Arizona Statewide Demographics Dashboard
A dynamic dashboard displaying summaries and comparisons of demographic data for all individuals in Arizona who have received any services from 2017 through present as documented in the Arizona Homelessness Management Information System (HMIS). Dynamic filters allow for instant summaries and comparisons of highly specific demographic groups.
This project focuses on the creation of a dynamic dashboard which summarizes demographic data for all individuals and households who have received any service as recorded in HMIS from the year 2017 through present. Below are some key features of these dashboards:
Visualize sociodemographic features such as age group, gender, race/ethnicity, individual/household-reported income, veteran status, disability status, and domestic violence history. Also visualize other features, such as geographic region where first service occurred (e.g., continuum of care, county, etc.), whether categorized as "First Time Homeless," and other homelessness-related features.
Visualizations depicting household-level characteristics, changes through time, geographic patterns, and active cases.
Dashboards allowing users to create their own customized comparisons.
Filters allow for dashboards to depict highly specific demographic combinations. For example, filters could be used to only show Black families who have ever reported any income and who are located in Maricopa county. These filtered numbers will always be displayed alongside total numbers for all people, allowing for comparisons.
Results with very small numbers of cases (<10) are suppressed.
Methods:
Sociodemographic data for the entire state of Arizona are consolidated, restructured, and re-coded to allow for reporting of summary characteristics. In addition, all HMIS IDs are removed and a random ID is generated for each person and each household to fully anonymize all data. After this, the data are ported over to the dashboards which have been created using R Shiny. Data are refreshed monthly.
Status:
We have completed the consolidation, restructuring, re-coding, and anonymization of the data, and all data have been ported over to the R Shiny dashboards. A first iteration/beta version of the dashboards depicting general sociodemographic patterns for all individuals has been completed, and we are currently developing dashboards which depict household-level characteristics and patterns since 2017.