Continuing our commitment to the Philadelphia Department of Records, we have recently rolled out a new application to help city staff visualize and interpret Philadelphia property information. The new application, called LandStat, is powered by the Kaleidocade Indicators Framework (KIF) to represent aggregated data on such topics as mortgages, deeds, foreclosures, real estate transfer tax, condominium declarations, and property types. By counting, averaging, or adding up records in a particular ZIP Code or census tract, areas can be compared to each other at a glance.
Map describing mortgages in Philadelphia in 2007.
The data used in LandStat has quite a lineage. Azavea previously worked with the Department of Records on the ParcelExplorer application, which combines property transaction and other information from the City’s PhilaDox document recording system with parcel-level data from other agencies as well as a series of historic and contemporary maps. Using the Philadelphia Department of Technology’s Unified Land Records System (ULRS), also developed by Azavea, we were able to enhance the real estate transaction data by performing a series of “point in polygon” operations to determine in which ZIP Code, City Council District, ward, US Census tract or blockgroup each document and property was located. In order to convert that data to something compatible with KIF, we then created an aggregating tool which took the sum, count, or average of each indicator in each of the different geographies and created a KIF database.
Block group report generated by LandStat.
As with other applications using Kaleidocade, LandStat’s data can be viewed in a map, with geographic areas color-coded to indicate different ranges of values. Being able to see hot spots or areas of inactivity quickly and easily can inform decisions and inspire ways of thinking that might not have been possible by viewing the same data in a spreadsheet. LandStat also enables users to create scatter plots, view a statistical analysis, create tables with specific ranges of data, or rank top and bottom locations for a particular indicator. Detailed reports can also be created for an area of interest. LandStat will round out the city’s already advanced suite of land analysis applications.
LandStat is currently available from the City of Philadelphia’s internal network, although the Department of Records may elect to make it available to the public at some point in the future. Please contact Chip Hitchens for more information on LandStat or KIF.
