Bureau of the Census—MAF/TIGER Accuracy Improvement Project (MTAIP)

MAF—Master Address File
The MAF is a complete and current list of all addresses and locations where people live, as well as the addresses or locations where people work. Also, the MAF is intended to contain information that identifies methods for the Census Bureau to communicate with the residents or employees at these addresses and locations.

TIGER—Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Reference System
TIGER is the system and digital database developed at the Census Bureau to support the decennial census and other Census Bureau statistical programs. The topological structure of the TIGER database defines the types, locations, names, and relationships of streets, rivers, railroads, and other geographic features to each other and to the numerous geographic entities for which the Census Bureau tabulates data from its censuses and household surveys.

Project Objectives
The primary goal of the MTAIP is the delivery of accurate, improved, and current information to the MAF/TIGER database. This improvement will provide corrected coordinates for current TIGER features and will identify new features not now in TIGER with accurate coordinates and required attributes for the United States, Puerto Rico, and the associated Island Areas. A further goal is development of a maintenance mechanism to regularly update the inventory of features in the TIGER database. This project will accurately locate over 45 million geographic features within the United States and its territories for use within the Census Bureau’s decennial census. This will facilitate the use of GPS-equipped portable devices as part of the decennial census process. A spatially improved and more complete MAF/TIGER database will enable enumerators to get to the proper location efficiently, significantly reducing the costs of field enumeration.Harris will perform the initial improvement for the database.

Other Important Benefits
This comprehensive database is also used by a broad cross-section of government customers including:

• Improved accuracy and completeness in redistricting political district boundaries and the corresponding population data to determine the number of delegates to the U.S.
• House of Representatives
• Location of census statistics directly affects the distribution of $185B/yr in federal funds to state, county, and local government programs such as schools, transportation projects, Medicare, and others
• Supports all statistical sampling conducted yearly to keep the demographic data current
• Transportation layer for USGS National Map Program
• Critical geospatial data layer for Homeland Security activities
• Created in cooperation with state and local governments; direct benefit to state and local governments for urban planning and E-911

MAF/TIGER Attribution

• Street center-lines and their names
• Lakes, streams, and their names
• Railroads
• Geographic entity boundaries, names, and codes (for governmental units, census tracts, census blocks, etc.)
• Housing unit locations (selected areas)
• Key geographic locations (for airports, schools, etc.)
• ZIP codes and address ranges (for streets with city-style addresses)
• Mailing address, if one exists
• Descriptive address, when no city-style address exists
• Census geographic location
• Source and history data

Also used by commercial customers for:

• Demographic studies
• Planning
• Address geocoding
• On-board vehicle navigation systems
• Commercial map generation

Distributed Production Management System

• Centralizes information control
• Orchestrates activities ongoing at geographically distributed locations
• Facilitates oversight
• Web-based, anytime, anywhere access to status