We use spatial data every day – navigating from point A to point B, delivery of mail and packages to an address, identifying boundaries of our homes. Spatial data is some of the most useful data to communicate information; we can communicate where something is, how far away it is, how we can navigate there, and aggregate to spatial shapes (i.e., your street block or zip code) to identify characteristics of an area. Spatial data is information captured in a shape - think points, lines, or polygons. Information stored in these shapes then allows us to map the information in relation to other information. This can include how close or far away something is, how big or small something is, and how two areas of information compare to something near it (how does your neighbor impact you?).
The City produces spatial data often to help us communicate the narrative of key information to residents. This can vary across a wide variety of topics, from where water main breaks are happening, to what streets are closed for road reconstruction, to what neighborhood an address belongs to, to how close a school is to a resident’s house, or to the last time a snow plow cleared the road a citizen is traveling on. All of this information is communicated clearly and concisely through maps comprised of spatial data. In this post, we will explore several examples of how the City uses spatial data to measure and improve services.
Census Data - Aggregating Information to Shapes to Communicate Demographics
One of the key generators and uses of spatial data that impacts everyone comes every 10 years with the census. The census helps the government capture information about geographic areas to better determine resource allocation (i.e., how many house representatives for each state) and to get information on areas, like spatial density, to update geographic shapes to accurately represent the current community the boundary encloses. The census also helps us measure populations, broken out by different geographic boundaries. The census posts this aggregated data online, publicly available for anyone who wants to use the data. One of the most used spatial polygons produced by the census is census tracts. These are spatially defined areas that are small, relatively permanent statistical subdivisions of a county with an average of about 4,000 inhabitants. The City of Syracuse is comprised of 55 census tracts in the newest census data (from 2020) and many population characteristics are calculated at the census tract level. We use these spatial polygons regularly to measure population density and equity of services, such as internet availability and deployment of road reconstruction.
An example of using census tract data in the City occurred during the first wave of COVID when students were being sent home for remote learning. We partnered with the Syracuse City School District (SCSD) to generate a map to identify where there was a high concentration of students and low access to the Internet to understand where connectivity products/programs could have the largest impact at the census tract level(https://syr.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/69d6751dab2349b79645ca8ff4415c32 ).
Road Reconstruction: Equitably Identifying Eligible Streets and Communicating to the Public
We also use census data to assess the equity of the road reconstruction projects the City works on yearly. The road network map is an important spatial dataset we utilize in many projects. Using this dataset, we were able to delineate roads eligible for road reconstruction and roads that receive slurry/seal. This road network data is combined with census data (aggregated to the census tract level) to develop a prioritization score to better inform which roads should be reconstructed every year, ensuring we are incorporating equity into the road reconstruction process.
The City maps current road closures for the public. The City’s Traffic Management Coordination office uses the mapped road network to update current road closures for road reconstruction or traffic impediments and updates Waze, Google Maps, and Apple Maps. For more details on the closures (i.e., the extent or how long the road will be closed), you can visit https://511ny.org/ .
Sanitation Routing
Houses receive sanitation service (both trash and recycling) from the City on a specified day, determined based on what sanitation route the address is located. The API office is working with DPW to help improve these routes for the sanitation trucks and also the snow routes to improve servicing of addresses and roads and to improve efficiency and safety for the workers. The first step in the process was to take the paper maps of routes and spatially create and store them as shapefiles so we can better visualize the current routes. We also needed a list of all addresses (including apartments and number of units) and roads in the City and have these overlaid on the current routes. By combining these different spatial datasets, we can identify high address density areas, determine the composition of parcels serviced, or map emergency roadways during snow storms. With this information, we can generate new routes to better serve the City’s trash and snow clearance and better track how we run these services. The new snow routes would also improve our snow map that shows when a road was last serviced. The route optimization and general improvement to our spatial data is happening at a critical time as we will be experiencing major changes to our road network with the switch from I-81 to a community grid.
Conclusion
Spatial data is everywhere and is used in so many different ways to better inform decisions and assess the current state of operations. Our office loves to foster the use of data in many ways and has helped maintain an Open Data portal for City data – both tabular and spatial. If you are looking for more information on our Open Data portal, there are several blog posts where you can read more detail about what this is and how to use it. The Open Data site allows users to access and manipulate any data from the City when they visit the site. There are cool maps or if you are adventurous, you can download the data to create your own maps or run your own analysis. We have information from the Syracuse Tomorrow’s Neighborhood Today to Part I Crime maps to SYRCityLine data. At the bottom of the site is also the opportunity to request data not currently posted, to join the email list to get updates on monthly releases, or to post a data project you worked on using data from the Open Data portal to be featured on the site. Happy mapping!
