Check out this video of a visualization of NYC’s transit system which was compiled through General Transit Feed Specification data and illustrates a day — from 4 A.M. to 4 A.M. — of transit operations.


Source: http://mashable.com/2012/11/27/transit-new-york/

Moneyball for New York City

Michael Flowers, Analytics Director for the Mayor’s Office of Policy and Strategic Planning and Director of the Financial Crime Task Force of the City of New York, shares how data science has played a surprising and effective role in helping city government provide services to over 8 million people, from preventing public safety catastrophes to improving New Yorkers’ quality of life.

- O’Reilly Strata Conference

Excited about Citi Bike? Using DOT’s open data, OpenPlans has put together a useful trip planner for New Yorkers to use when navigating from one bike share station to the next. Check it out at http://cibi.me/.




Help develop the plan for NYC government to unlock its data

NYC Open Data Policy Hack Day Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 11:00 AM (ET) REGISTER HERE

NYC recently enacted Local Law 11 of 2012, which mandates citywide open data in machine-readable formats through a centralized, publicly accessible web site. The NYC Open Data portal was launched in late 2011 to meet this need. The legislation additionally mandates the creation of technical standards in support of this initiative.

Join NYC DoITT’s team from the Office of Strategic Technology Development and the open government community – policymakers, technologists, civic hackers, app developers, academics, journalists and data enthusiasts – for an engaging day of discussions, drafting, planning and hacking.

Don’t wait until the event: collaborate on NYC’s Open Data Policies, Technical Standards, and Guidelines wiki now.

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg signed into law what he termed “the most ambitious and comprehensive open data legislation in the country.”The Mayor remarked:“If we’re going to continue leading the country in innovation and transparency, we’re going to have to make sure that all New Yorkers have access to the data that drives our City. Across City government, agencies use data to develop policy, implement programs, and track performance — and each month, our Administration shares more and more of this data with the public at large, catalyzing the creativity, intellect, and enterprising spirit of computer programmers to build tools that help us all improve our lives.” Read more on NYC.gov 
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Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg signed into law what he termed “the most ambitious and comprehensive open data legislation in the country.”

The Mayor remarked:
“If we’re going to continue leading the country in innovation and transparency, we’re going to have to make sure that all New Yorkers have access to the data that drives our City. Across City government, agencies use data to develop policy, implement programs, and track performance — and each month, our Administration shares more and more of this data with the public at large, catalyzing the creativity, intellect, and enterprising spirit of computer programmers to build tools that help us all improve our lives.”

Read more on NYC.gov 

Check out this free iPhone app, created with NYC OpenData. nycgov: In July 2010, we started giving letter grades to all 24,000 of our city’s restaurants, delis and other eating establishments. These grades let customers know about the results of the Health Department’s periodic check-ups on sanitary conditions. Today, we released the first major study of how the system has worked, and there are four major findings – all of them great news for New Yorkers:  1)  Kitchens across the city are cleaner.  As of the end of January, a record 72% of restaurants were posting “A” grades in their windows.  2)  New Yorkers overwhelmingly approve of posting the grades – by 91%, according to a Baruch College survey – and use it to make decisions about where to dine out.   3)  Business is booming; restaurant revenues increased 9.3% during the first nine months of the program, compared to just 2.7% in the previous year. It just may be that clean kitchens are as good for business as clean air that is smoke-free.  4)  Here is the most encouraging sign of all: Over the past year, the number of cases of salmonella infection – the best marker for foodborne illnesses – has dropped to a 20-year low. No wonder New Yorkers support restaurant grades!  The proof is in the pudding – and more than ever, the pudding is being prepared according to the highest food safety standards. And now, with our brand new iPhone and iPad app finding a clean kitchen around town is as easy as ABC.
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Check out this free iPhone app, created with NYC OpenData.

nycgov:

In July 2010, we started giving letter grades to all 24,000 of our city’s restaurants, delis and other eating establishments. These grades let customers know about the results of the Health Department’s periodic check-ups on sanitary conditions. Today, we released the first major study of how the system has worked, and there are four major findings – all of them great news for New Yorkers:

 1)  Kitchens across the city are cleaner.  As of the end of January, a record 72% of restaurants were posting “A” grades in their windows.

 2)  New Yorkers overwhelmingly approve of posting the grades – by 91%, according to a Baruch College survey – and use it to make decisions about where to dine out. 

 3)  Business is booming; restaurant revenues increased 9.3% during the first nine months of the program, compared to just 2.7% in the previous year. It just may be that clean kitchens are as good for business as clean air that is smoke-free.

 4)  Here is the most encouraging sign of all: Over the past year, the number of cases of salmonella infection – the best marker for foodborne illnesses – has dropped to a 20-year low.

No wonder New Yorkers support restaurant grades!  The proof is in the pudding – and more than ever, the pudding is being prepared according to the highest food safety standards. And now, with our brand new iPhone and iPad app finding a clean kitchen around town is as easy as ABC.

nycedc: As New York City’s dog lovers anxiously await the crowning of this year’s “Best In Show” at The Westminster Kennel Club’s 136th Annual Dog Show at Madison Square Garden, we estimated the number of pets (dogs and cats only) that call New York City their home. Based on our analysis, we estimate that there are approximately 1.1 million pets in the City (600,000 dogs and 500,000 cats), or an ownership rate of about one pet for every three households. This figure is lower than the national average (about 60%), as you might expect given the City’s tighter living quarters and that some apartment buildings still do not allow pets. As shown in the above map, dogs and cats seem to really enjoy living near Central Park and the back yards of Staten Island. Read the rest of our analysis via our StatsBee column on the NYCEDC blog.
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nycedc:

As New York City’s dog lovers anxiously await the crowning of this year’s “Best In Show” at The Westminster Kennel Club’s 136th Annual Dog Show at Madison Square Garden, we estimated the number of pets (dogs and cats only) that call New York City their home.

Based on our analysis, we estimate that there are approximately 1.1 million pets in the City (600,000 dogs and 500,000 cats), or an ownership rate of about one pet for every three households. This figure is lower than the national average (about 60%), as you might expect given the City’s tighter living quarters and that some apartment buildings still do not allow pets. As shown in the above map, dogs and cats seem to really enjoy living near Central Park and the back yards of Staten Island.

Read the rest of our analysis via our StatsBee column on the NYCEDC blog.

Visualization Submission: Heatmap of Restaurants in New York City

Check out these NYC restaurant heatmaps created by dfkoz using the NYC OpenData “Restaurant Inspection Results” dataset:

Two things I like are data and food. The two rarely mix, unless you do something stupid like create a heatmap of restaurant density in New York City. Which is exactly what I did. Without further ado, here it is:
Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan

Upper Manhattan
Downtown Manhattan
If you find this chart tasty, then try calling back for reservations over the next few days. The raw data set from NYC OpenData includes restaurant inspection grades and cuisine types, so consider this just the appetizer.
Lots of attributions here, since putting this together was like making Frankenstein. Restaurant addresses, of course, came from NYC OpenData’s Restaurant Inspection Results. Geocoding the raw addresses turned out to be harder than I expected, but it was nothing Excel/VBA (don’t judge) and Yahoo! PlaceFinder couldn’t solve. In order to generate the heatmaps, I used the Google Maps API and, most crucially, a JS heatmap library from Patrick Wied. Phew.