Human Services

The Illinois Network of Centers for Independent Living is a statewide coalition of the 23 regional centers for independent living (CIL) that serve Illinoisans with disabilities.  CILs promote full and equal access to our communities for those residents and visitors with disabilities.  The mission of INCIL is to help these regional centers share resources and collaborate on statewide issues such as funding and advocacy.

The Red Cross and FEMA jointly operate the National Shelter System, a comprehensive database of over 54,000 emergency shelters across the United States.  When shelters are activated during an emergency, this system is used to monitor locations, capacities, and other shelter information.  In addition to Red Cross and FEMA staff and volunteers, many state and local organizations use this information as well.

The New York Times, known for some first-class infographics and data visualizations, released this thought-provoking map of food stamp usage in the United States, on a county-by-county basis.  In addition to the county-level statistics, there are a number of call-outs and a related article.

One feature I thought was interesting, in addition to the elegant interactive map, was the sortable data table view of the underlying dataset.  Even cooler, if you don't feel like using the sortable dataset, the designers of the infographic have helpfully provided a link to download the raw underlying data itself in CSV format, so that you can analyze it yourself in OpenOffice.org Calc or Microsoft Excel!  Three cheers for open journalism.