TDM-INP-TAZ-to-CensusTract

This script performs a spatial join between TAZ centroids and U.S. Census tracts in Utah to assign each TAZ to its corresponding Census Tract GEOID. The result is exported as a CSV for further geographic or demographic analysis.

Workflow Overview

1. Libraries & Environment Setup

• Imports core libraries: pandas, numpy, matplotlib, os
• Uses arcgis Python API for spatial operations
• Sets working and results directories

2. Input Data

• Tract shapefile: tl_2018_49_tract.shp
• TAZ centroids shapefile: TAZCentroids.shp

3. Spatial Processing

• Loads shapefiles into Spatially Enabled DataFrames (sdf)
• Verifies and sets correct spatial reference (EPSG:26912)
• Performs spatial join: assigns each TAZ centroid to a Census Tract polygon

4. Output

• Extracts key fields: TAZID and matched GEOID
• Saves result as: