Bloomberg Philanthropies Supports Cities' Ability to Tap Into Big Data
In Mobile, Ala., building-code inspectors armed with smartphones and Facebook Inc.'s(FB) Instagram photo-sharing app were able to inventory the city's 1,200 blighted properties in just eight days--a task that enforcement officers had previously considered impossible with the older paper-based systems of tracking blight. With Instagram, inspectors could snap a photo of a property and have it appear on a map, showing officials where dilapidated, abandoned or other problem properties are clustered.
The inventory was just the first step. Mobile's two-year-old Innovation Team, funded with a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, cross-referenced the data with other available property information--tax records, landmark status, out-of-state ownership--to compile a "blight index," a master profile of every problem property in the city. This made it possible to identify which property owners might need assistance in rehabbing their properties and which ones to cite for code violations. The city is wrapping up a second survey of blighted properties to measure the net change over the past year, says Jeff Carter, Innovation Team's executive director. "Instagram was phase one, and we would never have made it to phase two without it," Carter says.
Mobile data collection is also helping Los Angeles to clean up city streets. Teams from the city sanitation department use video and smartphones to document illegal dumping, abandoned bulky items and other trash problems. The teams can use an app to report problems needing immediate attention, but what was really noteworthy--especially for a city the size of L.A.--was that they were able to view and grade all 22,000 miles of the city's streets and alleyways...