Local Update of Census Addresses, or LUCA, is a U.S. Census Bureau program that allows local governments to help update the address lists and maps that the Census Bureau will use to conduct Census 2010 and other surveys. More information…

Our Big Challenge During this decade Georgia’s local governments have added hundreds of thousands of addresses for new housing. Just as significantly most local governments have also assigned millions of new addresses to implement their E911 systems (E911 status map). During this decade the Census Bureau has made dramatic improvements in scale, spatial accuracy, and feature content in the census maps for Georgia, but they have not collected and encoded most of the new address information. Viewing a county-level status map of address information in census maps dramatically illustrates our big challenge. A status list of cities shows similar disparities. For census purposes E911 city-style addresses will work equally as well as postal city-style addresses. The LUCA program is designed to collect all city-style address information needed to complete our maps for Census 2010.

Your Best Option There are three options for local governments participating in LUCA. Nearly all Georgia local governments should select LUCA Option 2, Local Address List Submission, to participate in the LUCA program.  Why? Because the Census Bureau’s maps and address lists contain primarily older city-style postal address, whereas most of Georgia now has nearly complete coverage with maps and lists compiled for E911. The fastest, easiest, most effective way for E911 areas to participate in LUCA will be Option 2, submitting a complete local list of residential addresses. Local governments that do not have complete E911 systems should participate in LUCA using Option 1. Why? Because only Option 1 will permit governments to update the housing counts in rural areas where there are no city style addresses. More information…