AI-generated Key Takeaways
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The TIGER 2020 dataset from the US Census Bureau contains over 240,000 polygon features representing census block groups across the United States, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Island areas.
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This dataset provides detailed geographic information including land and water area, various census codes, and coordinates for the internal point of each block group.
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Usage of this data for reports or publications requires citing the US Census Bureau and is subject to their terms and conditions for data access via API.

- Dataset Availability
- 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z–2020-01-02T00:00:00Z
- Dataset Provider
- United States Census Bureau
- Tags
Description
The United States Census Bureau regularly releases a geodatabase named TIGER. This dataset contains the 2020 census block groups, which is a cluster of blocks within the same census tract that have the same first digit of their four-digit census block number. There are just over 240,000 polygon features covering the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Island areas.
For full technical details on all TIGER 2020 products, see the TIGER technical documentation.
Table Schema
Table Schema
Name | Type | Description |
---|---|---|
ALAND | DOUBLE | Land Area (square meters) |
AWATER | DOUBLE | Water Area (square meters) |
BLKGRPCE | STRING | Block Group Code |
COUNTYFP | STRING | County FIPS Code |
FUNCSTAT | STRING | Functional Status (S = Statistical) |
GEOID | STRING | Unique Identifier of Summary Level, Characteristic Iteration, US, State, County, Tract, Block Group Code |
INTPTLAT | DOUBLE | Internal Point Latitude |
INTPTLON | DOUBLE | Internal Point Longitude |
MTFCC | STRING | MAF/TIGER Feature Classification Code |
NAMELSAD | STRING | Full Name |
STATEFP | STRING | State FIPS Code |
TRACTCE | STRING | Census Tract Code |
Terms of Use
Terms of Use
The U.S. Census Bureau offers some of its public data in machine-readable format via an Application Programming Interface (API). All of the content, documentation, code and related materials made available to you through the API are subject to these terms and conditions.
Citations
For the creation of any reports, publications, new data sets, derived products, or services resulting from the data set, users should cite the US Census Bureau.
Explore with Earth Engine
Code Editor (JavaScript)
var dataset = ee.FeatureCollection('TIGER/2020/BG'); var visParams = { min: 0.0, max: 1e7, palette: ['d8d9d9', 'aaaaaa', 'b6dfe9', '2ea3f2', '0c71c3'] }; // plotting the water area per polygon dataset = dataset.map(function (f) { return f.set('AWATER', ee.Number.parse(f.get('AWATER'))); }); var image = ee.Image().float().paint(dataset, 'AWATER'); Map.setCenter(-81.99172, 29.74101, 9); Map.addLayer(ee.Image(1), {min:0, max:1}, 'background'); Map.addLayer(image, visParams, 'TIGER/2020/BG'); Map.addLayer(dataset, null, 'for Inspector', false);
Visualize as a FeatureView
A FeatureView
is a view-only, accelerated representation of a
FeatureCollection
. For more details, visit the
FeatureView
documentation.
Code Editor (JavaScript)
var fvLayer = ui.Map.FeatureViewLayer('TIGER/2020/BG_FeatureView'); var visParams = { opacity: 1, color: { property: 'AWATER', mode: 'linear', palette: ['d8d9d9', 'aaaaaa', 'b6dfe9', '2ea3f2', '0c71c3'], min: 0, max: 1e7 } }; fvLayer.setVisParams(visParams); fvLayer.setName('Water area by US census block group'); Map.setCenter(-74.0637, 40.6852, 13); Map.add(fvLayer);