An accurate address list is the cornerstone of a high quality Census. In the past, we have walked every street in every block to get every housing unit. In 2020, we want to visit and check only areas of change. The Geography Division plans, coordinates, and administers all geographic and cartographic activities needed to facilitate the Census Bureau's statistical programs throughout the United States and its territories. The division manages the geographic programs to continuously update the addresses, features, and boundaries of geographic entities in its nationwide, automated Geographic Support System (GSS).

The Census Bureau is the lead federal agency for governmental unit boundaries under the direction of OMB Circular A-16. The Census Bureau’s geographic framework used in this work is the Master Address File/Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) database. Research focuses on examining the MAF/TIGER maintenance processes, and improvements that can be made. In partnership with the Geographic Support System Program, our research focuses on both workloads and field productivity, and emphasizes reducing workloads through the use of statistical models and interactive review of imagery that identify geographic areas where roads and/or addresses have changed since the last Census. Evaluations include both quality and cost impacts. This work will culminate in a design where address updating for the 2020 Census only needs to be conducted in areas experiencing significant change and for which we have no other source(s) of information to update our files for these changes.

March 28, 2014