Problem

311 101

Every Chicago resident benefits from city services. From maintaining the roads residents drive on in the morning to collecting the garbage they throw out at night, city services keep Chicago functioning smoothly. Historically, citizens used to request services indirectly through their aldermanic offices. In 1999, the City implemented the 311 system: a unique, city-wide phone number acting as a "one-stop-shopping center" for requesting every non-emergency city service. Nowadays, the 311 system is also deployed as a text-in service, a web page, and several smart phone apps operating through the open-311 application programming interface.

Mining 311, knowing cities, improving government

Every time a 311 service request is filed, an entry is stored in a database, that contains updated information about that request. This means that there is a big volume of data that describe when and where a service is requested, and when such request is fulfilled by the City.

This data tells a lot about the neighborhoods Chicagoans live in - do different areas request different types of services? Are those service request patterns rooted in the demographic and economic makeups of those places?

311 requests also give us an x-ray view into city government, and could be mined to make public services more proactive and responsive through predictive modeling.

Our analysis is a first stab at understanding cities and optimizing government through the lens of 311.