US Census 2022 - Spatial Crosswalk (Tracts to H3)

This dataset provides a spatial index crosswalk between US Census Tracts (2022) and the H3 geospatial indexing system. It allows for efficient integration of census data with other H3-indexed datasets.

Note: This dataset currently contains only the geometry and identifiers (FIPS codes). It does not contain demographic attributes (population, income, etc.), which should be joined by FIPS code from the appropriate Census API or table.

Source

• Producer: US Census Bureau (TIGER/Line Shapefiles)
• Year: 2022
• Level: Census Tract
• Processing: Boettiger Lab (H3 Indexing)

Data Format

The dataset is partitioned by H3 resolution 0 index for efficient global querying.

• Parquet: s3://public-census/year=2022/tracts-hex-z10.parquet
• H3 Resolution: 10 (Average area ~0.015 km²)

Data Dictionary

Usage

Use this dataset as a "spine" to map tabular Census data to H3 hexagons.

1. Get Census Data: Download demographic data (e.g., ACS 5-year estimates) for 2022 tracts using the Census API or libraries like tidycensus / cenpy.
2. Join: Join your tabular data to this dataset on the FIPS column (ensure FIPS codes are formatted consistently as 11-character strings).
3. Spatial Analysis: Use the h10 column to aggregate or correlate with other H3 datasets.

Citation

U.S. Census Bureau. (2022). TIGER/Line Shapefiles. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.html