Community Profiles: Transferring Technology Across Partners

In 2013, The Providence Plan launched the Rhode Island Community Profiles website—a tool to present data in a series of interactive tables, maps, graphs and charts. This web application allows users to visualize information from dozens of local, state, and federal data sources at numerous geographic scales from blocks, census tracts, and neighborhoods to larger geographies, such as municipalities, school districts, and counties.  This tool replaced the very popular, but static and outdated neighborhood profiles site from the 2000 Census, and is now being used to improve communities across Rhode Island. In its first year, the RI Community Profiles has provided data to local residents, non-profits, consultants, schools, municipalities and state agencies for presentations, grant applications, and comprehensive plan updates with data ranging from simple Census demographics to local asthma rates and lead poisonings in children.

In late 2013, the University of Pittsburgh Center for Social and Urban Research contracted with The Providence Plan to adapt and deploy the tool for use in Southwestern Pennsylvania, thanks to support from the Allegheny County Department of Human Services Integrated Fund. One of the goals of this project is to make it easier to deploy the application in other cities, possibly as the platform for a shared cross-site indicators system. Join us as we demonstrate the tool, share our cross-site project experiences, and discuss how your city can adopt the profiles tool.