Making Public Safety Data Accessible in the Westside Atlanta Data Dashboard

TL;DR

This paper presents a human-centered, interactive data dashboard designed to improve accessibility and analysis of public safety data for Atlanta's Westside community, addressing local needs and promoting community-driven insights.

Contribution

It introduces a community-focused, interactive visualization tool tailored to local public safety data, emphasizing user needs and spatial analysis capabilities.

Findings

Development of an accessible mapping and visualization tool

Integration of overlays for spatial correlation of data

Finalization of a user-centered public safety dashboard

Abstract

Individual neighborhoods within large cities can benefit from independent analysis of public data in the context of ongoing efforts to improve the community. Yet existing tools for public data analysis and visualization are often mismatched to community needs, for reasons including geographic granularity that does not correspond to community boundaries, siloed data sets, inaccurate assumptions about data literacy, and limited user input in design and implementation phases. In Atlanta this need is being addressed through a Data Dashboard developed under the auspices of the Westside Communities Alliance (WCA), a partnership between Georgia Tech and community stakeholders. In this paper we present an interactive analytic and visualization tool for public safety data within the WCA Data Dashboard. We describe a human-centered approach to understand the needs of users and to build accessible mapping tools for visualization and analysis. The tools include a variety of overlays that allow users to spatially correlate features of the built environment, such as vacant properties with criminal activity as well as crime prevention efforts. We are in the final stages of developing the first version of the tool, with plans for a public release in fall of 2016.