How big Data helps New York solve various public problems

Do you think that only companies face big data problems? Think about it. New York: The largest city in the United States, with 8.2 million people, produces a lot of data every day, most of which are in highly dispersed islands of many municipal institutions and departments.

These data relate to business Identification Code (BIN), BBL tax number, http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/10603.html "> Business license, illegal parking tickets, traffic violations, health checks, criminal acts, Ambulance Service call, fire, etc.

"We need to deal with all kinds of data every day: mailing address, tax number, building identification number, and so on, but when we try to use all this data, from an ontology and taxonomy perspective," said Michael Flowers, head of policy and strategic planning at the mayor's office in New York City. This becomes very difficult. In addition, all of these data are stored in different locations in the city, which can be said to be fragmented. The storage system itself is also very different, some systems are advanced and easy to use, while others are already obsolete. ”

New York's 311 hotline receives more than 65,000 calls a day.

To make things even more challenging, New York's 311 non-emergency hotline receives more than 65,000 calls a day, involving complaints about noise and reports of tattered and pitted sidewalks, as well as questions about how to obtain a deed or whether it is lawful to feed a piranha.

"We're just allocating our resources based on simple sequencing," Flowers said, "and we'll respond to the call when a call comes in." ”

The only problem is: But the 311 call situation does not explain the true whereabouts of these resources, they are data, but incomplete data.

So, flowers a skunk Project for New York (a highly flexible, highly autonomous, unconstrained project), he and his team need to show the New York government community how much of New York's data can be used to allocate resources more efficiently.

"We are trying to make your life easier and to allocate those resources as efficiently as possible so that you don't have to pay too much for the same amount of tax," Flowers said. "What we need to do is find a way to show the utility of a common platform." I need to prove to the New York government community that we can integrate and use this information, which is our job. ”

Large data and illegal alterations

The project was "ambitious" and flowers wanted to use the data to help identify buildings that could have been illegally rebuilt, for example, 60 people were housed in buildings that were supposed to hold only six people.

According to the complaint against the 311 hotline, you would think that most of the illegal alterations occurred in lower Manhattan. But in fact, we found that the outlying areas of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are being illegally rebuilt.

Flowers said: "In the Spring and summer of 2011, we had two illegally rebuilt buildings with fire, some firefighters were badly injured and some died." ”

Flowers said that illegally rebuilt buildings are more prone to fire and, more importantly, firefighters are more likely to be injured or killed in these buildings, as the exits of these buildings are often blocked. "Our task is to find a way to solve this problem. ”

Successful data projects start with people

This seems to be an impossible goal for the flowers team. His team does not have a high degree, and all are at age 25 or below. In addition, because this is a skunk project, few people understand what they are doing. But they are determined to change the situation. The first thing flowers do is talk to people on the frontline.

"I talked to the firemen, talked to the police, talked to the inspectors of the Buildings department, and I asked them, ' when you see an unsafe building, what do you see? '" he said. And then I'll use the data to reflect. ”

Flowers let his team study the actual "vacated" situation, that is, when the procuratorate found that the building is not safe, they will ask to vacate the entire or part of the building.

"I don't need to deconstruct people's complaints," Flowers says, "but to deconstruct the problem, I use the city data to deconstruct the problem." ”

Flowers's team identified several possible indicators, including the following:

is the building located in a "high-risk area", a dangerous area where poorer citizens are more likely to live?

Is this a building before 1938? The 1938 building codes changed, and the buildings that changed after the norm were often more secure.

Is the building a foreclosure or a tax lien? The answers to these two questions are important, indicating the financial position of the owners, "Flowers said." I'm not saying that when the owners go bankrupt, they will treat their houses like rubbish. ”

-Have you ever complained? Flowers said: "If there has been a complaint before, six months after the complaint, then the building is likely to fire." ”

With these correct data, Flowers's team created a tool that could be used directly by the inspectors. Before the inspectors used the tool, when they found the building unsafe, they had to vacate 13% of the building, and 18 months after the flowers project, the inspectors could now vacate 70% of the buildings.

"The reason for our success is that we use the right data," Flowers said. "The city's data are good, and we're using the data in the right way." ”

"What we do is prioritize," he added, "an intelligence message that requires immediate action." ”

With the value of data-driven decisions proven, Flowers said he had three goals before the incumbent mayor, 3721.html, >2014 January:

--Establish a citywide analysis that focuses on more efficient use of institutional resources

--developing and initiating a data-based resource allocation culture

--Push dynamic New York data to the public, technology/entrepreneurship and academia (邹铮 compiled)

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)