Business Analyst Web App - Historical Data

[KevinO_Brien]

I remember (months ago) seeing historical data was available for many of the data points in the ArcGIS Business Analyst Web Application. However, now that I would like to use that data, it does not seem to be available. I see several blog post type Business Analyst 'updates' referencing Historical Data and it's availability, but that does not seem to be the case now. Can anyone confirm for me that the Historical Data is no longer available, or help me to find it? If it's no longer available, does any one know why, or if it will be made accessible anytime soon?

Thanks,

Kevin 

[Anonymous User]

Hi Kevin, 

Thank you for your question. You will find historical data for three variables in Business Analyst - total population, number of households, and the number of housing units for 2010 - 2020 annually. 

Here is a link to the White Paper: Esri Time Series Methodology

Please let me know if you have other questions.

Regards, Alice Kavanagh

Esri Sales

akavanagh@esri.com

[FasilTiru]

Hello Kevin,

The historical data is still available. For example, here is the historical population and housing data:

You'll also see these historical variables in infographics:

I hope this helps.

Fasil T.

Business Analyst Team

[KevinO_Brien]

Hi Fasil,

Thanks so much for the response. I see now that the blog post, published by H. Dondapati, did specify that historical data was available only for those variables. 

Does the Business Analyst team have any intention to make historical data available for other variables? For instance, back in August when the 2020 data update was made available, why not also give users access to the 2019 data as well as the previous years' data? I imagine other users would also find this useful.

Thanks again,

Kevin

[FasilTiru]

Hi Kevin,

Just discussed this with our data management team and confirmed that we currently don't have plans to make the full set of prior years' data available through the BA web app. However, we will continue to evaluate additional data variables that we can include in the Historical Time Series dataset beyond the currently available total population, households, and housing units. As might know, this functionality is currently available in BA Desktop/Pro with the datasets installed locally. 

Thanks,

Fasil

[FasilTiru]

I totally agree that this can be useful for other users as well. So I encourage you to add your idea here ArcGIS Ideas so that other BA users can promote it as well. 

Thanks,

Fasil

[Anonymous User]

Hey @KevinO_Brien ,

One more follow up question for you to tack on with Fasil. Can you share some of the variables that would be most valuable to you, if historical data was made available?

Thanks!

Aaron