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