In cases where membership or attendance figures were available, places of worship were selected for inclusion that had 750 or more members or attendees.
This dataset was created by TechniGraphics, Inc. for the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
Use Cases: Use cases describe how the data may be used and help to define and clarify requirements.
1. A disaster or health emergency has occurred, or is predicted for a locality. Places of Worship or congregations that may be affected must be identified.
2. An assessment as to the evacuation needs and issues for a given area needs to be made as part of a disaster mitigation plan. Places of Worship that may need to be evacuated must be identified.
3. Facilities that can serve as shelters must be identified.
4. A threat has been made toward Places of Worship and other religious institutions. These locations need to be identified, their leadership contacted, and their buildings protected.
The Places of Worship dataset is not intended to include homes of religious leaders (unless they also serve as a place of organized worship), religious schools (unless they also serve as a place of organized worship for people other than those enrolled in the school), mikvahs, hillels, and buildings that serve a purely administrative purpose.
This dataset only includes Christian, Judaic, and Islamic places of worship. In future updates, TGS will add places of worship for other religions.
This dataset is comprised entirely of non licensed restricted data that was obtained through State Partners and TGS research.
On 08/07/2007, TGS ceased making phone calls to verify information about religious locations. Therefore, most entities in this dataset were verified using alternative reference sources such as topographic maps, parcel maps, various sources of imagery, and internet research. The [CONTHOW] (contact how) value for these entities has been set to "ALT REF".
Records with "-DOD" appended to the end of the [NAME] value are located on a military base, as defined by the Defense Installation Spatial Data Infrastructure (DISDI) military installations and military range boundaries.
Text fields in this dataset have been set to all upper case and trimmed to facilitate consistent database engine search results.
Non printable and control characters were removed from all text fields. All diacritics (e.g., the German umlaut or the Spanish tilde) have been replaced with their closest equivalent English character. This was done to facilitate using this dataset with database systems that may not support such characters.
The currentness of this dataset is indicated by the [CONTDATE] field. Based upon the values in this field, the oldest record dates from 07/16/2007 and the newest record dates from 03/27/2008.
TechniGraphics, Inc. 3351 Eastbrook Drive Fort Collins, CO 80525 970-224-4996 8am - 5pm, Monday - Friday, Mountain Time <http://www.tgstech.com/gis.asp>
Florida Division of Emergency Management <http://www.floridadisaster.org/index.asp> <http://www.floridadisaster.org/gis>
TechniGraphics, Inc. Attribute Accuracy Report: The name, address, city, state, and five (5) digit zip codes were verified to be correct through alternate resources as of the date indicated by the [CONTDATE] field. The existence of the entity was also verified, as well as whether or not it met the criteria for inclusion in this dataset. Four (4) digit zip code extensions were derived from USPS (United States Postal Service) data and were not verified.
ID Check: The [ID] field is not blank and all IDs are unique.
Coordinate Check: Coordinates are not null or zero and the x and y fields match the shape.
Basic Address Check: Physical addresses were verified to be non blank and to not be a "PO Box", "General Delivery", "Highway Contract", or "Rural Route" address.
Highway Address without Type Check: Physical addresses containing the word "Highway" or "Route" were verified to also contain a type designator such as "State", "US", or "County", if one actually exists for the highway or route. These type designators are often missing from addresses, leading to confusion if more than one "Highway" of the given number exists in an area.
Basic Name Check: Entity name is not blank, is not the same as entity city, and has a minimum of 2 characters. Name does not contain punctuation characters that can interfere with database operations, such as " (quote) and * (asterisk).
Basic Phone Check: All phone numbers (including the area code) are ten (10) numeric digits. Alphabetic characters have been converted to the corresponding numeric digit.
County FIPS to State Compare Check: The county represented by the tabular FIPS Code is actually in the state specified in the [STATE] field.
County Name to State Compare Check: The county represented by the tabular county name is actually in the state specified in the [STATE] field.
Phone Number Format Check: Phone numbers (including area code) were verified to be formatted as nnn-nnn-nnnn.
Zip Code Check: The zip code is five (5) or nine (9) numeric digits, is listed in the postal database, is in the same state as indicated by the entity's [STATE] value, and is not a PO Box only zip code.
Zip City Check: The entity's zip code and its city were verified to match according to the USPS Address Information System (AIS).
Collocation Check: Entities with different addresses must not share the exact same geospatial location.
Geographic Spell Check: Words that appear in the entity name were checked against a standard English word list (and Spanish word list for entities in Puerto Rico). Words not appearing in these standard word lists were then checked against names appearing in the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) of geographic features that are located within 25 miles of the entity. Proper names were manually reviewed for correct spelling.
City Check: Entity city is not blank and is found in the NAVTEQ Named Places file within 25 miles.
NPA_NXX Check: The NPA (area code) and NXX (exchange) of the phone number form a valid combination according to data from the North American Number Planning Administration (NANPA).
Area Code Distance Check: The entity's area code is valid and the entity is not more than 25 miles from its area code boundary (unless TGS has previously verified that the phone number rings to a HQ location or otherwise does not ring to the entity).
Some smaller denominations are not currently represented in this dataset.
The Places of Worship dataset is not intended to include homes of religious leaders (unless they also serve as a place of organized worship), religious schools (unless they also serve as a place of organized worship for people other than those enrolled in the school), mikvahs, hillels, and buildings that serve a purely administrative purpose.
This dataset only includes Christian, Judaic, and Islamic places of worship. In future updates, TGS will add places of worship for other religions.
Records with "-DOD" appended to the end of the [NAME] value are located on a military base, as defined by the Defense Installation Spatial Data Infrastructure (DISDI) military installations and military range boundaries.
GeoPlan Center Accuracy Report: This data is provided 'as is' and its horizontal positional accuracy has not been verified by GeoPlan
2) NAICS Codes and NAICS Descriptions were assigned based on the entity name, web research, and the type of data sources that were used to create the database.
3) Four (4) digit United States Postal Service (USPS) zip code extensions were assigned based on the USPS Address Information System (AIS).
4) County names and FIPS Codes were assigned through a spatial join.
5) All text fields were set to upper case.
6) Leading and trailing spaces were trimmed from all text fields. These spaces can interfere with some database queries.
7) Non printable and diacritic characters were removed from all text fields. These values have been found to prevent data from being loaded into some spatial database engines.
The original dataset projection was: Spatial_Reference_Information: Horizontal_Coordinate_System_Definition: Geographic: Latitude_Resolution: 0.000000 Longitude_Resolution: 0.000000 Geographic_Coordinate_Units: Decimal degrees Geodetic_Model: Horizontal_Datum_Name: D_WGS_1984 Ellipsoid_Name: WGS_1984 Semi-major_Axis: 6378137.000000 Denominator_of_Flattening_Ratio: 298.257224
The dataset was renamed to: fdem_religion_jul08.shp
The dataset was reprojected to the FGDL Albers NAD83 HARN projection.
The dataset features were matched to their 1-kilometer United States National Grid (USNG) address via a spatial join, the USNG address can be found in the USNG_FL_1K field.
The USNG is an alpha-numeric reference system based on the UTM coordinate system and is similar to the Military Grid Reference System. Use of the USNG ensures a uniform grid mapping and positional reporting system for search and rescue, emergency planning, response, and recovery.
How to Read a United States National Grid (USNG) Spatial Address <http://www.fgdc.gov/usng/how-to-read-usng/index_html>
Three additional fields were added. DESCRIPT field based on NAME FGDLAQDATE field based on the date the data was acquired by FGDL from the source. AUTOID field based on FID + 1, GeoPlan Center feature identification number.
Finally the attribute table was upper-cased and the metadata was updated.
Furthermore, the GIS data available in the FGDL are provided 'as is'. The University of Florida GeoPlan Center makes no warranties, guaranties or representations as to the truth, accuracy or completeness of the data provided by the data sources. The University of Florida GeoPlan Center makes no representations or warranties about the quality or suitability of the materials, either expressly or implied, including but not limited to any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. The University of Florida GeoPlan Center shall not be liable for any damages suffered as a result of using, modifying, contributing or distributing the materials.
A note about data scale:
Scale is an important factor in data usage. Certain scale datasets are not suitable for some project, analysis, or modeling purposes. Please be sure you are using the best available data.
1:24000 scale datasets are recommended for projects that are at the county level. 1:24000 data should NOT be used for high accuracy base mapping such as property parcel boundaries. 1:100000 scale datasets are recommended for projects that are at the multi-county or regional level. 1:125000 scale datasets are recommended for projects that are at the regional or state level or larger.
Vector datasets with no defined scale or accuracy should be considered suspect. Make sure you are familiar with your data before using it for projects or analysis. Every effort has been made to supply the user with data documentation. For additional information, see the References section and the Data Source Contact section of this documentation. For more information regarding scale and accuracy, see our webpage at: <http://geoplan.ufl.edu/education.html>