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PCensus tips |
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PCensus Tip: Create a target list based on Postal Carrier Routes, School Districts, Telephone Wire Center areas or other mapped areas. Note: this tip sheet is illustrated using PCensus™ for MapInfo®. The steps required in PCensus for ArcView® will be slightly different; PCensus for MapPoint® cannot be used for this purpose. Why would you do this? A postal carrier route is a set of neighboring delivery addresses. An organization planning an advertising campaign might need to select the carrier routes to which unaddressed mail pieces can be delivered, based on selected demographic criteria; for example only those carrier routes whose income is above a specified threshold. Carrier routes can be conveniently represented as boundaries in a map layer, allowing PCensus to re-aggregate demographic data and create a summary for each route. This tip-sheet illustrates a suggested method for using this capability. Background The PCensus “Target List” feature lets us create a list of geographical areas (targets), showing selected demographic quantities (dimensions). The list can be ranked on the basis of a selected dimension, and we can also apply filters, for example to display only targets that have average household income greater than $50,000. In its simplest form, the target list contains “predefined” target areas that correspond to the geographic levels contained in the PCensus database; for example, we can list all the counties in California, or all the ZIP codes in San Diego. For many applications, we need to characterize types of target areas that do not correspond to the predefined geographies; we may want to list demographics for postal carrier routes, school districts or for sales territories or franchise areas defined for a specific business. All that is needed to do this is a map layer in which the territories are represented as polygons. To illustrate the process of targeting mapped areas, we will use a map layer containing postal Carrier Route Boundaries. We might want to know the household count for each boundary, as well as other information like average income, when planning a direct mail campaign. Carrier Route Boundaries, School Districts, Telephone Wire Center areas and many other types of boundary maps are available. Contact Tetrad for information on products for your specific requirements. Alternatively, you can create your own boundary maps for sales territories or other types of areas using MapInfo. Selecting Boundaries To begin, start a new PCensus project for a mapped study area, and open the boundary map layer that you wish to use. If you are using the study area wizard, click the Cancel button.
Now we can select the specific Carrier Route boundaries that we
want to include in our target list. We can do this in a number of
ways, for example by using the MapInfo Selection tool Now use the PCensus “Use Selected” tool
Continue through the Study Area Wizard steps until the Lifestyle Target List step and check the box to create a target list and define the Dimensions that you wish to display.
In the Next Wizard Step, select the option to create a Target row for each “Shape”.
Continue to the end of the Study Area Wizard and Search the areas.
PCensus displays the Target List for the selected Carrier Routes. We could now export the displayed data to an external file for further processing. Using the Select dialog
This query selects only those Carrier Routes in ZIP Code 07901. Do you have the latest Version of PCensus? Let us hear from you!
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or the
“Marquee Select” 
. Advanced
users might use the MapInfo Select dialog, for example to
select all the routes contained in a specific ZIP code (
to convert
the selected areas to study areas.
