How we enrich custom boundaries with census data
mySidewalk uses a geospatial technique known as weighted block point apportionment to create statistical profiles for custom study areas. At the core of this technique, census-block centroids are weighted based on the percentage of population, housing, and households they represent within their parent geographies and those weights are in turn used to estimate statistics across the study area.
Weighted block point apportionment is widely accepted as a standard for tabulating statistical profiles for custom, or irregular, geographies—that is, areas that do not neatly conform to the underlying boundaries to which the statistics were originally reported.
While mySidewalk is confident in the estimates derived from this technique, users should understand that these values are estimates and should be treated as such.