217025 Mapping lead-based paint conditions for tenant housing in New Jersey: A web-based application

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Jennifer Rovito, MS , Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ
Henry Mayer, PhD , Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ
Background: The Lead Safe Housing Registry is a web-based mapping application that identifies the lead-based paint condition of tenant housing in New Jersey as collected by six state agencies/departments.
Purpose: To provide public health officials, rental agents and the general public with a centralized database of tenant housing lead-based paint conditions, through a user friendly web-based map.
Methods: Working with the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, data was collected from six state agencies containing information such as street addresses and current lead status. The data required standardization and geocoding. A parcel match using ArcMap was completed on as much of the data as possible and a web-based geocoding tool was used for the remaining addresses.
Results: About 30,000 buildings representing one million tenant units have been mapped to date. These buildings can be queried using either a known address or city. Challenges encountered included non-standardized misspelled and/or incomplete address data that made the geocoding and map display formatting process very time consuming.
Discussion: The Lead Safe Housing Registry website is currently available to the public. Data updates will be completed on a quarterly basis to help improve the overall status of completed lead inspection certificate dates. The database is also being expanded to include additional data, more advanced querying, and better database management.



Learning Areas:
Communication and informatics

Learning Objectives:
Identify the value of using a GIS web-based map to display health data that has been collected and stored by state agencies that would otherwise never be released to the general public. Define the steps associated with building and maintaining a web-based map from inter-agency data collection, to data standardization and geocoding, to database management and map visualization. Identify the challenges and limitations associated with working with multiple state agencies that have datasets that are continuously collected in varying formats.

Keywords: Lead, Environmental Justice

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have a Masters of Science degree in Geographic and Cartographic Sciences (George Mason University). I am a GIS Specialist and have experience in Geographic Information Systems, distributed GIS, remote sensing, spatial analysis, risk assessment modeling, and database management.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 4234.1: Geographical Information Systems and Public Health