Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census.
Access to Basic Retail Facilities
– The percentage of NSA residents who live near a grocery
store and/or a pharmacy.
By utilizing the tax parcel database, each tax record was assigned to an NSA using GIS. Each tax
record was analyzed for residential use and this number was used as a proxy for the total number
of residential units.
Grocery stores and pharmacy addresses were identified using Google Maps and grocery store
and pharmacy websites. This data was geocoded and given spatial attributes in GIS and buffered
by 1 mile. The tax parcels that fell within the buffer boundaries were as a proxy for the number
of residential units with access to basic retail. The number of residential units accessible to basic
retail was divided by the total number of residential units to get the percentage of residents
accessible to basic retail for each NSA. A reverse Z score was used to prioritize NSAs with
lower access to basic retail facilities.
Sources: Google Maps, 2013.
Real Estate Assessor, Chesapeake, 2012.
Access to Park Facilities
– The percent of residential parcels within ¼ mile of a neighborhood
park and/or 1 mile of a district park.
By utilizing the tax parcel database, each tax record was assigned to an NSA using GIS. Each tax
record was analyzed for residential use and this number was used as a proxy for the total number
of residential units.
Neighborhood parks were buffered by ¼ mile and district parks were buffered by 1 mile. The tax
parcels that fell within the buffer boundaries were used to calculate the number of residential
units accessible to parks. The number of residential units accessible to parks and recreation was
divided by the total number of residential units to get the percentage of residents accessible to
parks for each NSA. A reverse Z score was used to prioritize NSAs with lower access to park
facilities.
Sources: Information Technology, Chesapeake, 2013.
Real Estate Assessor, Chesapeake, 2012.
Proximity to Noxious Facilities
– The percentage of NSA residents living within ¼ mile of a
noxious facility.
Noxious facilities include all facilities contained in the Air Facility System (AFS), a computer
based repository for information about air pollution maintained by the Environmental Protection
Agency. This information comes from source reports by various stationary sources of air
pollution, such as electric power plants, steel mills, factories. The geographic coordinates
provided by this database were used to create a point system representing their locations.
November 2014
A-10
