Open Data and Hacking for Good

Open Data and Hacking for Good

On February 19th, some members of our Office of Accountability, Performance, and Innovation (API), Nico Diaz (Chief Innovation and Data Officer), and Jason Scharf (Data Program Manager) had the pleasure to be part of CuseHacks' 2022 Hackathon. These events generally last somewhere between 24 and 72 hours, where teams break up and compete against each other to create innovative web applications, websites, maps, or design products to help solve different challenges. Some Hackathons have themes and some have different prizes for different categories.

CuseHacks is a Student-run Hackathon put on by Syracuse University students every year. Our API team was very excited at the chance to partner with CuseHacks and help sponsor this event.

, ,

A Successful Deployment of the City of Syracuse's Snow Plow Map: What it Does, What We've Learned, and What We Plan to Do

, ,
A Successful Deployment of the City of Syracuse's Snow Plow Map: What it Does, What We've Learned, and What We Plan to Do

Syracuse is no stranger to snow – historically we see an average of 124 inches a year and tend to be in the top 5 snowiest big cities in the country (from the Golden Snow Globe Competition). In an effort to share how we operate during a storm, we developed a snowplow map that shows when a street was last plowed.

Our Deputy Chief Innovation & Data Officer, Conor Muldoon, wrote a post outlining what led up to our current snowplow map and the potential impact of it right before we launched the tool in December here.

We have had several snow storms since the launch of the City’s Snow Plow map (ESRI’s Winter Weather Operations tool) the first week of December 2021. We successfully launched the tool to the public with the first large storm in January, tracking the plowed status of streets for three days, and saw around 12,000 hits over the course of the storm to the public viewer. We continue to maintain high engagement during the storms after, seeing consistent views of the tool throughout the storm’s length.

,

Syracuse Winter Weather Operations

,

In 2018, the Office of Accountability, Performance, and Innovation developed an in-house web application to track the City’s fleet of snow plow trucks and map street segments that had been plowed during winter storms in order to communicate to residents when their street had been plowed. The tool was exceptionally well-received and played an important role in the City’s communication strategy around an important public service delivery. However, last year the system experienced significant challenges with the underlying sensor technology and ran into limitations in the frequency of the network provider’s communications - resulting in performance issues that made the much-anticipated snow plow map no longer functional.

Despite extensive attempts to work around the inherent technical limitations, it became apparent that it was time to develop a more robust solution.

,

Meet our new Deputy Chief Innovation & Data Officer

,
Meet our new Deputy Chief Innovation & Data Officer

Introducing Conor Muldoon who will help to lead the API team in data and innovation to find new and efficient ways to improve how the City of Syracuse delivers services. Conor will oversee the implementation of a city-wide performance strategy and the continuous expansion of the city’s data infrastructure. He will assist our Chief Innovation & Data Officer in championing the Mayor’s innovative and performance management vision for all city departments and constituents.

, ,

Living a Quality Life in Syracuse

, ,

Over the past year, the quality of life project has sought to understand what direction our residents want to see the city drive in by asking “What matters most to your quality of life?”. The idea here is that the city is currently in a car in the middle of a parking lot with 360 degrees of directions to go in. The car is made of numbers, and the parking lot is made of the stories we hear from residents every day. By learning more about quality of life from constituent perspectives, we hoped to narrow down from 360degrees to just a few roads to choose to drive down. 

,

Sentiment analysis of social media shows how to address vaccine hesitancy in Syracuse

,

As more doses of the COVID-19 vaccine become available in the US, communities across the country have begun encountering vaccine hesitancy – sectors of the population that have access to doses but that express doubts, skepticism, or concerns. The ability to understand where that hesitancy comes from, and how to address it, could mean the difference between achieving herd immunity early or enduring many more months of the pandemic.