BTree Huggers: Data Scientists + NYC Parks Get Together, Blow Everyone’s Minds
Wow. Just, wow. Last weekend we hosted our first DataDive back in our hometown of NYC since our first event last October and it was, in no uncertain terms, incredible. The NYC Parks Department delivered three amazing projects related to tracking tree diversity in NYC, assessing areas of high risk during storms, and assessing how effective their pruning programs are in reducing work orders. Over the weekend NYC Parks, NYC DOITT, and our great data scientist community drilled into these problems, hacked up data, and ultimately came up with AMAZING results, namely:
- Storm Risk Map (headed up by Data Ambassador Brian Dalessandro): A full analysis of storm and tree damage data that resulted in a great study of data preparedness and an awesome map of storm risk.
- Block Pruning Analysis (headed up by Data Ambassador Cathy O’Neil): An in-depth look at the effect of block pruning on later work requests, including multiple statistical models, a thorough assessment of the data, and a preliminary analysis that shows pretty clearly that block pruning may not have an effect at all.
- Tree Diversity Map (headed up by Data Ambassador Adam Laiacano): An analysis of the tree species in New York, culminating in an insane interactive tool powered by CartoDB.
If you want to see more results, grab the data, or just check out all the fun things we did, head over to our wiki or see all our photos up on Flickr.
Another salute to NYC Parks, NYC DOITT, our incredible data ambassadors and, of course, all of you who continue to come out to help do great things for the world with data. We love the heck out of all of you and keep your eyes pointed to our events page for your next chance to get involved!