To reach its full potential, a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) should be grounded in accurate and accessible data that facilitates a region-wide conversation about economic development. Without a solid understanding of key metrics, trends, demographics, and more, a region is at a major disadvantage in planning for the future. Fortunately for organizations tasked with writing a CEDS, there are a variety of trusted data sources and tools available – many of them free of charge.
The NADO Research Foundation’s Data Deep Dive webinar series features organizations and their data tools and maps that can be easily accessed to collect, interpret, and share data to better prepare your CEDS and other regional plans. Each webinar includes a live demonstration of the tools and Q & A:
Headwaters Economics | Economic Profile System
Use the Economic Profile System (EPS) to download socioeconomic reports of communities, counties, and states, including aggregations and comparisons. EPS uses federal data sources from the Bureaus of Economic Analysis, Census, & others. Reports are downloadable in Excel and PDF formats and the database is updated continuously with the latest information available.
Center on Rural Innovation | Rural Opportunity Map
The Rural Opportunity Map, created by the Center on Rural Innovation, was born out of the need for a new framework to understand opportunities in small town America in the 21st century – a framework that takes into account the way industry and employment are changing and the demographic trends that have defined small towns for years. The Rural Opportunity Map has a range of uses, from allowing local leaders to identify and learn from peer communities, to surfacing emerging and established rural technology ecosystems, to providing information to Opportunity Zone investors.
Indiana Business Research Center | StatsAmerica
Since 2008, the goal of StatsAmerica has been to provide actionable data for economic developers and planners to use in site requests, developing metrics, grant writing, and strategic planning. Data items from hundreds of data sets including dozens of federal and state sources along with some commercial or private source data are featured in a variety of tools in the form of maps, graphs, comparisons of time or geography, time series, and more.
National Association of Counties | County Explorer
The National Association of Counties (NACo) County Explorer is a one-stop-shop for data and profiles for each of the country’s 3,069 counties. This mapping tool provides easy access to the latest available data, with hundreds of indicators across categories ranging from county economies to policy issues, including transportation, finance, infrastructure, energy, health, public safety and much more.
This webinar series is presented as part of the NADO Research Foundation’s Stronger CEDS, Stronger Regions program, funded through a grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration. Please contact Brett Schwartz at [email protected] with any questions or for more information.
