retrieve your shapefiles

33. Other Sources
• Public data
– Open Data Portals
• Federal, state & local data
– Political Data
• Voter data
• Legislative boundaries
• Commercial data
– Population Projections
– Consumer Data

34. Data Visualizations

35. Data Visualization: Your Questions
• Do you currently share data with your constituents?
• Where do you use data visualizations (e.g. annual
report, embedded infographics, live data trackers)?
• Do you currently map your data?

36. What does this have to do with trees?
• Charts, graphs, maps, and photos help us
tell a story.
• Show that trees are more than just leaves
and branches.
• Explore the science without making
people’s eyes glaze over.

37. Exploring Data
• Visualization tools
– Tableau
• http://www.tableausoftware.com/
• Pros:
– Flexible interface makes data exploration easy
– Fast even on large data sets
• Cons:
– Easy to visualize something that doesn’t make sense to look at
– Price (for desktop tool)

38. Demo

39. Exploring Data
• Visualization tools
– GeoCommons (GeoIQ)
• http://geocommons.com/
• Pros:
– Intuitive interface
– Analysis tools
– Geocoding for up to 5,000 records
– Supports KML (Google Maps) import & export
• Cons:
– US-only geocoding

40. Exploring Data
• Desktop GIS: Proprietary
– Esri ArcGIS
• Pros:
– Industry standard
– Many tools
– Extensive training materials
– Customer support
• Cons:
– Windows only
– Potentially expensive *
*

41. Exploring Data
• Visualization tools
– ArcGIS Explorer online
• http://www.arcgis.com/explorer/
• Pros:
– Supports many data formats
– Online digitizing
– Integration with other Esri services
– Presentation view / mobile app
• Cons:
– Can’t export geocoded results
– Geocoding limited to 250 records

42. Demo

43. Exploring Data
• Desktop GIS: Open Source
– Quantum GIS (QGIS)
– GRASS
– uDig
• Pros:
– Free
– Multi-platform (Windows, Mac OS, Linux)
• Cons:
– Limited functionality (for advanced users)
– Community-based support

44. Questions?

45. Contact Us
Deborah Boyer
OpenTreeMap Project Manager
dboyer@azavea.com
215.701.7506
Jeremy Heffner
Product Manager
jheffner@azavea.com
215.701.7712

46. Exploring Data Preparation and Visualization
Tools for Urban Forestry
340 N 12th St, Suite 402
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215.925.2600
info@azavea.com
www.azavea.com/opentreemap