Business Climate in Fairfax County: Social Impact Data Commons

Fairfax County and Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth are interested in understanding the landscape of business activity in Fairfax County with a focus on businesses owned by people from a minority group (based on race).
1. Measure Business Activities at Small Census Geo-Levels
•       The goal was to provide a data product on business activities across industries at small Census geography levels (Census tracts and block groups) to support Fairfax County decision-making.
•       Using microdata from Mergent Intellect, we estimate a set of metrics at the Census tracts and block group level across multiple industry categories. The data are accessible on our dashboard: https://uva-bi-sdad.github.io/capital_region
2. A Model-Based Approach to Identify Minority-Owned Companies
•       The goal was to design a classifier model using Natural Language Processing (NLP) models to improve the labeling of companies as minority-owned by Mergent Intellect in Fairfax County.
•       Using a Decision Tree model, we found that approximately 49% of companies located in Fairfax County are owned/managed by non-white people. This number is close to the Census Annual Business Surve

Siwe GL, Goswami T, Thurston J, Schroeder A (2024). Business Climate in Fairfax County. University of Virginia. 9 February 2024. https://doi.org/10.18130/hz6b-xn90

Acknowledgments: We thank the students Anjali Mehta, Prashanth Wagle, and Trinity Chamblin, who contributed to this project in the 2023 Data Science for the Public Good program through the Social and Decision Analytics Division (SDAD), Biocomplexity Institute (BI), University of Virginia.