Expanded coverage now live in Mapbox Boundaries and offline in Atlas
By: Jeff Butler
Last week, my colleague Lem posted about a recent USA TODAY report that helped push Congress to action on protecting seniors from abusive practices tied to reverse mortgages. The report included an interactive map that aggregated mortgage foreclosure data by US postal code, allowing each reader to get a personal view of the issue where they lived.
It’s a great example of how boundaries play an essential role in contextualizing the world. By allowing us to group and understand data along different geospatial units, boundaries influence outcomes from policy measures to business operations. This is why we continually improve our boundary data with new releases each quarter.
The newest release of Mapbox Boundaries is now available and highlights include:
- 228,000 new boundaries including complete, global admin-1 coverage
- Recency updates to regions of the world like the Caribbean and South Pacific
- Improved US postal code accuracy
- More metadata attributes like ISO3 country code
Boundaries as a data multi-tool
The USA Today report used postal codes for their analysis, but other use cases and analyses call for different spatial units. Mapbox Boundaries make all boundary types easily accessible in one seamless product that serves as a data multi-tool for customized and specific needs.
Secondary or tertiary administrative boundaries can also be a relevant way to communicate geographic analysis. For example, US counties — the interior secondary boundaries of the US after states — are recognizable to the general population, and have distinct governing bodies, social services, and tax bases.
More granular statistical units like US census tracts can be ideal for targeted small area analysis. These types of geographic analysis can be especially powerful when coupled with an aggregation to higher-level hierarchies to guard against bias or over-optimization of spatial areas.
For a project like the Eviction Lab, the team employed a combination of US statistical areas (census tracts, blocks) with administrative boundaries (state, county, city) to evaluate trends on micro and macro levels.
Mapbox Boundaries provides flexibility to deploy what works best for every use case. That might be a combination of boundary types in a static map or the ability to dynamically switch between types and levels in an interactive map. And we’re constantly working to expand our boundary portfolio and data types. More boundaries combined with higher accuracy and precision allows for more reliable, impactful analysis. Boundaries is also available within Atlas for those wanting to join sensitive data with boundaries in an offline or on-premises environment.
Get started with Boundaries
Read more here on how Boundaries can add value to your data, operations, or app experience. Boundaries is available through annual commitment plans, Atlas and data visualization platforms like Tableau, Power BI and MicroStrategy. If you’re ready to get started with Boundaries, reach out to our team. Atlas Boundaries users can immediately update to the improved Boundaries data by following the steps in our help documentation.
Jeff Butler - Senior Product Manager - Location Intelligence - Mapbox | LinkedIn
Why we continue to improve boundary data was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.