Thursday, April 14, 2016

Cleaning LA's Streets


Last week the Los Angeles Time created an interactive map showing the cleanliness of LA's streets. The Where are L.A.'s Dirtiest Streets? map shows the levels of litter, illegal dumping and weeds on all of Los Angeles' roads using data from the mayor's Clean Streets initiative.

At the time I thought that the LA Times map had potential to be a useful tool for the city's sanitation department. However it turns out that the LA Bureau of Sanitation has created its own maps from the data. The Clean Streets Index allows you to explore the data used in the LA Times map in more detail and also explains how that data is used by the City to help clean the city's streets.

Where the LA Times map only provides a visualization of each street's overall cleanliness score the Clean Streets Index has mapped visualizations of the cleanest and dirtiest areas, areas of persistent littering and areas with regular illegal dumping. By using the data to highlight hot-spots of illegal dumping and persistent littering the Bureau of Sanitation is better able to deploy enforcement tactics and target resources in the city.

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