Cannot find VA_data.zip file

[Oltmans]

Greetings, I hope you're doing well. I'm trying to set up
DistrictBuilder and stuck at one point. Documentation(https://
github.com/PublicMapping/DistrictBuilder/blob/master/docs/INSTALL) at
one point says (I've completed all things prior to this step as per
the documentation)

-------
. Unzip the datafile in /projects/PublicMapping/DistrictBuilder/data
to the import
directory: /projects/local/data/:

> sudo mkdir /projects/PublicMapping/local/data
> cd /projects/PublicMapping/local/data; sudo unzip /projects/
PublicMapping/data/VA_data.zip

-------

I actually cannot seem to find VA_data.zip anywhere. Probably I did
something wrong. Can you kindly let me know where to find this zip
file? I will really appreciate if you guys can help me locate this
file.

Thank you for all help.

[David Zwarg]

Hello,

That file is missing. We're currently trying to figure out the permanent home for it (it didn't seem like svn or git was an appropriate place for that kind of data), but in the meantime, I'll put it on our public ftp server.

It's about 280MB. I'll let you know when it's available and I'll provide the access information at that time, too.

An alternative to this (if you're setting up an instance that doesn't cover Virginia) is to download the census data for the area you are interested in.  You may download county shapefiles and tract shapefiles for entire states. Unfortunately, you may download the block files one county at a time.  DistrictBuilder is designed to import these files directly. The only difference between those files and the files in the VA_data.zip file is that all the blocks have been concatenated into a single shapefile.

More information about the data used in DistrictBuilder can be found here: http://www.publicmapping.org/resources/data

Thanks,
David

--
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[Dr. Micah Altman]

David,

Thanks for replying.

> That file is missing. We're currently trying to figure out the permanent
> home for it (it didn't seem like svn or git was an appropriate place for
> that kind of data), but in the meantime, I'll put it on our public ftp
> server.
>
> It's about 280MB. I'll let you know when it's available and I'll provide the
> access information at that time, too.

Once this is up in ftp, I can copy it to our AWS bucket for longer
term storage, and provide the link for our docs.

>
> An alternative to this (if you're setting up an instance that doesn't cover
> Virginia) is to download the census data for the area you are interested
> in.  You may download county shapefiles and tract shapefiles for entire
> states.

> Unfortunately, you may download the block files one county at a time.

Actually, block files with complete state coverage are available:

ftp://ftp2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/TABBLOCK/2010/tl_2010_[STATEFIPSCODE]_tabblock10.zip

> DistrictBuilder is designed to import these files directly. The only
> difference between those files and the files in the VA_data.zip file is that
> all the blocks have been concatenated into a single shapefile.

If I recall, another difference is that the VA shapefiles were also
reprojected from lat-lon to web mercator. Is that no longer a
requirement?

best,

Micah

[David Zwarg]

Hi Micah,

An AWS bucket sounds like the perfect place for that bundle.

I hadn't found the block by state download link, that is much more convenient than one county at a time.

You're right about the projection -- those shapefiles were indeed projected to web mercator, and we require that projection in DistrictBuilder.

Thanks,
David

[David Zwarg]

The file VA_data.zip is available at the following URL:

http://ftp.azavea.com/download/DistrictBuilder/VA_data.zip

Anonymous FTP access is also available at the ftp url (change the "http" above to "ftp").

Let me know if you have any issues accessing this data file.

Thanks,
David

[Dr. Micah Altman]

This is now up in AWS:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/districtbuilderdata/VA_data.zip

--
________________________________________________________________________
Micah Altman, Ph.D. <http://redistricting.info>           Twitter: @drmaltman
Senior Research Scientist, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard U.
Director of Archiving and Acquisitions, IQSS;
"Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate" - Dr. Invincibilis
(Corollary, "Ad indicia spectate.")

[David Zwarg]

Great!

I've update the documentation to point to the AWS bucket.

David

[Oltmans]

Hi, many thanks everyone. You've been very helpful. I downloaded
VA_data.zip from https://s3.amazonaws.com/districtbuilderdata/VA_data.zip.

Thanks.

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