GIS Analysis

3rc's partners include school districts, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, social service agencies, community development corporations, and libraries. Our partners all share one thing in common: a need to better understand the people they serve.

Allegheny County Library Association
          
3rc worked with the Allegheny County Library Association (ACLA) to visualize their patrons and analyze available data in the Information Commons in order to answer the following questions. What areas are library users coming from? What is the demographic makeup of users? Where are the gaps in library users? What is the demographic makeup of non-users? Through our analysis 3rc was able to identify the populations they were serving effectively and the populations that use the library for non-traditional use. Our efforts were extremely timely in that they helped ACLA leadership communicate the importance of libraries in our most underserved communities to the Regional Asset District (RAD), when funding formulas and subsequently dollar amounts were in jeopardy.

Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh
          
3rc worked with the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh and identified population densities to help focus marketing efforts. A number of factors were looked into including number of youth, demographic makeup, total revenue from zip codes, and legislative boundaries.

Hill District Report

As the Hill District community prepared to develop a community investment strategy in preparation for their community master planning process under the recently negotiated Community Benefits Agreement, 3rc worked closely with Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon) and Dewey & Kaye to provide community wide development activity, demographic, and socio-economic analysis to secure BNY Mellon’s $3 Million Dollar investment over the next 6 years through the State’s Neighborhood Partnership Program (NPP). The analysis provided by 3rc was crucial for the community’s case to the State as to why this type of investment was necessary to support the Hill District’s continuing revitalization.

Local Government Academy
          
3rc worked with the Local Government Academy (LGA) to visualize the competiveness of local governing board elections for the November 2009 elections. LGA collected election data from municipalities across the 10 county regions in Southwestern PA and 3rc assisted by visualizing this information based upon a definition for election competiveness. The final report painted a picture of Local Governing Board Republican primary competiveness, Local Governing Board Democratic primary competiveness, and Local Governing Board general election competiveness for the November 2009 elections. This helped LGA assess and communicate the wide variances in competiveness in our local elections.

Mayor’s Youth Commission

While serving as a member of the City of Pittsburgh’s Mayor’s Youth Commission, 3rc was asked to provide information analysis to examine distressed communities throughout the City of Pittsburgh as part of the Mayor’s initiative to target community investment in support of improving the lives of our City’s youth. 3rc’s analysis showed that the Hill Top neighborhoods were in most need of programmatic investments for youth and thus supported the Mayor’s Office’s interest in leveraging CDBG funding to build a Community Center for the Hill Top community.

McAuley Ministries

3rc played a vital role in developing the community investment strategy of McAuley Ministries, the grant-making arm of the Pittsburgh Mercy Health System focused on grant-making in the Pittsburgh neighborhoods traditionally served by the Sisters—the Hill District, Uptown, and West Oakland—and the sponsored ministries of the Sisters in southwestern Pennsylvania. Working in partnership with Dewey & Kaye, 3rc provided block level community analysis of afterschool programmatic activity, community demographics, and other socio-economic variables that helped Michelle Rone Cooper, Executive Director McAuley Ministries, develop and launch their grant-making strategy.

Pittsburgh Promise

Given 3rc’s track record in providing valuable information analysis to educators, libraries, non-profit organizations, and community development corporations, the Pittsburgh Promise asked 3rc to support their work in analyzing and communicating the impact and value of the Pittsburgh community’s investment in the Pittsburgh Promise. Working closely with Saleem Ghubril, Executive Director Pittsburgh Promise, 3rc collected and analyzed educational statistics, demographics, and a wide variety of socio-economic information to support the evaluation of the Promise and it’s potential in transforming our City’s public education.

University of Wisconsin-Madison
          
3rc is working with researcher Dr. Peter M. Miller from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to highlight how “outside of school” factors are tied to school achievement and broader child and student development. Dr. Miller was one of the first active users of Community Insight and immediately saw the value of the tool and the data that is in the Information Commons. The projects’ focus is around the point that while school achievement measures are very important and should be purposefully pursued, such efforts must be joined by comprehensive social services and policies that engage community-level dilemmas like unemployment, crime, and poverty.