Soren DeOrlow
Data, Models & Decisions Health, Ethics & Society

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USDA Food Access Research Atlas — North County San Diego

May 2024 · DSCI 549 · Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science

Analyzing food-desert conditions in San Diego's North County by comparing USDA census-tract data from 2015 and 2019 — tracking shifts in poverty, SNAP enrollment, and demographic composition across 72,864 tracts.

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Built as the final project for DSCI 549 — Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science at USC Viterbi. The project uses the USDA Food Access Research Atlas to quantify how food-desert conditions in North County San Diego shifted between 2015 and 2019, and to contextualize those shifts against demographic and economic change.

What the project does

  • Ingests USDA Food Access Research Atlas data for 72,864 census tracts nationally; filters and focuses on North County San Diego.
  • Compares 2015 and 2019 snapshots across multiple metrics: low-income flags, low-access flags, SNAP household shares, vehicle-access rates, and racial/ethnic composition.
  • Renders geospatial maps and comparative charts with Matplotlib + GIS layers.
  • Frames findings in terms of public-health equity rather than retail geography.

Why it matters

A food desert is not only a distance-to-grocery problem — it’s a compound of income, transport, and demographic change. The atlas lets you see which tracts became food-access-constrained over four years and which improved, and to read those changes against the demographic moves underneath.