Help me find a geospatial dataset with county-level coverage and no PII

Here are good options for county-level geospatial datasets that contain no personally identifiable information (PII). I’ll focus on datasets that are public, aggregate by county, and commonly used for mapping or spatial analysis.

Good dataset options

1. U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line Shapefiles

• What it is: Official county boundary polygons for the U.S.
• Coverage: Nationwide county-level geometry.
• PII: None.
• Use cases: Choropleth maps, spatial joins, county lookup.
• Link: https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.html

2. CDC PLACES

• What it is: County-level health estimates for chronic disease and related risk factors.
• Coverage: U.S. counties and many county-equivalent geographies.
• PII: None; estimates are aggregated.
• Use cases: Public health mapping, county comparisons.
• Link: https://www.cdc.gov/places/

3. USDA ERS County-level socioeconomic datasets

• Examples: Rural-urban continuum codes, county typology codes, poverty/income-related county indicators.
• Coverage: U.S. counties.
• PII: None.
• Use cases: Economic and demographic geospatial analysis.
• Link: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/

4. EPA EJScreen

• What it is: Environmental justice screening indicators at the census tract and county level.
• Coverage: Includes county-level data.
• PII: None.
• Use cases: Environmental exposure analysis, county maps.
• Link: https://www.epa.gov/ejscreen

5. FEMA National Risk Index

• What it is: County-level natural hazard risk metrics.
• Coverage: U.S. counties.
• PII: None.
• Use cases: Disaster risk visualization and prioritization.
• Link: https://hazards.fema.gov/nri/

6. County Health Rankings

• What it is: County-level measures on health outcomes, behaviors, clinical care, and social factors.
• Coverage: U.S. counties.
• PII: None; all aggregate.
• Use cases: Public health analysis and mapping.
• Link: https://www.countyhealthrankings.org/

Best choices depending on your need

• Need boundaries only: TIGER/Line Shapefiles
• Need health indicators: CDC PLACES or County Health Rankings
• Need environmental data: EPA EJScreen
• Need disaster risk: FEMA National Risk Index
• Need socioeconomic context: USDA county datasets

Quick PII check

These are safe because they are:

• aggregated at county level,
• not person-level,
• not tied to names, addresses, phone numbers, or similar direct identifiers.

If you want, I can also help you narrow this down by:

1. topic (health, environment, economics, climate),
2. file format (CSV, GeoJSON, shapefile), or
3. country (U.S. only or international).