“Open data”

• Data made available to the public, (ideally) without restriction
• In principle, open data contribute to:
  • An informed community
  • Innovative new applications created by the public

Cities and open data

TCU Center for Urban Studies

• On the web: http://urbanstudies.tcu.edu/
• Major initiative: developing applications relevant to cities from open datasets
• New project: Visualizing Fort Worth –> Visualizing Texas

Other examples of open data in action

• NYC Taxis, A Day in the Life by Chris Whong
• Bay Area Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
• I Quant New York

Where does open data come from?

Open data portals

• National data: http://www.data.gov/
• Cities:
  • Fort Worth: https://data.fortworthtexas.gov/
  • Dallas: https://www.dallasopendata.com/
  • Houston: http://data.ohouston.org/
  • New York City: https://nycopendata.socrata.com/

What about smaller cities?

What does open data look like?

API access

[ {
  "beat" : "N43",
  "location_type" : "13",
  "councildistrict" : "2",
  "block_address" : "2500 BLOCK NE 28TH ST",
  "state" : "TX",
  "case_no_offense" : "000063560-09A",
  "from_date" : "2000-01-03T00:00:00",
  "city" : "Fort Worth",
  "division" : "N",
  "offense_desc" : "Capital Murder",
  "attempt_complete" : "C",
  "locationtypedescription" : "Highway, street, roadway, alley",
  "case_no" : "63560",
  "location_1" : {
    "needs_recoding" : false,
    "longitude" : "-97.32579565245308",
    "latitude" : "32.79506097874604",
    "human_address" : "{\"address\":\"\",\"city\":\"\",\"state\":\"\",\"zip\":\"\"}"
  },
  "offense" : "09A",
  "nature_of_call" : "MURDER",
  "reported_date" : "2000-01-30T00:00:00"
}
 ]

Text files

Text files

PDFs (ack!)

Link: http://fortworthtexas.gov/propertymanagement/tax-foreclosed-inventory.pdf?v=151014

Are open data truly open?

• API, CSV, JSON… these are not terms that are going to be familiar to the average urban resident
• In turn, while many datasets are open, they are not widely accessible
• This requires:
  • Tools to translate open data into publicly-meaningful products
  • Skilled analysts who know how to use these tools appropriately

Tools of the trade

Open data and visualization tools

• Best-case scenario: explicit connection between open data catalogs and visualization/analysis tools
• Example: Data.gov

CartoDB

• Web-based platform for geospatial data management and visualization
• Let’s check it out at https://cartodb.com/

“Big data”

Open data and “big data”

Applied example

• Question: how do assessed property values vary by land parcel in Fort Worth?
  
• Data source: Tarrant Appraisal District
• Tools to use: QGIS, R, CartoDB
• Full tutorial to be posted at http://urbanstudies.tcu.edu/research/open-data

Data acquisition

Simplification: QGIS

Data wrangling: R

Data visualization: CartoDB

End result

Questions and discussion

• Email: kyle.walker@tcu.edu
• On the web:
  • http://personal.tcu.edu/kylewalker
  • http://urbanstudies.tcu.edu
  • Twitter: @kyle_e_walker