Research question

What kind of trends have appeared in New York City 311 service requests during the time period 1/1/2013-12/31/2015? How do these changes compare with changes in population and income by zip code?

Cases

These are citizen complaints for social service and quality of life issues such as noise, garbage, illegal parking, sidewalk and road conditions, health conditions, heat and hot water in residential buildings, and more. There are over 100,000 complaints collected each month. It may be more appropriate to focus on a subset of these complaints for this project.

Data collection

New York City has a free 311 service request program which fields citizen complaints via phone, online, and mobile apps. The data for the complaint is collected by representatives and input into the 311 database. The database records are made public in approximately 1 day.

Type of study

This is an observation study looking at actual collected data from real world experiences.

Data Source

The response data source is NYC 311, via the NYC Open Data website.

https://nycopendata.socrata.com/Social-Services/311-Service-Requests-from-2010-to-Present/erm2-nwe9

The explanatory variable data source could be US Census population and income data for New York City, via census.gov.

Response

The response variable is categorical, complaint type, which is grouped by the agency responsible for responding.

Explanatory

The explanatory variables are numerical, population change and income change.

Relevant summary statistics

Sample NYC 311 data for the first week of March 2016

oneweek<-read.csv("311samplemarch16.csv")
oneweeksub <- subset(oneweek[, c(2:9)])
kable(head(oneweeksub))
Created.Date Closed.Date Agency Agency.Name Complaint.Type Descriptor Location.Type Incident.Zip
3/1/2016 0:00 3/2/2016 0:00 DOHMH Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Rodent Rat Sighting Commercial Building 10467
3/1/2016 0:00 2/2/2016 0:00 DOHMH Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Rodent Signs of Rodents 1-2 Family Dwelling 11357
3/1/2016 0:00 2/18/2016 12:53 DOHMH Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Rodent Rat Sighting 3+ Family Apt. Building 10457
3/1/2016 0:00 DOHMH Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Rodent Signs of Rodents 3+ Family Apt. Building 11207
3/1/2016 0:00 3/2/2016 0:00 DOHMH Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Rodent Rat Sighting 1-2 Family Dwelling 11377
3/1/2016 0:00 DOHMH Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Rodent Rat Sighting 3+ Family Apt. Building 11205
kable(summary(oneweeksub))
Created.Date Closed.Date Agency Agency.Name Complaint.Type Descriptor Location.Type Incident.Zip
3/1/2016 0:00: 98 :13945 HPD :9344 Department of Housing Preservation and Development:9344 HEAT/HOT WATER : 4156 ENTIRE BUILDING : 2754 :9714 : 2768
3/2/2016 0:00: 92 3/3/2016 12:00: 318 DOT :5477 Department of Transportation :5477 Street Condition : 2214 Pothole : 1664 RESIDENTIAL BUILDING:9285 11226 : 472
3/4/2016 0:00: 71 3/5/2016 12:00: 266 NYPD :4682 New York City Police Department :4676 Street Light Condition: 1708 Street Light Out: 1439 Street/Sidewalk :3850 10467 : 455
3/3/2016 0:00: 69 3/4/2016 12:00: 227 DEP :2607 Department of Environmental Protection :2601 Blocked Driveway : 1471 APARTMENT ONLY : 1402 Street :2527 10458 : 410
3/2/2016 9:40: 42 3/2/2016 12:00: 192 DSNY :1892 Department of Buildings :1144 Illegal Parking : 1444 No Access : 1089 Sidewalk :1072 10453 : 383
3/1/2016 9:50: 34 3/4/2016 0:00 : 110 DOB :1144 Department of Health and Mental Hygiene : 735 UNSANITARY CONDITION : 1067 PESTS : 497 Store/Commercial : 401 11207 : 368
(Other) :28960 (Other) :14308 (Other):4220 (Other) :5389 (Other) :17306 (Other) :20521 (Other) :2517 (Other):24510