The digital divide is a very real and very stable reality in communities like Oakland, California. Knowing which neighborhoods have solid access to high speed internet is a critical aspect of planning for government and nonprofit provided online services- if we want low income folks from Oakland’s flatlands to use a new digital application, we’d [...]
As part of our work in supporting the Alameda County Violence Prevention Initiative we recently produced an update of our county Violence Fact Sheet. According to the 2012 uniform crime reports, Alameda County had higher rates of violent crime than California and the Nation. Over the past decade, 2003 to 2013, Alameda County has become [...]
As part of our work supporting EBAYC and their new partners as they plan to create new site infrastructure to serve Asian and Pacific Islander communities, we helped them to locate low-income neighborhoods and schools with large populations of Asian residents or students. The result of our work was a series of maps and summary [...]
The Eden Area Community Profile 2013 was commissioned by Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley to provide both a new baseline for understanding the five diverse communities in the Eden Area and to evaluate the changes since the initial profile was prepared. It is intended to support the work of Phase II of the Eden Area [...]
We'll be publishing some new data for this weekend's International Open Data Day and wanted to give people a look at what it contains. We obtained Oakland Fire Department calls for service data under a public Records Act request a year ago for a Healthy Homes project, but the data unfortunately did not contain enough [...]
A well-established body of academic, clinical, and community-level research has demonstrated that conditions within housing units can deeply impact the physical and mental health of individuals in those units, for better or worse. In many areas, the literature is conclusive: just as a dilapidated apartment with a cockroach problem can trigger asthma in a vulnerable [...]
An underlying premise behind open data is that you, the creator of a dataset, may not know the best use of your data and therefore need to leave the data open and let the future decide. It is a hard decision for a data analyst who believes that data needs to be properly handled by [...]
We would like to applaud and spread the word about Alameda County's increased offerings for geospatial data. For anyone who looked before, you remember the single layer of parcel outlines. The new offerings include layers from supervisor districts to sanitation districts. This is a small step towards open data and we look forward to seeing [...]
Way back in 2011, we carried out a comprehensive study of the data landscape in the Bay Area related to the important work of affordable housing and neighborhood stabilization efforts for Enterprise Community Partners. The report got delivered to our clients but we realized that we did not ever publish the results. Despite the time [...]
Did you think your postman/woman just delivered your mail? Wrong. They happen to be a rather awesome real-time crowd sourcing force for public data! When your mail is delivered and you turn out to not be there, and this keeps happening for a month, or for three months, your responsive public servants take note of [...]
