ZTRAX ends. Long live ZTRAX-based findings and data products?

[Christoph Nolte]

Dear colleagues,

I'm not sure whether you received the news (and apologies for any double-posting; the below is both time-sensitive and potentially valuable for empirical researchers with interest in U.S. land policy).

Zillow is permanently closing its ZTRAX program. ZTRAX generously offers academics free-of-charge access to nationwide property transactions and tax assessor data. ZTRAX data can be linked to digital parcel boundaries and has catalyzed a wide range of novel empirical findings in a rather short time frame. Last applications for two-year research projects are due July 15, 2021, and data access will end Sept 2023. Researchers can keep findings and data products, as long as ZTRAX data cannot be reverse-engineered from them.

This decision puts empirical researchers with interests in public land policy (especially underfunded ones) in an interesting position: we have a two-year opportunity to produce generalizable research findings and data products that can stand the test of time and peer review. However, as we will show at the 2021 PLACES webinar next week, ZTRAX data - as any data synthesized from public deed & tax roll records - is messy and needs substantial cleaning, data fusion, and documentation to produce interpretable, reproducible nationwide findings on land policies. At the PLACES lab, we are therefore intensifying our efforts to enable other U.S. principal investigators (especially traditionally underfunded ones) to make the most out of this unique opportunity. This includes sharing and scrutinizing our data processing standards (next Wednesday), as well as inviting new collaborations.

If you'd like to learn more, please consider registering for our webinar. We will present new findings from ongoing work, scrutinize best data practices, and discuss priorities for the next two years.

Thank you for your consideration. With all best,

Christoph

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Christoph Nolte

Assistant Professor

Earth & Environment

Computing & Data Science

Boston University

+1-734-747-0305

www.placeslab.org