In many ways, a geofence is simply another name for something that has been around for a long time— a geographic boundary (i.e. polygon) defined by a series of lat/long coordinates.  The term geofencing refers to the use of geofences in combination with a location-aware device running apps/services that can send notifications when the person carrying the device crosses a geofence.  And of course, Maponics is all about defining geographic areas and delivering them in GIS data products, so we are excited about the new ways in which they can be leveraged and applied in geofencing scenarios.

We see geofencing use cases for all of our GIS data products but I wanted to highlight several here to make the case for how predefined geofences, versus basic radius perimeters, can be more meaningful and useful in geofencing applications.

Predefined Geofences vs. Radius-based Geofences

Most of the scenarios you might be reading about in the tech sites hypothesize about a geofence that is a simple radius around a location, like a store.  A radius geofence may be used in push-marketing situations where a store owner hopes you’ll cross her geofence so that her marketing alert will go off and send you a promotional offer to encourage you to visit her store and purchase merchandise.  We call these “on the fly” geofences because as a user, you never know when you might randomly cross one or multiple geofences that are generated on the fly—the stores themselves (or their marketing companies) control when users get the notices.  As a user, this can be pretty noisy and we guess few users will opt in to such a service.

Contrast this with predefined geofences, for example, neighborhood boundaries.  As a user, you could set your preferences to only notify you when there are restaurants offering specials in the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco.  Of course, this requires a predefined geofence for Russian Hill.  Such a geofence is not a radius –it is a complex polygon, shaped by the streets or natural borders of said neighborhood.

As you’ll see, there are numerous reasons why predefined, polygon-based geofences are going to be superior in many situations.

Social Networking

A sense of location and movement is becoming a fundamental part of social networking.  Much of the emphasis has been on tagging updates with location information (read about how Maponics powers place designation for geotagged Tweets) but generating alerts and Tweets based on when your friends enter or leave areas, like choice neighborhoods, can give you a heads up about where the party is headed.  Also, using neighborhoods boundaries as geofences enables alerts based on when friends enter the neighborhood where you are hanging out.

Real Estate

Mobile apps and house hunting go well together.  Consider the following scenario:

A couple with two kids in elementary school is planning to relocate to a new city for career opportunities.  Prior to their house hunting trip, they visit an online real estate web site and generate a short list of properties to visit based on numerous preferences, including price range, number of bedrooms/bathrooms, amenities, etc. within several neighborhoods that they heard have good schools and are kid-friendly.  Further, on the real estate web site, they sign up for a geofencing service to be notified on their Smartphone (the house hunters tool of choice) when they enter and exit their target neighborhoods so they can get a sense of locally-recognized neighborhood boundaries and to help orient and direct their house hunting activities.

The couple uses the online real estate site’s mobile app on their iPhone to get directions to the first few properties.  While looking at one of the houses, they visit a nearby park with their kids and strike up a conversation with a local mom.  They quickly find out that there are several public elementary schools nearby but they are not at all on the same level as far as GreatSchool ratings (also available through the mobile real estate app—and that the attendance areas for the schools cut across several of their target neighborhoods. Armed with this local “intel”, they launch the online real estate app once again and find to their surprise that schools and even school attendance zones are search parameters they can use to further refine their target house list.  Similar to the neighborhood alerts they set earlier, they turn on the geofencing service for elementary school attendance zones so that they know as they drive around when they enter and exit the exact boundaries that define which public schools residents attend.

The couple’s location-aware, micro-targeting saved them hours of running around wasting time looking at houses that on the surface may have looked fine but ultimately would not have worked because of the location in relation to desired neighborhoods and schools.

Parental Notification

Many parents grapple with striking the right balance when considering technology that can help them monitor their kids’ location and activities.  Lots of kids now have GPS-enabled phones, so it is easier than ever to track them–but, exact location tracking is often not an option because kids reject it as too intrusive.  With neighborhood-based geofencing, parents can get notifications if and when their kids enter certain neighborhoods—without monitoring their exact location.  This might be just enough information for parents to know if they need to touch base or take action but not too much to be considered draconian.

We’d love to hear your cool geofencing ideas—feel free to post comments below.

Firstly, although public schools are required to report to the NCES annually, depending on when changes (e.g. new or consolidated schools) occur and the fact that the NCES generally does not publish results until about a year after the reporting cutoff, some of its data can be as much as two years old.

Further, around 2000, the NCES added lat/long coordinates for the schools in its databases by geocoding the schools’ addresses against TIGER and perhaps another street dataset.  However, we find that the placement of many of these schools is considerably off, many miles in some cases.

Maponics School Boundaries ^TM

As I’ve described in previous posts in this blog series, for Maponics School Boundaries, we annually source and update the entire set of school geography (including school district boundaries, school attendance zones and school locations and profiles) for every locally-sourced area.  Under our Maintenance Program, we revisit and verify the district’s information each year.  As part of this process, we work with local resources and officials to ensure that we represent the latest information about all the schools within the district.

We start with the NCES database and state lists and then go directly to the school districts to ensure we represent all public schools in our data and know where they are located.  We geocode any addresses obtained against a high-quality dataset and take any locally-sourced point sets and update these using aerial and satellite imagery to move the point to the rooftop of the school.

Of course, with Maponics School Boundaries, the value comes not just from the comprehensive database of schools but the combination of the database with the related boundaries, including school attendance zones and school district boundaries.

As I discussed in my last post in this series, school district boundaries change to reflect underlying demographic shifts and numerous other social, economic and political factors. Well, school attendance boundaries are even more likely to change for two primary reasons:

• By definition, schools attendance zones are established and adjusted to balance student populations within school districts and as a result, they often change over time even when school district boundaries do not: and

• Schools attendance zones are directly associated with school locations themselves—geographically, they are represented as a boundary around a single school. So, as schools are created, expanded or closed, school attendance zones change.

For example, in Frisco, Texas, where I happen to live, significant population growth means that school attendance zones may have to change almost every year for the foreseeable future.

How We Source and Build School Attendance Zones (SAZ’s)

Neither the federal government nor most states maintain a school attendance zone boundary set. These have to be sourced from the local school districts. This is a daunting task in that there are almost 14,000 US school districts with school attendance zones and they record these boundaries in a variety of formats—many of which are not in high-quality digital maps.

We go directly to local authorities to collect all sorts of resources to define the limits of the SAZ’s. Sometimes we are able to acquire digital map data, but most often districts only share paper maps, low quality PDF’s, or provide a list of school assignments by address range. We take all of this raw data, import or digitize it, clean it up, make it all match up with street centerlines, satellite and aerial imagery and other school districts borders and attendance zones. Now imagine repeating all of this 14,000 times and updating them annually!

But, we understand the value in doing this because so many decisions, from real estate purchases to public policy to direct marketing, can be driven by defining a clear and consistent relationship between residences and public schools.

The Congress requires the Census Bureau to create special tabulations of decennial census by school district boundaries to support calculations for such allocations as Title I funding.  Every two years, the Census conducts a review of school districts and collects paper and sometimes digital map data from designated state school district mapping coordinators.  The TIGER school districts were last updated with the release of TIGER 2008 and contain boundaries submitted during the 2007-2008 School District Review Program (SDRP).  As a result, the TIGER school district data may now be as much as three years old and the next file will not be available until November 2010, long after the 2010-11 school year begins.

With demographic shifts, financial issues, and failing schools, the rate of change (events like district mergers and splits) in school district boundaries is on the rise.  In the last 30 days alone, there have been stories on consolidations (or potential consolidations) in 9 states (PA, IA, IL, VT, MS, AR, KS, WI, and NJ).

For Maponics School Boundaries ^TM, we source school district boundaries and school attendance boundaries directly from contacts at the local level, rather than at the state level.  And we review and update the entire set of school geography (including school district, school attendance zones and school profiles) for every locally-sourced area every year.  This ensures that we reflect all of the latest changes every year and that our customers can count on the fact that they have the latest information available.

In the spirit of full disclosure, we base our nationwide school district boundaries on TIGER data but continually enhance them with locally sourced data and add school attendance zones–something that TIGER does not include at all.

In early America, schools were organized by a group of neighbors or perhaps a larger community and were largely independent of one another.  New England colonies first provided for a public education, requiring that towns establish schools. This township-based model extended to the midwestern states and eventually many western states. The township boundaries, usually defined by states, became the first school districts. Some still exist in their original form, but many have consolidated into larger districts.

Education in the South was generally a private matter until after the Civil War.  When public schools were established there, counties generally became responsible for them. This is why school districts in most southern states generally have the same borders as their counties or county-equivalents.

In the beginning of the 20th century, schools began consolidating into larger and larger districts, sometimes through local action but more often as a result of state legislation. Of the 200,000 districts that existed in 1900, fewer than 14,000 still exist.  Because of continuing and sometimes dramatic population shifts and economic factors, many areas of the country are grappling with the need to redraw school district boundaries.  Even New England states, which have largely retained districts that had coincided with their town boundaries since the 1650′s, are likely to radically merge and realign their districts in coming years.  And state legislatures everywhere will often have more say than local residents in how school district boundaries will be drawn.

Of course, with continual change comes the need for current representation of school district boundaries and related school and school attendance zone information.   As we mentioned in the last post, the US Census (TIGER) updates their school district boundaries file every 2 years— this means many changes to school districts are not reflected until long after they are put into effect and don’t necessarily represent information for the current school year.  Further, TIGER lacks the more granular and in many ways, more important, attendance zones within school districts.

For Maponics School Boundaries ^TM, we annually source and update the entire set of school geography (including school district, school attendance zones and school profiles) for every locally-sourced area. Under our Maintenance Program, we revisit and verify the district’s information each year.  This ensures that our customers, who rely on our data currency and accuracy to display schools, school district maps and attendance zones, have the latest information available.

In this first post, I’ll discuss the basics—think of it as School Geography 101.  Just a few definitions and a sense for what our School Boundaries product is all about to provide some context.  In coming weeks, one of our Lead Developers and a subject matter expert, Cory Martin, will add to the series with posts that discuss key topics in more detail.

Why School Boundaries Matter

You can’t see school boundaries and most of us are unaware of exactly where they are but school districts and more importantly, attendance zones, determine which schools our children attend and that has a profound impact on everything from our daily lives to their futures.

School Boundary Definitions

School Districts

School districts are the basic units around which public schools are organized and operated.  They represent an official administrative units as well as distinct geographic areas.

School Attendance Zones

School Attendance Zones are the areas within school districts that assign collections of households to specific public elementary, middle and high schools.  School Attendance Zones (SAZs) are generally determined by local school boards and allow them to distribute and balance the student population with available classroom space and resources.

Maponics School Boundaries ^TM

While the US Census is a source for school district boundaries (though they are only updated every two years), the only source for school attendance zones are local school officials, which is exactly where we obtain the data for mapping SAZ boundaries.

As of the first release (May 2010), 14,000 school district boundaries and 134,000 school points are available nationwide. School attendance zone boundaries are available for many major metro areas, representing student population coverage of 20%.

More Maponics School Boundaries Information

See school boundaries in action in our interactive mashup.
For more info, check out our school boundaries FAQ page.

Let us know what you think by posting a comment below.

For the first time ever, companies—and their customers—can now see the actual school attendance zones, not just simple school districts.

What is a school attendance zone?  Well sometimes called “catchment areas”, these are the geographies within a school district that define which households send their kids to which schools.  Some school districts have many schools and they draw boundary lines to determine who goes to which school.

Imagine you are relocating to Miami and you have 3 kids: one in elementary school, one in middle school, and one in high school.   You have the names of a few neighborhoods and good schools that your friends have highly recommended.

So, you visit your favorite real estate search web site and search on a neighborhood name. The search results still show dozens of houses but you’d like to be able to see only those within the attendance zones of your target elementary schools.  Using online map display options on the real estate web site, you click to show middle school zones and high school zones as well – because they are not always the same.  You locate the ones you are interested in and click them to shade the attendance zone boundary. After a few iterations, you can easily see all the properties for sale within your target neighborhood. In contrast, imagine trying to do this without a map boundary overlay!  We’re talking hours – and maybe even days – of time savings for the homebuyer.

We are also excited to share that through our partnership with GreatSchools, we include the GreatSchools ID so that our customers can link our boundaries to the wealth of information GreatSchools has to offer.  There will be more news on this relationship in the future, but the highlight is that our business customers can combine the best geographic data from Maponics with the best attribute information on schools to create a winning platform.

Of course, the value of accurate school attendance zones isn’t confined to real estate.  Marketing and advertising, social networking, and institutional entities also can improve their services by incorporating updated school districts, school location points, and school attendance zones.

Our team has worked hard on this since 2009 and I personally want to thank them – and also thank all our beta customers who helped shape this new and exciting product into one that will be of immense value to several industries.

“We continue to hear from our customers that international neighborhood coverage is vital to their plans to add cultural and location context to everything from local search to social networking,” said Darrin Clement, CEO of Maponics.

Click here to read the entire press release.

]]> http://blog.maponics.com/2010/04/20/maponics-first-to-expand-neighborhood-coverage-to-all-populated-continents/feed/ 0 http://blog.maponics.com/2010/04/05/directions-magazine-podcast-conversation-with-maponics-ceo/ http://blog.maponics.com/2010/04/05/directions-magazine-podcast-conversation-with-maponics-ceo/#comments Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:40:09 +0000 Gloria http://maponics.com/blog/?p=503 As part of the “Hallway Conversation” series, Directions Magazine Executive Editor, Adena Schutzberg, interviewed Maponics CEO, Darrin Clement.

Listen Now: A Hallway Conversation with Darrin Clement, CEO of Maponics, Data Provider to Twitter.

Darrin discussed how Maponics worked with Twitter to provide the Neighborhood Place information in Twitter’s new Location Feature. Adena and Darrin also shared insights and trends about how location is used by consumers via cell phones and through social media in general.

We are pleased to be the sole provider of the global neighborhood GIS data used by Twitter to power this feature.  Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries ^TM are used to resolve coordinates from a mobile device or computer where the Tweets originate to a neighborhood location on a map.

Clearly, location is an important part of social networking and neighborhoods are a meaningful social and cultural reference point that help give context to everything from Tweets to real estate and local search.

To read more about how to Tweet with your location, click here.

To find out how you Maponics can help your business provide better location-based information, visit our website.