Geospatial Intelligence for Advocacy
Visualizing opportunity data across Maryland's 1,400+ census tracts to power community-driven change.
What We Measure
Six Lenses of Opportunity
Each data lens reveals a different dimension of neighborhood opportunity, helping advocates identify where support is needed most.
Income Mobility
Track upward economic mobility using Opportunity Atlas data. Identify census tracts where children from low-income families face the steepest odds of climbing the economic ladder.
Opportunity Index
A composite score from the Child Opportunity Index 3.0 combining 30+ indicators across education, health, and social domains into a single z-score that captures neighborhood-level opportunity.
Education
Explore educational opportunity including school quality, early childhood education access, and post-secondary enrollment rates by census tract.
Health & Environment
Assess health-related opportunity including access to healthy food, green space, environmental quality, and proximity to health services.
Social & Economic
Examine socioeconomic factors including poverty rates, employment opportunities, housing stability, and community resource access.
Incarceration Risk
Track justice system disparities, historical incarceration rates, and access to legal resources across Maryland neighborhoods. Source: Opportunity Atlas.
How It Works
Our Methodology
SparkMap synthesizes publicly available datasets into a unified, interactive visualization. Here's where our data comes from and how we integrate it.
Data Sources
Harvard & Census Bureau
Income mobility metrics tracking economic outcomes for children who grew up in each census tract. Includes household income at the 25th and 75th percentiles, employment rates, college attendance, teen birth rates, and incarceration rates.
diversitydatakids.org
A composite index of 30+ indicators organized into three domains: Education, Health & Environment, and Social & Economic. Reported as national z-scores at the census tract level.
TIGER/Line & ACS
2020 TIGER/Line shapefiles provide the geographic boundaries for Maryland's 1,400+ census tracts. ACS 5-year estimates provide population data for county-level statistics.
Points of Interest
Locations of hospitals, schools, parks, libraries, and retail stores filtered to Maryland. POI data is spatially joined with county boundaries for resource access analysis.
Integration Pipeline - Vertical Timeline
Synthesize
Merge Opportunity Atlas and COI datasets by census tract GEOID, combining income mobility scores with opportunity domain z-scores.
Crosswalk
Remap 2010-era Opportunity Atlas tracts to 2020 census boundaries using the official Census Bureau relationship file, achieving ~98% data coverage.
Enrich
Join tract polygons from TIGER/Line shapefiles with the synthesized opportunity scores, producing a map-ready GeoJSON layer.
Overlay
Augment with OpenStreetMap POI layers spatially joined to counties, enabling resource access analysis alongside opportunity data.
Reading the Scores
The Numbers, Translated
COI scores are national z-scores; they measure how a tract compares to every census tract in America, not just Maryland. A score of 0 equals the national average; each unit represents one standard deviation. Scores typically range within bounds of -3.0 (Very Low) to +3.0 (Very High), though rare extreme outliers may occasionally fall just outside this range.
A Percentile With Real Consequences
Income Mobility is the average income percentile rank of children raised in a tract, measured at age 35 against all Americans. Income Mobility represents a structural signal derived from 20 million observed life trajectories.
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National-normed child opportunity percentile.
Source: Opportunity Atlas (Harvard Kennedy School & U.S. Census Bureau) · kfr_pooled_pooled_mean · 1978–1983 birth cohorts
Three Decades of Longitudinal Research
SparkMap does not generate its own scores. Every number on the map is sourced directly from peer-reviewed academic research and federal datasets.
Tracks 20M Americans from birth through age 35 across 1978–1983 cohorts. Published in peer-reviewed journals. Used by federal policymakers.
30+ indicators from ACS, EPA, NCES & CDC. Z-scores normalized across 72,000 US tracts and validated against childhood health outcomes.
Official 2020 tract boundaries for Maryland's 1,406 tracts. Crosswalked from 2010-era Atlas data using the Census relationship file (~98% coverage).
POI data (hospitals, schools, parks, libraries, stores) spatially joined to county boundaries. Used only for resource access context; these POIs are not used for scoring.
Who We Are
About SparkMap
SparkMap is a geospatial intelligence platform built to empower advocates, policymakers, and community organizers with data-driven insights about neighborhood opportunity in Maryland. By synthesizing publicly available datasets into an interactive map, SparkMap makes complex census-tract-level data accessible and actionable, so communities can advocate for resources where they're needed most.
Identify Mobility Deserts
Find census tracts where children face the steepest odds of upward economic mobility. Use advocacy filters to isolate tracts below custom thresholds and export the data for grant applications or policy briefs.
Compare Lenses
Switch between six data lenses to understand root causes: is a low-opportunity neighborhood driven by education gaps, health barriers, or socioeconomic challenges? Compare dimensions to build a complete picture.
Export for Advocacy
Download filtered tract data as CSV for reports and analysis, or generate infographic PNGs with built-in legends and statistics, ready for presentations, grant proposals, and community meetings.
Explore POI Access
Toggle hospitals, schools, parks, libraries, and stores on the map to see if under-resourced tracts also lack critical community infrastructure. Identify service deserts alongside opportunity deserts.
Stay Connected
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Follow along for release updates, map walkthroughs, and stories about the communities behind the data.