sbrudz / ratgraph

Visualization of rat and rodent sightings in NYC

ratgraph

Overview

ratgraph is an interactive visualization of rat and rodent sightings in NYC based on data from the NYC Open Data portal.

Development

• Install the ruby version specified in the .ruby-version file
• Make sure that bundler.io is installed
• Run bundle install in the root of the project directory
• Run bundle exec middleman server to start the development server

Deployment

Ratgraph lives on GitHub pages and uses the middleman-gh-pages gem from Neo Innovation for publishing. To deploy an update, run:

rake publish

Technology

The visualization is based on the following javascript libraries:

• d3.js -- data-driven charts library
• dc.js -- a library of d3 chart components integrated with crossfilter
• crossfilter.js -- a library from square that allows filtering a large data set across many dimensions
• leaflet.js -- a mapping library
• Stamen toner-lite -- black and white tiles for the map
• My customized version of the the dc.js leaflet component, originally created by yurukov and further enhanced by monostop -- a component that combines a dc.js choropleth with leaflet.js.
• spin.js -- a library that provides the waiting spinner

HTML5 and SASS / CSS are used for content and layout. It uses Middleman to handle static site generation and bourbon.io for SASS mix-ins to make using the flexbox layout easier.

For testing, I'm using jasmine.

Roadmap

• Support entering your zip code to quickly see all sighting data for your area
• Plot individual rat sightings on the map when zoomed in
• Add in results of rat inspection reports
• Setup a nightly batch job to pull in the latest sighting data

Credits

• Thanks to Cyrus Innovation and Occom for supporting work on this project
• Thanks to Jon Roberts for his NYC Zip Code Map geoJSON.
• Thanks to the city of New York for providing their 311 data to the public in an easily accessible format