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DATA eh? Interviews Reham Gorgis, Open Data Coordinator, City of Toronto

DATA eh?: Tell us what you do as part of the team.

RG: I help coordinate all the requests for data that come to us through various channels like twitter and the Open Data mail box (opendata@toronto.ca). I sort these into ones needing answers that I can provide or ones I can’t answer and have to send to division staff. Beyond that, I also initiate contact with the client divisions – introduce City staff to the initiative and set up initial appointments so we can get to know their area and what data they have and host.

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Adventures (in code) - Alastair Coote: Think all government data is boring? Think again: a showcase of location data you want to use.

nycopendata:

Great post by one of our Reinvent NYC.gov Hackathon winners, Alastair Coote:

alastaircoote:

There’s a ton of government data out there- you probably already know that. But it’s no good to you, right? Education statistics, financial reports… very important stuff, of course, but kind of… dry. Not exactly “every day use” sort of stuff.

Well, I’m going to try to challenge that perception a little. I signed up for a contest called NYC BigApps, which is a city-run competition to encourage use of city data. I was pleasantly surprised by the data I found. So, I thought that for a little bit of Friday fun I’d run through some of the more interesting and unexpected geo datasets. At the end, I’m going to discuss how I’m using NYC open data in my BigApps entry, Taxonomy.

The embedded maps you see are provided by CartoDB, which rocks. Seriously, go check it out. Each of the markers are clickable, giving you a sample of what data is available. The data, of course, comes from the NYC Open Data web site. I’m sure other cities have similar data out there- and if they don’t, urge them to release it.

WiFi hotspots

An absolute no-brainer, this one. Everyone needs a WiFi connection every now and then, and this dataset shows you their locations, and whether they are free or paid (in the map above, green is free, orange is paid). The world is crying out for ratemywifi.com - how’s the connection speed? Does the guy behind the counter get angry when you only order one small coffee every four hours? Do you get a cool IP address or some lame 192.168 handout? What’s the hacker to amateur novelist ratio? Surely a billion dollar IPO awaits.

Filming Locations

File this one under “I never even thought of this before”. A ton of stuff gets filmed in New York every year, and of course permits need to be approved before the cameras can roll. It turns out that the New York government has made that data public, going all the way back to the 60’s and before. Maybe next time your friends visit you can assemble a walking tour of your favourite movies. Fun fact: NYC BigApps entry Scene Near Me uses this data to text you when you check in near a filming location. 

Public Bathroom Locations

OK, OK, this isn’t exactly the sexiest dataset going, but don’t try to tell me you wouldn’t use it. Whether you’re in Central Park or just out shopping, no-one wants to buy a coffee just so that you can go to the bathroom- it’s only going to make you need to go again in half an hour. Never was there a greater resource for the public good - bathroo.my, anyone?

Parking Locations

I don’t own a car, but I’ve heard they’re quite popular. I also heard at the BMW iVentures launch partythat parking in the city is an utterly miserable experience. So it was pleasing to see that the city has an open directory of parking garages, even including the number of parking spots in each one. As you may be able to tell from the map above, there are quite a few.

How I’m using NYC Open Data

As I said at the start of the post, I’ve used NYC Open Data myself, in my NYC BigApps entry. One sits at the heart of the app- it’s the taxi driver dataset. I use it to allow Taxonomy users to review their taxi driver- the idea is that over time we collect feedback on the best and worst drivers, as well as tracking which ones take the most efficient routes, and which ones don’t know their way around.

I made another- more fun- data mashup, though. I wanted the map in my app to be dark rather than the usual Google Maps bright and bold, so I made custom map tiles. As part of that process, I used the following datasets:

  • Building Perimeter Outlines
  • Street Centerline
  • Roadbed

(from the NYC DoITT GIS downloads section) to create the higher zoom-level maps. I’m very happy with the way they turned out, and I’d encourage you to give them a try next time you’re making a map-based app or site:

Taxonomy is available in the App Store, and even has a web site for you to find out more.

(via nycdigital)

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Alex Lougheed, spokesperson for the local advocacy group Open Data Ottawa, said the group is “super excited” about this next stage in the ongoing process of fighting for open data. In the end, it was community pressure that led to this success, said Lougheed, a Centretown resident. That pressure went beyond the open data community and tech-minded developers because transit users are able to see the benefit and express that to councillors and commissioners. “There is a lot of genuine demand for this stuff,” Lougheed said, who handed out “certificates of awesome” to transit commission members to thank them for their support. OC Transpo agrees to release GPS data - News - By Laura Mueller Ottawa South Local Community News
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Traditional city maps visualize just one aspect of urban design—the city’s intended structure, full stop. But add in a layer that visualizes how people actually use the city, and then the map becomes much more interesting. Eric Fischer did exactly that when he used Twitter’s API to collect tens of thousands of geotagged tweets and map them onto the streets of New York, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay area. The maps amount to something close to adesire path on a macro scale: The maps show where our buses and subways should be, if they conformed to the way we actually move and live.

Traditional city maps visualize just one aspect of urban design—the city’s intended structure, full stop. But add in a layer that visualizes how people actually use the city, and then the map becomes much more interesting. Eric Fischer did exactly that when he used Twitter’s API to collect tens of thousands of geotagged tweets and map them onto the streets of New York, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay area. The maps amount to something close to adesire path on a macro scale: The maps show where our buses and subways should be, if they conformed to the way we actually move and live.

(Source: sustainablecitiescollective.com)

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US national government placing such a high priority on better transit information that the CTO of the USA and the Deputy Secretary of Transportation convened a discussion “to see what we can do to help millions more transit riders get better access to information”. ‘Other agencies around the country are less certain about opening their data to the public. [US CTO] Aneesh Chopra reminded particpants that the experience of the Obama Administration’s Open Gov initiative suggests that, “Openness empowers people with information to make decisions.”’ Fast Lane - the Official Blog of the US Secretary of Transportation - Transit apps empower riders with information - January 24, 2012 /via @bthubbard

US national government placing such a high priority on better transit information that the CTO of the USA and the Deputy Secretary of Transportation convened a discussion “to see what we can do to help millions more transit riders get better access to information”.

‘Other agencies around the country are less certain about opening their data to the public. [US CTO] Aneesh Chopra reminded particpants that the experience of the Obama Administration’s Open Gov initiative suggests that, “Openness empowers people with information to make decisions.”’

Fast Lane - the Official Blog of the US Secretary of Transportation - Transit apps empower riders with information - January 24, 2012

/via @bthubbard

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New York - If Mr. Russianoff were at the bargaining table, he would ask that countdown clocks on subway platforms be installed at a faster pace; they’ve made it thus far to less than 40 percent of the system’s 468 stations. Elsewhere on the technology front, he’d like swifter adoption of Bus Time, a service that enables riders to use their cellphones to find out how much longer it may be before their bus arrives. New York Times - A Voice for the Riders, Lost Amid Transit Talks. What’s on the mind of Metropolitan Transportation Authority commuters?

(Source: The New York Times)
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One of the benefits of getting comprehensive public transport information fully integrated in Google Maps is the potential to include public transport in all forms of local search. An example of this is the experiment launched over the weekend to search for hotels based upon a travel time from a location. In the example below searching for Hotels within 25 minutes of the Google Office

One of the benefits of getting comprehensive public transport information fully integrated in Google Maps is the potential to include public transport in all forms of local search. An example of this is the experiment launched over the weekend to search for hotels based upon a travel time from a location. In the example below searching for Hotels within 25 minutes of the Google Office

(Source: edparsons.com)