What is the STICS Web site?
The coastal management community is challenged to better understand and incorporate the spatial patterns of human activities into the management of coastal and ocean resources. The Spatial Trends in Coastal Socioeconomics – or STICS – Web site provides the coastal management community access to several national demographic and economic datasets recompiled in a variety of geographic units that managers must work with on a daily basis, such as:
- Placed-based management programs – for example, the NOAA National Estuarine Research Reserves and the EPA National Estuary Program
- Floodplains – for example, FEMA 100-year flood hazard areas
- Watersheds – for example, NOAA estuarine watersheds and USGS hydrologic units
- Political areas – for example, counties, states, and state Coastal Zone Management Program boundaries
STICS currently offers recompiled data from the following national datasets:
- Time series demographic information from the U.S. Census Bureau for the four decadal censuses in 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010.
- Employment, establishments, and wages trend 1990-2011 information for the total economy, derived from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). GDP trend 1990-2010 estimates for the total economy are derived from state level BEA GDP data.
- Demographic projections developed by Woods and Poole Economics, Inc. from 1970 to 2040
- Critical Facilities (2012) from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
How can I find socioeconomic data from STICS?
The STICS Web site offers three separate tools to facilitate quick data retrieval, comprehensive data downloads, and map-based queries and downloads.
- The Quick Report Tool offers new users a map-based interface to quickly determine demographic and economic characteristics of a wide variety of important coastal management jurisdictions.
- The Data Download Tool allows advanced users to download entire datasets, data dictionaries and other relevant metadata documentation, and geography files.
What is the Value Added of the STICS Web site?
First, STICS recompiles very large and complex socioeconomic datasets into a variety of important coastal management jurisdictions (i.e. coastal floodplains, coastal/non-coastal watersheds, and others) – so that you don’t have to do this.
Second, historical data have been normalized to 2010 county boundaries to allow users to make “apples to apples” time-series comparisons using all of the different geographic units offered via STICS.
Third, the STICS Web site offers powerful Visualization / Analysis Tools for users with different levels of data and analysis needs. The site offers Standard Profiles of user selected areas for those on the low end and the means to download the data in whole for the more sophisticated users.
Fourth, STICS offers a detailed discussion about how the coastal management community defines “the coast” and describes the various coastal management jurisdictions provided to STICS users. Because many social science datasets are collected and reported using political boundaries – especially counties – this discussion also reviews common aggregations of U.S. “coastal counties.”
Fifth, the socioeconomic information that the web site delivers can be used to provide insights into a range of priority coastal issues of interest such as the impacts of coastal storms, sea-level rise associated with global climate change, and habitat loss and restoration.
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