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