NJ-Childcare-Centers

A Spatial Analysis of the Licensed Childcare Centers in New Jersey, USA

Project Overview

This project was conducted as the final project required by the ‘Seminar in Public Informatcs (Command Line Geographic Information System’ course at E.J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University. This project aims to analyze the Licensed Childcare Centers in New Jersey, USA through Spatial Analysis tools.

Data Sets

NJ licensed childcare centers as csv file

NJ counties as geojson file

Bus stops of NJ transit as geojson file

Light rail stations of NJ transit as geojson file

Passenger rail stations as geojson file

Path stationlocations as geojson file

Rail stations of NJ transit as geojson file

Resources & Tools Used

ESRI Tools: ArcGIS Pro

Core programming language: Python

Development environment: Jupyter Notebook

Libraries & packages: pandas, geopandas, pygeos, arcgis, shapely, folium, mapclassify, matplotlib

Data Wrangling

I have collected the dataset from the New Jersey Office of Information Technology (NJOIT) Open Data Center (source link: https://data.nj.gov/Public-Safety/Licensed-Child-Care-Centers/cru5-4rmm). The dataset was downloaded as csv file. There was no geographic coordinates information in the dataset. I had to convert the address and ZIP codes into geographic coordinates through geocoding. I also had to explore Spatial Joins, and Geoprocessing tools like Buffer, Clip, Union Overlay Operation, Unary Union etc. to make the data appropriate to generate the desired maps. Finally, I encountered a bug in the heatmap of the interactive map. I solved that issue by adjusting the heatmap layer style in the HTML codes.

Data Analysis

STATIC MAPS

NJ Licensed Childcare Centers by County

NJ Licensed Childcare Centers per 100k Residents

NJ Licensed Childcare Centers: Five Mile Transit Accessibility by County

INTERACTIVE MAP

NJ Licensed Childcare Centers Web Map

You can also explore this map as its own web page here