In my February 2nd post, I showed how Philadelphia’s Illegal Dumping 311 requests have been rising since the City started systematic data collection in 2015 (link).
Philadelphia’s 311 calls and on-line requests have been growing since January, 2015, so it is fair to ask whether Illegal Dumping requests are increasing as a share of all 311 service requests. I will give a quick answer then I will explain how I arrived at the answer for those interested in the details.
Yes, Illegal Dumping is increasing as a percentage of all 311 field service requests, as shown in the chart below.
Since information and directory assistance calls are included in the 311 OpenDataPhilly file, I removed them from the 1.2 million 311 records to determine the identify the field service requests. I then computed the Illegal Dumping requests as a percentage of the monthly field service requests, as shown above.
The illegal dumping trend is quite clear. Philadelphia residents are submitting more and more illegal dumping requests to 311 each month. The exception was January, 2016. It turns out that we had a 22.4 inch snow storm on January 24th which depressed the number of illegal dumping requests as residents had the pressing challenge of shoveling snow.
This is just a small example of the important information hidden i the City’s 311 raw data. Now that we have a well organized 311 data reporting and tracking system, we need to move forward with a routine analysis of our 311 data to understand trends and patterns.
Philadelphia Police’s Crime & Maps web page provides an excellent example of how we should use the City’s 311 data to prepare regular management reports for City officials, Council members and residents.