New York City’s tree damaged by Isaias
Datamining in New York City 311 Service Request dataset
By Hanzhang Yang
Hanzhang Yang is an urban planner and rookie data analyst.
The year 2020 is unusual. COVID-19, the death of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Justice Ruth Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice nomination, presidential election, the trade war with China(is that still a thing?) all happened this year.
However, what bothered New Yorkers the most in the past 10 months? NYC311 is the non-emergency city services and information program provided by the city government. Since 2010, the 311 service request data has been stored and distributed through the NYC Open Data hosted by Socrata, a SaaS platform owned by Tyler Technologies.
By looking at the 311 Service Request data by year, we can learn that New York City residents use 311 Services much less than in recent few years in the first half of 2020. Still, when national unstable led by the death of George Floyd reach New York City, the number of 311 requests peaked in June, July, and August.
But why the number of 311 Service Requests topped in August 2020?
From the above diagram, we can see a sharp peak of 311 Service Request on August 4, 2020. Where are these complaints going to?
The Department of Parks and Recreation! But for what?
14863 calls, more than 90% of the 311 requests were about “Damaged Tree” why? Do not forget the Hurricane Isaias hit the five boroughs on that day. Shall we recall together with the news?
Where are the damaged trees, precisely?
We can find many damaged trees (in red) on the Atlantic coast of the New York five boroughs. Furthermore, we have another map showing how the trees were damaged.
From the news article above, we learned that the Queens residents have been complaining about their trees’ condition for a long time. The next article would follow the past complaints before Hurricane Isaias, to discover how the neglected small things could be aggregated to big mistakes, and big costs.
Data sources:
311 Service Requests from 2010 to Present
2015 Street Tree Census - Tree Data
This story is part of the research for PLA6619 Intro to Urban Data and Informatics, taught by Dr. Boyeong Hong.
