Three sites for GIS mapping, stats and data sets we forgot to include yesterday:

What is Community Mapping? is part of the Equitable Development Toolkit available at PolicyLink.org. It offers a good, practical layperson’s introduction to and overview of GIS mapping, a modest but useful list of basic online GIS resources, along with real world examples of how GIS mapping has been and can be used to better understand and analyze data in support of economic and community development. Worth the visit.

If you’re doing GIS in the poverty community, one direct link you must have: Resources for Locating 2000 and 1990 Census Tracts and Associated Data @ U.S. Census.

And here’s a mapping site for environmental advocates: Scorecard.org created by Environmental Defense. Among other online mapping features and statistical tools available here, you can enter a zip code and get a list of pollutants emitted in that area and who emits them; search by geographic area or company name; and find rankings for lead hazards, land contamination (Superfund) according to state, county or census tract. And there’s more! You can rank on country or state level and lists companies responsible; show degrees of environmental burdens felt by different racial and income groups in each county in English or Spanish; and allows you to rank the top issues in the designated area based on comparative risk projects.