geo.lookup: Search Census geographies

Description

When working with the acs package and the acs.fetch and geo.make functions, it can be difficult to find exactly the right geographic units: geo.make expects single matches to the groups of arguments it is given, which can be problematic when trying to find names for places or county subdivisions, which are unfamiliar to many users (and often seem very close or redundant: e.g., knowing whether to look for "Moses Lake city" vs. "Moses Lake CDP"). To help, the geo.lookup function will search on the same arguments as geo.make, but outputs all the matches for your inspection.

Usage

geo.lookup(state, county, county.subdivision, place,
  american.indian.area, school.district, school.district.elementary,
  school.district.secondary, school.district.unified)

Arguments

state

either the two-digit numeric FIPS code for the state, the two-letter postal abbreviation, or a character string to match in the state name

county

either the numeric FIPS code for the county or a character string to match in the county name

county.subdivision

either the numeric FIPS code for the county subdivision or a character string to match in the county subdivision name

place

either the numeric FIPS code for the place or a character string to match in the place name

american.indian.area

either the numeric FIPS code for the American Indian Area/Alaska Native Area/Hawaiian Home Land, or a character string to match in the names of these Census areas

school.district

either the numeric FIPS code for the state school district (any type), or a character string to search for in the names of the school districts.

school.district.elementary

either the numeric FIPS code for the state school district (elementary), or a character string to search for in the names of these elementary school districts.

school.district.secondary

either the numeric FIPS code for the state school district (secondary), or a character string to search for in the names of these secondary school districts.

school.district.unified

either the numeric FIPS code for the state school district (unified), or a character string to search for in the names of these unified school districts.

Value

Returns a dataframe of the matching geographies, with one column for each of the given search terms.

Details

Unlike geo.make, geo.lookup searches for matches anywhere in geographic names (except when dealing with state names), and will output a dataframe showing candidates that match some or all of the arguments. (When multiple arguments are provided, the logic is a little complicated: basically, with the exception of American Indian Areas, to be included all geographies must match the given state name; when a county and a subdivision are both given, both must match; otherwise, geographies are included that match any --- but not necessarily all --- of the other arguments.)

Examples

Run this code

# NOT RUN {
geo.lookup(state="WA", county="Ska", county.subdivision="oo")
geo.lookup(state="WA", county="Kit", place="Ra")

# find all counties in WA or OR with capital M or B in name
geo.lookup(state=c("WA", "OR"), county=c("M","B"))

# find all unified school districts in Kansas with "Ma" in name
geo.lookup(state="KS", school.district.unified="Ma")

# find all american indian areas with "Hop" in name
geo.lookup(american.indian.area="Hop")
# }