recent OpenDataPhilly updates - May 2024

[OpenDataPhilly Info]

OpenDataPhilly community,

The City and the OpenDataPhilly team have made a number of updates, changes, and additions to the data catalog over the past few months. Below is a brief summary:

Re-organized data sets - data providers periodically reorganize how they provide the data to the public. Often this is done in order to make accessing the data more flexible or to clarify how the data can be useful

• Philadelphia District Attorney - when the DA originally began releasing data several years ago, it was released as individual data sets (Arrests, Bail, Case Length, Case Outcomes, Charges, etc.) Summary). At the time, OpenDataPhilly maintained a separate catalog entry for each data set. However, the DA has recently reorganized how they make the data available to the public by creating a data download portal - all of the downloadable data is now accessible from this single web site. In addition, they have created a data dashboard that displays graphs and maps for multi-year comparisons.

• SEPTA - The original data APIs that SEPTA published were developed through a series of transit-oriented hackathons in 2012-2015. in 2023 SEPTA reorganized the data it releases to the public. In addition to an open data landing page, the APIs are better documented and support online testing and there are many more datasets. We've recently reorganized the various OpenDataPhilly catalog entries in order to fix references to the previous hackathon APIs. In addition, several new data sets were released (see below).

New data sets and applications

• Villanova University - as part of a research project, Dr. Lance.Hannon developed a dataset that matches 2020 census blockgroups to police districts and service areas (PSAs) in order to support demographic analyses.
• PA Dept of Transportation - as we cleaned up some old datasets that were no longer published by PennDOT, we discovered a large number of datasets that relate to Philadelphia but were not in OpenDataPhilly. These include: at-grade intersections, bridges, rail lines, state/local roads, traffic counts, and transportation improvement projects. A shoutout to PASDA for its amazing array of resources. 
• SEPTA - In addition to re-organizing the datasets, SEPTA released several new data sets, including: elevator outages, performance dashboards, ridership statistics, GIS data for stops and lines, and financial data. An addition, SEPTA also now provides several types of alerts using the GTFS-RT standard. A full list of SEPTA datasets in OpenDataPhilly is at https://opendataphilly.org/organizations/septa/
  
• PA Dept of Health - we added several new statewide data sets related to health care, including birth centers, community mental health centers, drug alcohol treatment facilities, home health agencies, medical marijuana dispensaries, and nursing homes.
  
• Election Results application - https://opendataphilly.org/datasets/election-results/
• Campaign Finance Reports - added 2023
• Tree Inventory - added 2023
• Health of the City - added a new dataset, API and application for Health of the City - a community health report.
• Street Legal Cards - added a new guide to reading and understanding the cards.
• Traffic Calming Devices - added new data set for locations of traffic calming devices (speed cushions, humps, and tables
• Vehicular Crashes - updated datasets for 2018-2022

Best regards,

Robert Cheetham

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