About PNCIS
The Pittsburgh Neighborhood and Community Information System (PNCIS) is focused on the collection, storage and analysis of information vital to local community development efforts. PNCIS aggregates numerous data sets and provides visualization tools for stakeholders to monitor community conditions in the City of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. Data is available for over 500 thousand individual properties and 130 municipalities in Allegheny County including details on vacancy, tax delinquency, property ownership, assessment, foreclosure, crime, housing sales, elections, and land use.
The PNCIS is a project of the Urban and Regional Analysis Program at the University of Pittsburgh´s University Center for Social and Urban Research (UCSUR). PNCIS is also a partner of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP), a collaborative effort by the Urban Institute and 35 local partners across the nation. NNIP partners across the nation are working to further the development and use of neighborhood information systems in local policymaking and community building.
Over 600 people representing more than 200 local organizations use the PNCIS to inform planning efforts, promote neighborhood investment and revitalize communities. These users come from a variety of organizations, and include local, state, and federal government staff and elected officials, grantmakers, university researchers, students, staff and volunteers at community-based organizations.
PNCIS has developed an interactive mapping tool for users to access community information. Any volunteer or staff member of a nonprofit or governmental agency can receive free access to the data by completing a data sharing agreement.
Neighborhood research and news is shared with the community through The Pittsburgh Urban Blog and the Pittsburgh Economic Quarterly newsletter. Training sessions and online training materials support users of the PNCIS Website, and our users are encouraged to share their stories at our annual PNCIS Users´ Conference. We also host nationally-known experts in our "brown bag" speaker series and regularly respond to media requests, contributing to over 100 local, national, and international news stories since 2009.
Key local partners in the operation of the PNCIS include the Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development (PPND) and the City of Pittsburgh. UCSUR operates PNCIS in agreement with PPND, a leader in community development in the City of Pittsburgh.
