Upcoming Changes to Regrid's Schema 2023

As we have been communicating in our monthly email the past few months we will be making some changes to the Regid Parcel schema in late October of this year.

The Finalized Schema and Data Dictionary are now available within this linked Sheet. Please see the “Q4 2023 Additions [wip]” tab.  Note that at some point shortly after the 30th of October there will be only a “Current” tab as the changes will no longer be “work in progress”.  The new fields are currently  highlighted in a green/mint color and are contained in sequence numbers: 6,7,8,22,41,72,87,88,89,90,96,97,98,99. Additionally, the fields being removed are shaded in a light pink color.

The below bullets offer a quick recap of what is changing:

• We are removing 6 rarely-used fields
• We are adding 7 new fields to all deliveries
• We are adding two new groups of attributes containing 7 fields to our Premium schema (total additional attributes = 14).

These changes will begin rolling out the week of October 30th. Depending on your delivery particulars, you will see this arrive around that date or in the following days (i.e. if you generally receive your update the first week of the month you will see it arrive in early November).  Please let us know if you have any questions about when you specifically will see this information made available to you.

We have also prepared a small data sample for you to review and utilize as you prepare for this upcoming change to the delivered schema. This link will automatically download the sample file.

Below are summarized details of everything that is changing and some other information you may find helpful and useful.

We will be removing the following columns from our schema. These columns were identified as redundant with other columns or being of low utility, and all have low fill rates: 

• sourceagent
• multistruct
• subsurfown
• subowntype
• sourceref
• sourcedate

We will be adding the following columns to our Premium Schema:  

• census_elementary_school_district: US Census listed elementary school district
• census_secondary_school_district: US Census listed secondary school district
• census_unified_school_district: US Census listed unified school district
• fema_flood_zone: FEMA Flood Zone Type
• fema_flood_zone_subtype: FEMA Flood Zone Subtype
• fema_flood_zone_data_date: The FEMA effective date of the flood zone data

• fema_flood_zone_raw: JSON field containing additional Flood Zone details such as instances where multiple Flood Zones are associated with a property.

We will be adding the following columns to our Standard and Premium Schemas:  

• account_number: Account Number; tax account number tracked by the county
• tax_id: A Tax ID number tracked by the county
• state_parcelnumb: A statewide parcel numbering system, if one is used by the state
• previous_owner: The previous owner or property grantor
• numrooms: The number of rooms as tracked by the assessor
• census_zcta: US Census Zip Code Tabulation Area
• szip5: The 5-digit situs zip

Standard and Premium Schema Additions

Here’s some additional detail on the 7 new fields being added to both of our schemas with our late October/early November delivery. 

These fields can be categorized into 3 general categories:

• Fields that will assist in matching to other datasets (account_number, tax_id, state_parcelnumb)
• Fields that provide greater property insight (previous_owner, numrooms)
• Discrete fields designed to assist users with focusing queries and searches on specific geographic areas (szip5, census_zcta).

Let’s dig into each of these categories in detail and better understand how they can help you.  

The account_number, tax_id, and state_parcelnumb additions will facilitate better matching for users who are linking the geographic data from Regrid to other sources of data.

• Challenge: counties across the nation use varied methods to uniquely identify property within their jurisdictions.
• Solutions:
  • Regrid already seeks to identify the “best” unique number for each county and map it to the parcelnumb field and attempt to match to the numbers utilized by official county websites.
  • Regrid already provides three alternate parcelnumb fields
  • Regrid already provides a version of parcelnumb without any formatting
  • (NEW) Adding discrete fields for account_number, tax_id, and state_parcelnumb delivers fields that are specifically labeled to reduce confusion and better facilitate automated matching

Next we’ll discuss some of the benefits of the addition of previous_owner and numrooms fields. Both of these elements will provide greater detail related to the property and support specific requests from users. These two fields in particular will be backfilled along with all the others. However the fill rate may initially be low but will increase over time.

• The previous_owner field will assist with more detailed property research and can be of assistance when seeking input into the lineage and changing hands of property.  
• Including a numrooms field within our schema will bring together data which previously may have been scattered across un-normalized fields to provide a standardized location for users to seek these insights and better focus queries. 

Finally, the inclusion of the szip5 and census_zcta will provide users with several key components with which to focus their queries. 

• The szip5 field is beneficial as the existing szip field contains the five digit zip and the +4 extension when it is available. Providing just the szip5 without the +4 extension makes it easier to structure a query without creating unnecessarily complicated query statements or cleaning steps.  
• The ZCTA (census_zcta field) is related to zip codes but is slightly different and is specifically designed to assist with statistical analysis related to data from the United States Census Bureau. Check here for additional information related to ZCTA data. 

Both these fields will provide you with additional query flexibility and data analysis optimization in your engagement with Regrid data. 

Premium Schema Additions

We’re also adding 6 new fields to our Premium Schema with our late October/early November delivery.  These groups and attributes are:

• Attributes related to US Census Bureau defined School Districts
• census_elementary_school _district
• census_secondary_school_district
• census_unified_school district
• Attributes related to FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs and D-FIRMs)
• fema_flood_zone
• fema_flood_zone_subtype
• fema_flood_zone_data_date
• fema_flood_zone_raw

Let’s dig into each of these groups and attributes in detail and better understand how they can help you.  

The addition of School District information from the US Census Bureau will provide you with information related to the school district, or school districts, that individual parcels are associated with. Importantly, this addition relates to school districts, not individual school attendance zones. The key benefits you will experience with the addition of this data are:

• Beneficial insights for residential Real Estate use cases, in the areas of both reporting/insight and property selection. 
• Statistical and modeling uses cases that can make use of parcel level school district reportings to uncover new insights and trends in both Real Estate and Demographics. 

Additional detail on the US Census Bureau School District data can be found here on the Census site. 

Next we’ll discuss some of the benefits of the addition of Flood Zone information from FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs). We’ll be utilizing the FEMA FIRM data available through the National Flood Hazard Layer to attribute every parcel possible with the highest level of Flood Risk identified for the property by the FEMA FIRM data. Importantly, and for a wide variety of reasons, this information cannot and should not be used for completion of the regulatory Standard Flood Hazard Determination Form (SFHDF) required for lending and insurance purposes. Rather, this allows the potential for flood hazard risk to be identified early in decision making and planning processes and helps eliminate unwelcome surprises. Some key benefits of these new data elements are:

• Early indication of flood risk on a property or properties that are being developed allowing for faster decision making processes, or identification of more suitable sites, speeding project progression and completion.  
• Understanding of potential risk exposure to existing assets, buildings or personal property, and infrastructure. This understanding provides opportunity for planning and mitigation in advance of any flooding event. 
• Provision of baseline flood risk information to enable more timely detailed research to better understand, navigate, and mitigate both regulatory and non-regulatory flood risk.

More information on the National Flood Hazard Layer (NFHL) and making official flood determinations can be found here on the FEMA site. 

Next steps

Please let us know if you have any questions.  We also request that you share this information with anyone in your organization who may be impacted or find this information helpful and informative.

Thanks,

The Regrid Team