526
July 2015
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
PROFESSIONAL
INSIGHT
An interview with Jim Castagneri, Geographer at
the U.S. Census Bureau about TIGER. Jim has
been a Geographer for the U.S. Census Bureau since
1987. He began his career at Census as part of the
team building TIGER using analog cartographic
techniques in the early 1980’s. He later shifted
his focus to digital TIGER maintenance and GIS.
Jim was instrumental in bringing modern spatial
analysis to the Census Bureau using commercial
GIS and received the Department of Commerce
Bronze medal for the application of GIS technology
in survey management. He resides with his family
in Denver, Colorado.
I N T E R V I E W
TIGER
Geography and the Census; why is this connection so
important that it lead to the creation of TIGER?
The Census is not only about counting people, it’s also
about counting them in the right place. The creation of TI-
GER stemmed from the realization that we needed a more
efficient way to distribute, collect, and tabulate the mil-
lions of census responses to the correct geography. With
the growth of computerized mailing lists in the 1960’s, the
Census Bureau recognized the potential of the U.S. Postal
Service as a primary means to distribute and collect ques-
tionnaires. This required a way to code these question-
naires into their respective geographies. To accomplish
this, we developed our Address Coding Guide (ACG) in the
1970’s. The ACGs evolved into GBF/DIME (Geographic
Base File/Dual Independent Mapping and Encoding) files
in 1980 and these in turn evolved into TIGER for 1990.
The MAF/TIGER system now facilitates a wide variety
of activities including the distribution and tabulation of
millions of questionnaires from the decennial census and
other surveys.
What is TIGER and why, 25-years later does it significantly
impact our lives on a daily bases?
TIGER, now referred to as the “MAF/TIGER system”;
stands for ‘Master Address File/ Topologically Integrat-
ed Geographic Encoding and Referencing’ and is the
very foundation of the U.S. Census Bureau. It was built
through a massive cooperative effort with the USGS in the
1980’s. The MAF/TIGER system provides the geographic
framework and sample universe for all fieldwork and sub-
sequent tabulation. Additionally, TIGER/Line products
have become the defacto standard in the U.S. for GIS anal-
ysis of demographic data from the Census Bureau and oth-
er agencies. Simply put, the MAF/TIGER system is the of-
ficial storehouse for all political and statistical geography
of the United States. Every state depends on it indirectly
for the distribution of billions in federal dollars every year.
What was being used prior to TIGER?
Up though the 1980 Census, we used modified paper
maps from state and local governments to manage the
collection and tabulation of the decennial census. To fa-
cilitate that massive operation, Geographers would scour
the countryside visiting state and local governments for
pre-existing maps that would be modified for census use
by scores of cartographers. We then used age-old car-
tographic techniques such as ZIP-A -Tone shading and
drafting pens to customize the maps we needed. This
type of map production was extremely time consuming,
costly, and error-prone. There was no consistent scale or
content and it was very difficult to make corrections. We
began standardizing what would later become a “census
map” with our Metropolitan Map Series (MMS) for the
1970 and 1980 Censuses. Before TIGER, there wasn’t
much consistency.
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Vol. 81, No. 7, July 2015, pp. 526–527.
0099-1112/15/526–527
© 2015 American Society for Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing
doi: 10.14358/PERS.81.7.526
