OpenGov Hack Night: Karen Weigert and the CleanWeb Challenge

Christopher WhitakerMay 10, 2013

Energy usage by neighborhood area, picture courtesy of Tom Schenk Jr

Karen Weigert and the CleanWeb Challenge

This week’s OpenGov Hack Night featured a presentation by the City of Chicago Chief Sustainability Officer Karen Weigert and the winners of Chicago’s Earth Day Hackathon showed off their apps.

In September, the City of Chicago released the Sustainable Chicago 2015 Plan focusing on seven areas:

Economic Development and Job Creation
Energy Efficiency and Clean Energy
Transportation Options
Water and Wastewater
Parks, Open Space, and Healthy Food
Waste and Recycling
Climate Change

All together, the city has twenty-four goals and a hundred actions points. “All of which could be enhanced from data, visualizations, apps and stats analysis,” states Karen Weigret.

As part of this effort, the City has been releasing data on sustainability issues – including an API and data set for energy usage by neighborhood. Chicago’s been on the forefront of environmental issues and was recently awarded $30,000 from the World Wildlife Fund to help support sustainability programs in Chicago.

The city also hosted an Earth Day hackathon bringing together 300 civic innovators to think of ways to use technology to create a more sustainable city.

And that is just the beginning: The city recently partnered with the World Wildlife Fund to launch the Chicago Cleanweb Challenge. The Chicago Cleanweb Challenge is a year-long competition designed to promote sustainability in Chicago through community engagement and entrepreneurship. The city has partnered up with several environmental non-profits to host events throughout the year and will be releasing more data sets as the competition progresses. The overall winner of this challenge will get a chance to meet the mayor.

You can follow the progress of both the CleanWeb challenge and Chicago’s progress on sustainability issues by following @SustainChicago on Twitter.

Earth Day Hackathon Winner: Bike Rack Finder

The winner of the Earth Day Hackathon was the Chicago Bike Rack Finder by Patrick French and Jon Freeman.

Chicago has a lot of bike racks. This tool is used to help bikers find bike racks near them or near their final destination if they’re planning a trip. The app is completely mobile and open source. Currently, the app is still in the prototype phase. The team would like to add more features, such as users being able to add new bike racks to the data.

Currently, the city only has data on its own bike racks – but no data on the privately installed bike racks. While the city has put bike rack data on GitHub and is accepting pull requests, the team behind bike rack finder hope that by making it easier to report new bike racks that data gets filled in faster.

Another problem the team would like to address is to report the presence of “sucker poles” – poles that make it easy for thieves to steal any bike locked to it. By warning users that these sucker poles are not a safe place to lock your bike too, the app can help prevent bike thefts.

Earth Day Hackathon Winner: Urbs in Horto

In a very close second is the Urbs in Horto app by Todd Jones. that helps people find new places for urban gardens in Chicago. (If Urbs in Horto sounds familiar, it’s because the name of the app is also the City of Chicago motto: City in a Garden).

The app lets the user see all the vacant lots in Chicago as possible candidates for urban gardening spaces.

Because the hackathon was only 12 hours, both the apps are still just prototypes. However, this is just a taste of what’s to come as the Cleanweb competition continues.

Next Big Thing: Safer Communities Hackathon

Tomorrow, the City of Chicago and Google will be sponsoring a Safer Communities Hackathon at Google’s Chicago headquarters. You can RSVP for the event here.

Join us for the National Day of Civic Hacking in Chicago

Smart ChicagoMay 7, 2013

On May 31st – June 3rd, Chicago will have three separate events in coordination with the National Day of Civic Hacking.

National Day of Civic Hacking is a nationwide effort being coordinated by Random Hacks of Kindness, Code for America and the White House to help organize civic minded developers, designers, writers, and data scientists help create innovative solutions to civic problems.

This day— the first of its kind in the nation— has been a long time in coming. Back in January, I wrote about what it takes to turn civic hacking into civic innovation. Here’s a snip:

The civic hacking community in Chicago has produced a variety of civic web applications based on open data provided by local government here in Chicago. These apps do things like show economic indicators in fun ways, let you know if your car was towed, and how & where to get a flu shot.

There are lots of reasons why civic hacking works here in Chicago— a rich baseline of data and technology, an engaged developer community, real discussions with government about policy and data, and the support of institutions are all important factors.

But what we’re missing most is sustained engagement with the residents of the city of Chicago. That’s how we can turn mere hacking into real innovation. The magic combination of government, developers, and community members is what we’re after.

So that’s our focus here in Chicago. While cities across the nation participate in the essential baseline tasks of civic hacking, we’ll be tackling this broader work, seeking to expand the movement we’ve built.

It’s time for all Chicagoans to “meet the movement”– to work hand-in-hand with hackers in order to make our communities better. We hope you’ll join us. Here’s a list of events:

ChicagoMigrahack at Cibola (May 31st – June 2nd)

The purpose of Chicago Migrahack is to foster the use of technology and open data to innovate information around immigration. In Spanish, the word “migra” refers to immigration.

We want to bring together our communities to create innovative platforms around one of the most debated topics today: Immigration

This event will kick off Friday, May 31st with a day of training around civic hacking and data. There will be $7,000 in cash prizes given away for the best projects.

Civic Hack Day for Youth at Adler Planetarium

Image courtesy of Greg Briggs – Creative Commons License

The Adler Planetarium is holding a youth-focussed Civic Hack Day on June 1/2 where Chicago youth, mentors, and highly skilled STEM professionals will work together in teams towards solutions to Chicago Issues. Youth team members will bring problems with them that they, or members of their communities, face on a daily basis, as well as a vision for a technological solution. This unique, youth-focused event is being run in collaboration with the Hive Chicago, Mikva Challenge, the Chicago Architecture Foundation and Free Spirit Media Working. Young people, their mentors and STEM professionals will shape and build working prototypes of their solutions over an awe-inspiring 28-hour period.

Hack for Chicago at 1871 (June 1st)

We’ll be having several different events at 1871 during the weekend. You can register for these events here.

App Design Workshop with the Knight Lab

Miranda Mulligan from the Knight Lab will give a workshop on designing apps that meet the needs of users.

National Civic Hacking 101 Workshop with Code for America

Christopher Whitaker will give a short primer on civic hacking to help orient people who are new to hackathons and civic innovation. This class will be broadcast nationwide in cooperation with other cities.

OpenStreetMap Edit-a-thon with Ian Dees

OpenStreetMap is an open source map that anyone can edit. Users can add data to the map including information about their favorite restaurants, cultural venues, and more. We’ll be adding more data to the map all weekend long. You can register for the event at the Chicago OpenStreetMap Meetup Page here.

General Hack Session with OpenCity Apps

We’ll also be having a general hack session if you’re already working on a civic app.

We’ll be sending more information about the event as time gets closer. Look forward to seeing you at one of the events!

PRESS

Here’s some coverage of the event.

Chicagoan’s prep for massive civic hacakthon
WBEZ Datum blog

Chicago: City of Big Data and National Day of Civic Hacking
Code for America Blog

Join the CUTGroup and Take Part in Test of a Travel-to-School Website

Smart ChicagoMay 6, 2013

We’re organizing a test of a web site that allows you to explore travel options to your Chicago Public School.

If you meet the following requirements, you qualify to be in the test, receive a $20 VISA gift card + bus fare, and help make better software for Chicago!

Responsible for taking one or more kid to a Chicago public school this Fall
Available on the evenings of Tuesday, May 28 or Thursday, May 30

If you’re already in the CUTGroup, you’ve already received an email to this effect. Otherwise, sign up now, get a mitt, get in the game, and get some money.

CUTGroup as of May 5, 2013

Foodborne Chicago on WBEZ Chicago

Smart ChicagoMay 4, 2013

Yesterday morning I talked with Tony Sarabia of the WBEZ Morning Shift about Foodborne Chicago. Here’s the sound. Listen all the way to the end for a pretty wacky bumper tune.

Key points covered:

This site is not about making a cool app. It’s about making teeny tiny connections between the people who matter: residents of the City of Chicago and the municipal government that serves them
Chicago’s Open 311 system (funded and supported by Smart Chicago) provides the technological and conceptual basis for this site. Without the ability to write directly to the City’s 311 system, and thereby get into the Chicago Department of Public Health’s normal workflow for dealing with food safety, Foodborne Chicago wouldn’t exist
Twitter and other social media is fast becoming important in all sorts of human domains, including health. There are one million health tweets per day and users tweet symptoms 4 days before seeing a doctor. See more here in this presentation out of Johns Hopkins University: Social Media: New Data Source for Public Health

This Week’s OpenGov Hack Night: App Design Workshop with Knight Lab’s Miranda Mulligan

Christopher WhitakerMay 3, 2013

.@jmm teaching app design at Chicago #OpenGov Hack Night

This week’s OpenGov Hack Night featured an app design workshop by the Knight Lab’s Miranda Mulligan. This design process doesn’t start with the latest data set, but instead starts with establishing empathy with the user.

Everyone partners up for the workshop and takes turns interviewing their partners about a particular problem they face. The workshop encourages participants to dig deeper by determining the user’s needs, insights on how they feel about the issue.

More hacking at the design workshop

Miranda then encourages users to think of radical ways that app designers can meet the users needs. After this, participants get feedback from their partners to help refine their ideas.

Then comes the fun part – arts and crafts time!

Arts and Crafts time at the OpenGov Hack Night

Using a variety of multi-colored paper, participants build mock-up designs of their apps. We then went around the room showing off our work.

Now that's what I call a wireframe

More demos of designs at #opengov hack night

If this sounds like a fun workshop (and it is!) then you’re in luck! Miranda will be giving this workshop again as part of National Day of Civic Hacking June 1st at 1871. The event is free and everyone is welcome. Registration for the event will open up later this week!

And as always, you can join us each and every Tuesday at 6:00 for OpenGov Hack Night at 1871.

The Chicago Police API, Safer Communities Hackathon, and Huge List of Chicago Crime Data Resources

Smart ChicagoMay 2, 2013 1 Comment

Who will watch the watchmen? Reed!

On May 11th, the City of Chicago and Google will host a Safe Communities Hackathon at Google’s Chicago office. (You can register for the free event here.) The team at Chicago’s Department of Innovation and Technology has just launched a new API based on the ClearMap System that will serve as great fodder for the hackathon and should lead to some interesting apps in the weeks and months to come.

Public crime data has a long history in Chicago, going back at least as far as the Citizen ICAM project in the early 90s. Adrian Holovaty’s broadly influential Chicago Crime website (which later was embedded in EveryBlock) was hot in the mid to late 00s.

When Brett Goldstein moved from the Chicago Police Department to his role as Chief Data Officer, he engineered the enormous publication (brought down Socrata w/ number of downloads!) of more than a decade of crime data. Great apps from great developers like Open City and the Chicago Tribune have built on this data, making it easier to see and understand these crime reports.

All of this is great stuff. But crime here is still a enormous issue. It tears a hole in the corpus of the city.

The newly minted API at http://api1.chicagopolice.org/clearpath/documentation (take a moment to consider that URL) is a great step in changing that. It has methods for querying crime, most wanted lists, and mug shots– data about what has already happened, much in the same vein of the tools and services created in the last decade or so.

But the beauty of this API is the “Community Concern” and “Community Event” elements. With the ability to submit and check a community concern, and see events where your neighbors are gathering to discuss safety, this API brings the Chicago Police Department back full circle. The first CLEARPath system was made as a corollary the nascent Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy, which was a new concept at the time.

I am signed up for the hackathon– I hope to see lots of people there. Meanwhile, here are some resources for the Safer Communities Hackathon created by Christopher Whitaker.

Data

Data provided by the City of Chicago

ClearPath REST API

The City of Chicago Police Department’s ClearPath website has been a leader in putting crime information online for years. Now that system has a brand new API. Below is a list of the API calls developers can pull up.

List of API Calls

Community Concerns API Calls
- Create Community Concern
- Check Community Concern Status
Crimes API Calls
- Crime Categories
- By Major Crimes
- Crimes Near XY Coordinates
- By Record Division Number
- By Type of Crime
- List of all Crimes
Mugshots API Calls
- By Warrant Number
- Display Mugshot
Most Wanted API Calls
- List of Most Wanted Individuals
Community Events Calendar API Calls
- Get Community Events
- Get Community Events Calendars

City of Chicago Crime Data from 2001 to Present

All City of Chicago crime reports from 2001 to the present.

City of Chicago Hardship Index

“This dataset contains a selection of six socioeconomic indicators of public health significance and a “hardship index,” by Chicago community area, for the years 2006 – 2010. The indicators are the percent of occupied housing units with more than one person per room (i.e., crowded housing); the percent of households living below the federal poverty level; the percent of persons in the labor force over the age of 16 years that are unemployed; the percent of persons over the age of 25 years without a high school diploma; the percent of the population under 18 or over 64 years of age (i.e., dependency); and per capita income. Indicators for Chicago as a whole are provided in the final row of the table.”

Vacant and Abandoned Buildings as reported to 311

“All 311 calls for open and vacant buildings reported to the City of Chicago since January 1, 2010. The information is updated daily with the previous day’s calls added to the records. The data set provides the date of the 311 service request and the unique Service Request # attached to each request. For each request, the following information (as reported by the 311 caller) is available: address location of building; whether building is vacant or occupied; whether the building is open or boarded; entry point if building is open; whether non-residents are occupying or using the building, if the building appears dangerous or hazardous and if the building is vacant due to a fire.”

Vacant Abandoned Building Violations

“Vacant and abandoned building violations issued on properties owned by financial institutions since January 1, 2011. Each violation is tied to a Docket Number. A Docket may have more than one violation associated with it. Fees are assessed based on all violations associated with a particular Docket. This dataset displays the most recent action (disposition description) for each violation, the fees and fines associated with the docket and the amount paid or outstanding for the docket. If the docket is a City Non-Suit or the owner is found to be Not Liable, then no payment is required. Note that multiple addresses may be associated with a violation; in these cases, multiple records will be included in this dataset for a single violation. / Data Owners: Administrative Hearings / Finance / Time Period: January 1, 2011 to present / Update Frequency: Data is updated daily”

Police Stations

“Chicago Police district station locations and contact information.”

Police Beat Boundaries

“Current police beat boundaries in Chicago. The data can be viewed on the Chicago Data Portal with a web browser. However, to view or use the files outside of a web browser, you will need to use compression software and special GIS software, such as ESRI ArcGIS (shape file) or Google Earth (KML or KMZ), is required.”

Police District Boundaries

“KML files of police districts in Chicago. To view or use these files, special GIS software such as Google Earth is required.”

Chicago Police Department – Illinois Uniform Crime Reporting Codes

“Illinois Uniform Crime Reporting (IUCR) codes are four digit codes that law enforcement agencies use to classify criminal incidents when taking individual reports. These codes are also used to aggregate types of cases for statistical purposes. In Illinois, the Illinois State Police establish IUCR codes, but the agencies can add codes to suit their individual needs.”
311 Reports of Graffiti

All open graffiti removal requests made to 311 and all requests completed since January 1, 2011. The Department of Streets & Sanitation’s Graffiti Blasters crews offer a vandalism removal service to private property owners. Graffiti Blasters employ “blast” trucks that use baking soda under high water pressure to erase painted graffiti from brick, stone and other mineral surfaces. They also use paint trucks to cover graffiti on the remaining surfaces. Organizations and residents may report graffiti and request its removal. 311 sometimes receives duplicate requests for graffiti removal. Requests that have been labeled as Duplicates are in the same geographic area and have been entered into 311’s Customer Service Requests (CSR) system at around the same time as a previous request. Duplicate reports/requests are labeled as such in the Status field, as either “Open – Dup” or “Completed – Dup.” Data is updated daily.”

Police Overtime

“Employee overtime and supplemental earnings by month and year-to-date. Data Owner: Budget & Management. Time Period: January 2012 to present. Frequency: Data is updated monthly.” (I’ve created a view that takes the original data set and shows only Chicago Police Department overtime”

State of Illinois Data

Drug Arrest Data

The State of Illinois’ Statistical Analysis Center has drug arrest data from 1975-2009. It only breaks down this data by the Act in which the arrest occurred. So, marijuana is in one category, every other drug in another, needles in another, and drug paraphernalia in another.

Cook County Data

Public Defender Pending Cases for 2011 by Month, Type

Citizen gathered data

Cook County Jail Inmate Tracker API (Beta)

By the Supreme Chi-Town Coding Crew

This is Django app that tracks the population of Cook County Jail over time and summarizes trends. This app is in active development.

Schoolcuts.org Data

By Apples2Apples and the Open Data Instititute

One of the major concerns around school closing is regarding students safety as they go from their old school to the new school. Schoolcuts.org shows which schools are closing and which schools are receiving students.

Private company data sets

Forecast.io API

One of the conversations you’ll here in Chicago is that when the weather gets warm, the city gets violent. Given that, for forecast.io API from the Dark Sky company may be useful to developers for showing if that’s true or not. The first 10,000 API calls are free and after that each 10,000 calls are a $1 each.

Projects

WBEZ Gang Map

From WBEZ Chicago’s web site

“WBEZ reproduced the flat maps depicted in the latest volume ofThe Gang Book and placed them in a more interactive format online. For the maps to be useful, we needed them to be searchable or at least browsable in a way that other maps informed by public data are. While fact-checking the boundaries we were drawing in a Google map, we asked the Chicago Police Department to supply gang territory data in commonly-used digital mapping formats (e.g., KML files use by Google maps). The department did not fulfill that request. Eventually (after we involved the Illinois Attorney General’s Office), the department provided flat, non-interactive maps that resembled those published in The Gang Book. The map you see below attempts to follow the contours laid out in those files.”

Crime in Chicago (OpenCity Apps)

From OpenCity Apps

“Crime in Chicago is a data visualization by Open City that lets you explore crime trends in Chicago’s 50 wards. It was built using open data about Chicago crimes released by the Chicago Police Department.”

Crimestep (Beta)

By Nick Doiron

Crimestep shows crime stats along your walking route including percentage of violent crime and crime that happens between 12:38 and 6:38pm. (Application still in development).

Vacant and Abandoned Building Finder

From OpenCity Apps

“The Vacant and Abandoned Building Finder is a tool for helping people and organizations find buildings in Chicago that are not in use and potentially hazardous to the neighborhood around them.”

Go2School App (Still in production)

By Tom Kompare

(The Go2School app is an app that helps parents find directions to their child’s school. While the initial version doesn’t deal with crime, a feature that Tom is working on involved integrating the safe passage program into the app)

Chicago Homicide Watch

By Chicago Sun-Times

“Our goal is to tell the story of every murder in the city, so that together we might fight the tendency to view homicides as just another rising or falling number, like mortgage rates or batting averages.”

Crime in Chicago (Chicago Tribune)

From the TribApps Team

“Find out about crime on your block, in your community, along your commute, and more.”

RedEye’s Homicide Map of Chicago

From RedEye Chicago

“Tracking homicides in Chicago is an ongoing project of the RedEye. This site is updated regularly with information from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, the Chicago Police Department and the Chicago Breaking News Center. Information is subject to change. Data points appear Thursdays in RedEye’s print edition.”

2012 Chicago Murders Map & Timeline

By DNAinfo.com Chicago

“DNAinfo.com Chicago tracked every murder in Chicago in 2012 in an effort to show the human toll of violence in the city”

Articles

This reading list isn’t comprehensive or complete – but a good starting point in terms of thinking about these issues.

WBEZ

This American Life

Harper High School, Part One (Audio)

“We spent five months at Harper High School in Chicago, where last year alone 29 current and recent students were shot. 29. We went to get a sense of what it means to live in the midst of all this gun violence, how teens and adults navigate a world of funerals and Homecoming dances.”

Harper High School, Part Two

“We pick up where we left off last week in our second hour from Harper High School in Chicago. We find out if a shooting in the neighborhood will derail the school’s Homecoming game and dance. We hear the origin story of one of Harper’s gangs. And we ask a group of teenagers: where do you get your guns?”

WBEZ News

Report links Chicagoans’ distance from trauma centers to higher mortality rates, 4/18/2013, Natalie Moore

Kenwood residents react to policing policies, 1/13/2013, Natalie Moore

Chicago Tribune

Crime in Chicago’s vacant property soars 48% since 2005, 4/30/2013, Mary Ellen Podmolik

Timeline of a gun sale, 2/18/2013, Annie Sweeney, Ryan Nagle, and David Eads

Chicago Magazine

Gawker Glosses Chicago’s Murder Problem, 8/14/2012, Whet Moser

Chicago’s Criminals Are Getting Away With Murder, 5/2013, Noah Isackson

Chicago Reader

Concentrated Poverty and Homicide in Chicago, 7/26/2012, Steve Bogira

The speech Obama should give in Chicago, 2/14/2013, Steve Bogira

Are we missing something? Hit us up in the comments.

Year: 2013