Welcome to Connect Chicago. We’re bringing together the people, organizations and institutions who offer transformative digital resources to all Chicagoans into one place. Continue reading
Year: 2012
CyberNavigators, TEC Services Train Austin Residents
With the help of Chicago Public Libraries’ CyberNavigators, west side residents are making the most of the rich technology resources available in Chicago at the Austin Branch Library. Continue reading
Bronzeville Community Center Gets Digital Skills Initiative
Long a great resource in Chicago’s Bronzeville for people looking for job training and other services the Charles A. Hayes Family Investment Center has added even more programs to help Chicagoans gain the connections and computer skills they want and need. Continue reading
Dearborn Homes Lab Provides Residents Computer Access, Job Resources and Training
Minimizing the city’s digital divide by providing computer education and access to everyone, the Chicago Housing Authority is opening technology centers in residential developments. Continue reading
Smart Chicago + Local Developers + Tweets = Better Public Health
The Smart Chicago Collaborative provided server space on our Amazon Web Service account so that a local developer to develop an algorithm to classify tweets in the service of public health. Here’s how Joe Olson of Tracklytics describes the work:
Tracklytics partnered with Smart Chicago and DePaul University to enter a the Now Trending: #Health in My Community contest sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services. The purpose of the contest was to spur innovation in analyzing social media outlets to detect global health trends. Specifically, the contest requirements were to use Twitter to identify trending topics relating to disease, such as West Nile virus and Legionnaire’s disease.
Tracklytics designed and implemented the solution, DePaul helped with testing and algorithm validation, Smart Chicago funded the computer time.
We did not win the contest, but several innovations were developed. We now have the ability to collect over 1,000,000 disease-related tweets per day. A subset of these tweets are run through a machine learning algorithm, and can be filtered down to a much smaller set of tweets where someone is reporting having an instance of a disease, as well as their location. Current accuracy of this is near 85%. We’ve reduced the cost of classifying tweets down to .0000057 cents/tweet, storing them for analysis down to 0.000000235 cents/tweet/month, and archiving them down to 0.000000004 cents/tweet/month.
You can view the site at http://hhs.tracklytics.com
We are currently working on modifying this technology to track food poisoning cases in Chicago. Once legitimate food poisoning cases reported by individuals are identified by Twitter using the machine learning algorithm, we can send to the person reporting the case a tweet containing a URL directing them to a form to collect more specific information (do you suspect the incident occurred at a restaurant, was from tainted food, etc). This information can them be entered into the City’s 311 system via the Open311 interface, and directed to the City’s Health Department for further analysis.
Lots more to come from this work— stay tuned!
Smart Chicago Hosts Flu Shot App for Local Developer Using Civic Data
Today the Mayor’s Office and the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) announced the launch of a new interactive web map that pinpoints CDPH’s citywide flu shot clinics based on location and hours of operation. Here’s a snip from the press release:
The Smart Chicago Collaborative hosted project was led by the Tom Kompare, who volunteered his time to develop the app that makes it easy for Chicago residents to stay healthy this flu season by finding their nearest flu shot clinic to get vaccinated. Kompare lives in Rogers Park and also volunteers with Open Government Chicago(-land), a technology meetup group for Chicagoans interested in seeing governments function more efficiently and responsively.
“Helping make City data more accessible and understandable is my way of giving back to Chicago, a sort of e-volunteerism,” said Kompare. “Chicago has made public a really impressive amount of data and it’s up to developers like us to make this data more useful for everyday Chicagoans.”
Smart Chicago is hosting this app on our Amazon Web Services account. If you are a developer working with civic data, you may be eligible for free space on this account. Go here for more info on this program.
If you’re interested in using civic data to make lives better in Chicago, you should join the Open Government Chicago(-land) meetup group!
City of Chicago — Get A Flu Shot Map
“Get a Flu Shot” Sign on the Door of 37th Ward Alderman Emma Mitts’ Ward Office
A Good Idea, on the Side of a Bus: Get A Flu Shot
