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Kaleidocade

WellBeing Toronto Promotes Neighborhood Vibrancy, Government Transparency and Open Data

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In an effort to promote neighborhood wellbeing, government transparency, and open data policies, the City of Toronto wanted to develop an application that could engage decision makers from community groups, residents, government officials and business leaders with the data that has typically not been made easily available.  In 2005, Toronto’s Strong Neighborhoods Task Force developed a list of 13 Priority Areas by analyzing “social risk” factors to provide a snapshot of the socio-economic conditions in the neighborhoods.  By compiling baseline data the City was able to measure progress in these areas over time and determine what services were needed (and which were more effective) at creating stronger, more vibrant communities.

While this proved to be an effective method, the criteria used in generating the Priority Areas was static and only suited to examine a particular aspect of what makes communities flourish.  Instead, what if the disparate sources of demographic, economic and social service data were brought together in such a way that anyone could create their own priority areas based on the factors of their own choosing?  Neighborhoods could be analyzed by service organizations to see where the highest needs for their services were required, and as the data is updated, the same tool could be used to determine the effectiveness of the services provided.  Similarly for determining potential business and economic investments, real estate decisions and municipal services: if the data is available and tools for analysis provided, the power to identify and direct the future wellbeing of Toronto’s neighborhoods is opened to a wider audience, increasing awareness and promoting greater civic participation.  It was therefore vital to develop a common fact base over time that could be used for place-based decision-making across all service perspectives.  It was also determined that this “fact base”, include all neighborhoods across the City ofToronto, and not just the 13 priority areas.

Drawing on our experience developing data visualization and decision making tools such as our Kaleidocade Indicators Framework and DecisionTree products, Azavea was hired by the City of Toronto to develop a web based mapping and measurement tool to help gauge wellbeing amongst Toronto’s neighborhoods.  The result, Wellbeing Toronto, combines a list of over 150 (and growing) indicators of wellbeing and the corresponding data for each of the city’s 140 neighborhoods.  The datasets are grouped into 10 categories including Demographics, Health, Safety, Transportation and Environment.  Users are able to select up to 20 indicators, and the website generates a thematic map showing how strongly the set of indicators is represented in each neighborhood.  The selected indicators can be further weighted so that the values of certain indicators are more heavily represented in the map.  In addition to the map analysis, the application also produces tabular data showing the exact values of each selected indicator for each neighborhood.  Charts and graphs showing the distribution of an indicator set and statistical information on each indicator are available as well.  For further analysis, a variety of geographic reference points, such as day care centers, police stations, public transit locations – from up to seven categories – can be overlaid on the thematic map.

All geographic data is accessed through the City of Toronto’s ESRI ArcGIS Server infrastructure.  The website itself is built using the latest open source JavaScript technologies, including jQuery and the OpenLayers web mapping framework.  Several components in the OpenLayers project that allow it to operate with ESRI’s ArcGIS products were developed and contributed by Azavea.  The back-end application supports the web app with a REST API developed with Java, and several open source GIS toolkits, Java Topology Suite and GeoTools.

The application was launched to much excitement in early July, and received a considerable amount of television and newspaper press.  There were nearly 18,000 unique visitors on its initial launch day alone, making it the most popular page on the toronto.ca domain for the day.  The application is also a triumph for the City of Toronto in its commitment to Open Data policies, as well as fostering a comprehensive understanding of neighborhood wellness across a broad range of perspectives.  Instead of fearing the exposure that comes with transparency, the Wellbeing Toronto application proves that putting the data and the tools in the hands of the public can engage people in their own communities to evaluate and assess the wellbeing of the neighborhoods in which they live, work and play.

 

Important Links:

Main page: http://www.toronto.ca/wellbeing/
Tutorial: http://www.toronto.ca/wellbeing/tutorial.htm
FAQ: http://www.toronto.ca/wellbeing/faq.htm
Description: http://www.toronto.ca/wellbeing/about.htm

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Geographic Statistics and Indicators Heavy Lifting at a Glance

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kaleidocade_smKIF—the Kaleidocade Indicators Framework—has proven to be a powerful tool for organizations that want to share with the public large amounts of data, visualize it, and provide sophisticated analytical tools to help people interpret it.  But what about those organizations with much less data or the need for a more streamlined, simple approach?

"KIF Lite" - Global Sample

The KIFlite global sample application assembles hundreds of statistics and indicators

KIFlite is a new option for organizations that wish to publish geographically aggregated indicators.  It combines the analytic power of KIF with a simplified user interface, making it easy to quickly dive into maps and charts.

KIFlite was originally conceived as a way for KIF to operate on a touch screen.  Potential users of KIF may not have the luxury of sitting comfortably at a computer, thinking through questions in detail, and then saving their work and returning to it later.  We had to think of a way for KIF to be immediately engaging and easily manipulated without the use of a mouse or keyboard  by someone passing a kiosk at a conference or other interactive display.  Even though KIFlite has been expanded to work from a regular computer and not necessarily only from a touch screen, that initial focus led us to differentiate KIFlite from the full KIF package in several ways:

  • A Single Geographic Level— The full KIF application supports the inclusion of several different geographies in one implementation.  Depending on the coverage area of the client’s data, it might be broken up into states/counties/tracts or municipalities/ZIP codes/school districts. The end-user chooses the area and associated data they are interested in.  KIFlite analyzes and displays all data at a single geography, simplifying the user experience.
  • Live Indicator Selection—In KIF, before performing analysis, a user chooses a subset of indicators relevant to their interests and adds them to their own “indicator collection” before doing any analysis.  These can then be saved to a user account and retrieved later.  KIFlite makes any indicator available for any of the available analysis tools, but doesn’t save data to a user’s collections.
  • User Accounts – Though user accounts are extremely useful in an application where people are likely to want to save their work, the quick in-and-out approach of KIFlite makes user accounts unnecessary.
  • Reports—KIFlite’s rapid and temporal style of interaction inherently de-emphasized the need for highly detailed reports.   KIFlite offers a smaller range of simplified reports.
KIF Lite - Scatter Plot

KIFlite - Scatter Plot

If you’d like to check out KIFlite, check out our global sample application; it focuses on global socio-economic indicators, ranging from health to freedom of the press worldwide.

We hope that this addition to the KIF family of products will bring the power of Kaleidocade to an even wider audience who deals with large amounts of geographic indicators that need to be interpreted and analyzed quickly and efficiently. For examples of organizations that use KIF already, please visit our KIF clients’ page.

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Data on Mortgages, Deeds, Sheriff’s Deeds, Property Types, etc. at Your Fingertips: Philly LandStat Released to the Public

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"The Philadelphia Department of Records has released LandStat to the public, allowing anyone to access more than 650,000 individual pieces of property transaction data within the city. "


Have you ever wondered which zip codes in your city have the most real estate transactions? Or maybe you’ve wanted to know which city council district has the most vacant land? Whether you are a city planner, a real estate investor, or a curious citizen, The Philadelphia Department of Records‘ ‘Philly LandStat ‘ website allows you to access more than 650,000 individual pieces of property transaction data within the city. When we first announced the application in October 2008, it was only accessible from the City’s internal network. The Department of Records has recently released the application (which has just been updated with the latest real estate data) to the public.

LandStat incorporates information on property transactions from the Department of Records’ ParcelExplorer and PhilaDox applications and presents it in an interactive web application. Individual records from those applications were placed into ZIP Codes, City Council districts, wards, U.S. Census tracts, and blockgroups using the Unified Land Records System (ULRS) — winner of the Public Technology Institute 2008 Technology Solutions Award (Web & EGovernment category). Once aggregated to these districts, the resulting dataset could then be fed into Azavea’s Kaleidocade Indicators Framework (KIF) software for publication and analysis over the web, covering such categories as mortgages, deeds, condominiums, the Real Estate Transfer Tax, and property type.

2008 Residential Parcels in Philadelphia’s City
Council District #10.

Kaleidocade enables the end user to create thematic maps, chart trends over time, get detailed reports on specific geographic areas of interest, and perform complex analysis through a straightforward interface using only a web browser. Releasing the property data through KIF, rather than as a flat text file or raw database, gives those interested a set of easy-to-use tools to quickly and easily visualize the various datasets. Users can focus their queries on individual geographic areas or specific types of transactions, or take a step back and look at the data in a larger context, depending on what types of questions they’re trying to answer. It’s the hope of the project that as those answers are sought, a level of knowledge is gained that otherwise might not have been possible by simply looking at a listing of the facts and figures on their own.

To try LandStat, just point your browser to: http://www.phillylandstat.com. Registration is free, and will create an account where all of your searches and reports will be saved so that you can return to them later, but it’s not a requirement.

For more information on Kaleidocade, please contact Chip Hitchens at chitchens@azavea.com.

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Philly’s Election Results Searchable and Mappable through Kaleidocade: Over 4 Million Records

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"...KIF would make it simple for elections commissions to share data with the public [and] ... could accommodate data for any locality, from any time period."

Over the past few years, Azavea has been involved with numerous elections-related projects, ranging from election-day incident reporting to consulting for candidates at every level of government. During the course of this work, we’ve occasionally needed to incorporate voter registration information or historical election results into our analysis. The public records request process can be arduous and cumbersome. And, all too often, even when a request is granted, we’ve found ourselves photocopying primary source records or holding a 100-page printout of the information we were seeking. Needless to say, we’ve been surprised that information so vital to the functioning of our democracy is rarely provided in a form that is easy for average citizens to access.

Map of the percent of the vote won by Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential general election, by precinct

Recently, as we began to develop a sample application to demonstrate the ways the Kaleidocade Indicators Framework (KIF) can be used to visualize and interpret local datasets, we realized that we had the opportunity to illustrate how historical elections data can be made available to the public in a user-friendly web interface. To this end, we assembled the results of elections held in Philadelphia for all state and national offices from 1992 to 2008, along with the results of the 2007 elections for city offices — all told, more than 4 million records.

We’re excited to announce that the election results that we acquired are now available in the online KIF Local Sample at both the precinct and the ward levels. Users can generate a simple report based on an address or can assemble a fine-tuned collection of indicators by selecting particular candidates and geographies. Once an indicator collection is complete, KIF provides many options for interpreting the data. Visualizing election results on a map allows users to detect spatial patterns in candidate performance. Users can customize the data display by changing the class break schemes or color ramps, and by overlaying selected features and boundaries. The data can also be examined in a table (including trendlines of candidate performance over time), viewed as statistical summaries like distribution histograms, or compared through ranked lists of results.

Increasingly, from the federal to the local level, transparency and open government are becoming mandates. Our local sample serves as a prime example of how KIF would make it simple for elections commissions to share data with the public. Offering historical election data through a web application also has the advantage of making public records requests a self-serve process that can reduce the burden on elections commissions’ personnel. And while historical data is important, a tool like KIF can also be adapted to near real-time election results reporting. Rather than releasing text summaries of election results after the fact, city elections officials could enter precinct results into KIF as they are reported, making the web interface a valuable breaking-news and public information tool.

In the meantime, the KIF team plans to continue adding Philadelphia election results to the local sample, including the Philadelphia mayoral and city council races from 2003 and 2005. Check out this powerful local resource and spread the word! If you’re interested in politics and open government, you might also want to take a look at Cicero Live (described below) and the Elections and Advocacy sample application of DecisionTree, Azavea’s web-based geographic decision-making tools, with which you can simulate a canvassing or GOTV campaign.

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LandStat Helps Philadelphia’s Department of Records Get the Big Picture on Real Estate Transactions

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"[The] new application...helps city staff visualize and interpret Philadelphia property information"


Continuing our commitment to the Philadelphia Department of Records, we have recently rolled out a new application to help city staff visualize and interpret Philadelphia property information. The new application, called LandStat, is powered by the Kaleidocade Indicators Framework (KIF) to represent aggregated data on such topics as mortgages, deeds, foreclosures, real estate transfer tax, condominium declarations, and property types. By counting, averaging, or adding up records in a particular ZIP Code or census tract, areas can be compared to each other at a glance.


Map describing mortgages in Philadelphia in 2007.

The data used in LandStat has quite a lineage. Azavea previously worked with the Department of Records on the ParcelExplorer application, which combines property transaction and other information from the City’s PhilaDox document recording system with parcel-level data from other agencies as well as a series of historic and contemporary maps. Using the Philadelphia Department of Technology’s Unified Land Records System (ULRS), also developed by Azavea, we were able to enhance the real estate transaction data by performing a series of “point in polygon” operations to determine in which ZIP Code, City Council District, ward, US Census tract or blockgroup each document and property was located. In order to convert that data to something compatible with KIF, we then created an aggregating tool which took the sum, count, or average of each indicator in each of the different geographies and created a KIF database.


Block group report generated by LandStat.

As with other applications using Kaleidocade, LandStat’s data can be viewed in a map, with geographic areas color-coded to indicate different ranges of values. Being able to see hot spots or areas of inactivity quickly and easily can inform decisions and inspire ways of thinking that might not have been possible by viewing the same data in a spreadsheet. LandStat also enables users to create scatter plots, view a statistical analysis, create tables with specific ranges of data, or rank top and bottom locations for a particular indicator. Detailed reports can also be created for an area of interest. LandStat will round out the city’s already advanced suite of land analysis applications.

LandStat is currently available from the City of Philadelphia’s internal network, although the Department of Records may elect to make it available to the public at some point in the future. Please contact Chip Hitchens for more information on LandStat or KIF.

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MPIP Launches MetroPhilaMapper and Makes Hundreds of Local and Regional Indicators Available to the Public for Free

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"With over 250 local and regional indicators ... MetroPhilaMapper holds about 250,000 pieces of data."


The growing interdependence of people, markets, and institutions across the country requires a multitude of agencies, businesses and non profit organizations to analyze and understand social, economic, and environment patterns within the regional context in which they operate, helping them to better serve their constituents. But while raw data rarely tells a compelling story on its own, figures buried deep in databases do have a story to tell. Many organizations maintain enormous databases full of information critical to their mission, but too often they lack a convenient way to effectively utilize or present the data in a way that informs people’s decisions.

In June, Temple University’s Metropolitan Philadelphia Indicators Project (MPIP), a project that promotes data-driven regional civic dialogue, launched MetroPhilaMapper, a free, online mapping application. With over 250 local and regional indicators, MetroPhilaMapper leverages Azavea’s KaleidocadeTM Indicators Framework (KIF) to enable the public to easily find, geographically view, display in charts and tables, and compare data that used to be scattered across multiple agencies.

Regional in focus, MetroPhilaMapper displays aggregated quality of life data including land use patterns, SAT scores and school enrollments, population characteristics, health statistics, business and job locations, housing, real estate and mortgage information, voter registrations, income and wage data, and crime patterns that cover the two-state, nine-county region. The system provides detailed and nuanced indicators at several geographic levels including boroughs and townships, school districts, and zip codes. MetroPhilaMapper currently holds about 250,000 pieces of data and will grow substantially later this summer when the project adds data at the Census tract level as well as additional economic and employment data.

Azavea’s Kaleidocade Indicators Framework uses ESRI’s ArcIMS 9.2 and ArcSDE, and enables MetroPhilaMapper’s users to make and save their own maps by selecting the sets of indicators and levels of geography of their choice; choose to view the same information in tables, charts or reports; upload addresses to create their own maps on the fly; and download and save all maps, tables, and reports for use in their own reports or analysis, among many other features.

For more information, visit MetroPhilaMapper. You can create an account, if you want to save your work, or click on “Anonymous Login” if you just want to experiment with the application.

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Puzzle: Explore MetroPhilaMapper’s Indicators and Learn About the Region

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Sample map from MetroPhilaMapper, powered by KaleidocadeTM.

Temple University’s MetroPhilaMapper, powered by KaleidocadeTM, provides the public with a powerful tool for learning about and analyzing regional demographic and quality-of-living data. This month’s puzzle will take you on an exploration of the application. Be the first to send in all three correct answers and receive a $25 gift card to Barnes & Noble!

Open the MetroPhilaMapper application. Either log in annonymously or register for a free account. Click on the ‘Make a Map’ button. Select ‘All Municipalities’ from the drop down menu. In the ‘Category’ drop down menu select ‘Arts & Culture/ Federal and State Funding for Arts and Culture, 2004′. Click on the ‘Add’ button to add this choice to your ‘Project’. Then name your project and click the ‘Save’ button to proceed.

1. MetroPhilaMapper enables users to view results in five ways: map, table, statistics, scatter, rank. Click on the ‘Table’ icon to view the amount of funding various municipalities received in 2004. How much funding did Philadelphia receive? Hint: Use the arrows in the ‘Federal and State Funding’ column to sort the results into descending value.

2. MetroPhilaMapper provides information on the Greater Philadelphia region. Now, click on the ‘Map’ tab. Click the arrows next to ‘Search’ (first link in the map legend area on the left of the map) to access the address search function. Enter “Downingtown, PA” into the search box and click ‘Find’. What is the range of funding that Downingtown received in 2004? Hint: The colors on the map correspond to the map legend visible under the ‘Search’ function.

3. Since the range of any indicator can be quite large, MetroPhilaMapper provides some additional statistics. Click on the ‘Statistics’ tab. What is the mean for ‘Federal and State Funding for Arts and Culture, 2004′?

Send your answers to info@azavea.com. Be the first to send in all three correct answers and receive a $25 gift card to Barnes & Noble! The winner will be announced in our next newsletter.

The winning caption from the last newsletter’s PhillyHistory.org mystery photo puzzle was sent in by Nikki Cross, City Planner for Philadelphia City Planning Commission. Winning Entry: “Philadelphia scientists test an early protype of an underwater breathing apparatus. Their big secret? A common garden hose.”

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OJJDP Implements SMART On The Kaleidocade Platform

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"Kaleidocade brings ... data ... to the people who need it, in a way they can easily understand, summarize, and analyze. "

Azavea announces the public release of the first national-scale implementation of our Kaleidocade Indicators Framework (KIF): The Socioeconomic Mapping and Resource Topography (SMART) system, developed for the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). Kaleidocade is a unique web-based software framework used for visualizing geographically aggregated data as maps, tables, charts, statistics, and trends, which fit perfectly with OJJDP’s requirements.

The OJJDP supports state and local juvenile justice systems and programs nationwide, and sponsors research and training related to juvenile justice issues. In order to more effectively match resources and needs, they sought to develop a system that would merge a wide range of data sources such as demographics, crime, risk factors, education, economics, and grant resources, to support the identification of emerging issues and assist decision makers in developing appropriate responses.

Azavea, under subcontract to Development Services Group, Inc. (DSG), implemented the Kaleidocade framework, which uses ESRI’s ArcIMS, ArcGIS Server and ArcWeb Services for mapping and geocoding functionality. OJJDP required a tight timeline and Phase I was finished and installed in 6 weeks. Phase II, which contains enhancements, is ongoing. SMART currently contains over 3.3 million rows of demographics, economic indicators, educational data, youth risk factors, and statistical indexes—more than 100 different indicators aggregated to states, counties, and census tracts throughout the entire United States. Kaleidocade brings all of this data to the people who need it, in a way they can easily understand, summarize, and analyze.

To view the SMART application, visit http://smart.gismapping.info. For more information on Kaleidocade, please visit www.azavea.com/products.aspx or contact info@azavea.com.

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