November 19, 2014 – Bi-State Regional Commission offers three economic development reporting, visualization, and analysis tools to member governments, economic development organizations, and businesses to aid in decision-making.
Esri™Community Analyst contains thousands of demographic, Census, economic, health, crime, and business data variables for the entire United States, including historic, current, and projected data. Clients can get information for exact areas needed—including standard Census geographies, hand-drawn shapes, or rings or drive times around a location. Data can be displayed on maps or in detailed reports with charts and graphs.
Emsi™ Analyst is an economic modeling application that also features many demographic and economic data variables, which can be displayed in numerous reports. Detailed economic data is only available for the states of Illinois and Iowa and for the five-county Bi-State Region, plus five additional adjacent counties, but most demographics are available for the U.S. Data available includes occupations, industries, jobs, earnings, training and educational programs, gross regional product, exports & imports, and much more. One key tool is the Input/Output model. This can be used to determine the ripple effect of change in a region by adding or removing jobs, earnings, or sales in an industry. Another useful statistic is an area’s Location Quotient. It is a concentration of an industry or occupation in relation to the nation and communicates the uniqueness of that industry or occupation in a region.
Infogroup™ReferenceUSAGov is a business database with over 24 million records (U.S. businesses). Businesses can be queried by company name, business type (keyword or NAICS/SIC codes), location, business size (number of employees or sales volume), and much more. Bi-State staff can generate mailing and other business communication lists for members and also uses ReferenceUSAGov for creating top employers lists for various areas.
Bi-State subscribes to all three cloud-based tools and makes the data available free of charge to all member governments and economic development organizations and for a minimal charge to businesses and other interested parties. For more information, contact Lisa Miller, Data/GIS Director, 309.793.6302, ext. 133, lmiller@bistateonline.
