Northern Kentucky Atlas Serves as Data Resource for Region

By David McAleese , NKY Tri-ED

MORE THAN 200 UNIQUE DATA VARIABLES ARE AVAILABLE ON THE Northern Kentucky Atlas, a community-accessible data platform launched by Northern Kentucky Tri-ED in late 2022.

This tool provides users with a wealth of information for Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties.

The Atlas was developed out of a desire to make data free and easily available to the community with the goal of providing a baseline benchmark that allows us to highlight our region’s strengths while also bringing attention to some of the challenges we face. Over time, the tool will enable us to track progress around key metrics that reflect our goal of prosperity for all Northern Kentucky residents.

The platform enables us to collect, analyze and disseminate data to the community, while also putting that power in the hands of individual users.

We have enjoyed strong economic growth in Northern Kentucky in recent years. However, as we look toward the future, maintaining this momentum will become more challenging as resources such as land and talent become increasingly scarce. As Tri-ED Research Director, I believe it is important to utilize data to help better understand the factors that have the potential to disrupt or hinder our economic vitality.

We can’t begin to address problems in our community, or celebrate our successes, without this understanding, as well as aligning with community leaders and other key stakeholders on what our priorities should be. The Atlas can help pinpoint areas in the community where we may be at risk of leaving segments of our community behind as our economy grows.

Users of the Atlas can explore data across eight categories: demographics, infrastructure, quality of life, education, economics, health, housing, and workforce. Each of these categories include detailed topics that provide data on socioeconomics, demographics, environmental factors, health behaviors and outcomes, and more.

With its mapping and visualization functions, most data measurements can be viewed spatially at the county, municipality, zip code, and census tract levels, allowing us to better understand differences between places and geographies across the Northern Kentucky region.

Not only will this dashboard allow leaders to gain important insights into their communities, areas in Northern Kentucky can also be compared to one another, the overall Cincinnati metropolitan area, or an additional 12 “peer” metropolitan areas, such as Pittsburgh or Memphis. These peer metro areas are generally those with which Northern Kentucky often competes for economic development projects, but are also similar to Northern Kentucky in demographic composition and population size.

We worked with the Chicago-based company Metopio to create the Atlas. Metopio COO Angie Grover said they included topics that they believe will be interesting and valuable to the whole community. Each data set is curated from publicly available sources, which are referenced on the dashboard.

“Data-informed community decision-making” is one of four key initiatives developed by Tri-ED, with public and private sector input, as part of our Build + Elevate NKY campaign. “Making data publicly available by developing a dashboard on an open, interactive website” was one of three actions listed for this initiative.

The Atlas dashboard can be found at atlas.northernkentuckyusa.com.