Inputs behind the fact sheets

The British Columbia extract is clipped to the bounding box -139.8, 53.8, -127.8, 60.3 to keep the Alaska Highway and cross-border routes without inflating the graph.

Custom-built feeds were authored from each carrier's published schedule (per-carrier sources and retrieval dates listed below). Public feeds come from TransitLand.

Per-mode rates: WALK $0 · BUS $2 base · CAR $0.70/mi · FERRY $1.00/mi · AIRPLANE $115 base + $1.60/mi. The AIRPLANE rate, in particular, was fit to a sample of published one-way fares across the integrated air carriers, and produces a reasonable order-of-magnitude estimate rather than a quote. Total trip cost is the sum of leg costs.

From the raw ACS variables, 15 derived metrics are calculated (percent transit-dependent, percent without vehicle, percent Native, etc.) and joined onto the community fact sheets.

The food-access analysis combines two complementary datasets. The USDA SNAP retailer list is the most comprehensive census of food retailers in Alaska — every store that accepts SNAP benefits — and provides each store's USDA-assigned type (Super Store, Supermarket / Grocery, Convenience, etc.). However, USDA's type label occasionally misclassifies a meaningful grocery as a lower tier. The Alaska Food Policy Council's curated list of major grocery stores is therefore overlaid as a reclassifier: any SNAP retailer within 2 km of an AFPC major grocery is promoted to Tier 2 (Grocery Store). Stores are then grouped into three tiers — bulk food (warehouse clubs), grocery stores, and general stores — and each community is routed against all three.

Per-capita wild-food harvest comes from the most recent comprehensive subsistence harvest study ADF&G has published for each community in the CSIS. Study years vary by community (the system reports the latest available), so figures are not all from the same year. Communities are tiered by pounds per person to flag where subsistence is a contributing, major, or primary local food source; communities with no published study, or below 150 lbs / person, show no subsistence note. Specifically, the fact sheet renders a small Subsistence callout, tiered on subsistence_per_capita_lbs: nothing below 150 lbs/person, otherwise “contributing” (≥ 150), “major” (≥ 300), or “primary” (≥ 500) local food source.

K–12 school enrollment and grade span come from the Alaska Department of Education & Early Development (DEED) file; each school is classified as primary (K–5) and/or secondary (6–12) from its non-zero grade-level enrollment. Because the DEED file geocodes every school to its community centroid (stacking all of a town's schools on a single point), per-campus coordinates are taken from the NCES EDGE Public School Locations dataset, and the DCCED Alaska Schools directory supplies the school-type flags used to exclude correspondence / distance and youth-facility programs. The postsecondary list covers Alaska's colleges, universities, and technical institutions; it is a curated roster (no statewide authoritative point layer exists) with each campus geocoded from its published address.

Waterway access is based on the USACE National Waterway Network, which maps federally navigable channels used for barge and freight service. It does not include the many smaller rivers, sloughs, and coastal waters that communities rely on for boat and skiff travel. The absence of a mapped navigable waterway does not mean a community lacks water-based transportation.

Used to build a graph of trail-connected communities, with intersection nodes added where trails cross; Dijkstra over that graph yields network distances between snapped communities.