Roadmap: OpenGrid

Vision Statement

OpenGrid will be the central location to find city data across all users who have access to a computer, tablet, or cell phone.

Motivation of current roadmap

Organization, like cities, are overwhelmed with data systems. Not data per se, but disparate data systems that don't let anyone bring data together. While most discussion is on "big data", the most practical challenge is the linking of disparate data together.

As a result, managers and analytists cannot bring data together easily--they must work with several systems and departments. Data scientists, meanwhile, must spend their time linking data together before any research can be begin. There are traditional data warehouse methods to bring data together; however, these are often time-consuming and complicated. Ultimately, disparate data sources will reduce response times to problems and lengthen the time to complete more sophisticated analytics.

OpenGrid has clearly address these challenges. Users--both within the city and the public--can view data together. Right now, it appears as a bunch of dots on a map. This did represent progress, but more work should be done to meaningfully bring data together.

Moreover, OpenGrid is not at the pinnacle for usability. It still can involve training and expertise to run queries. Further refinements to the user experiences needs to be made to empower casual users while satisfying the needs of more advanced users.

OpenGrid has also been an excellent implementation of "open data as a feature". This idea should be carried further. More work should be done to make it easier to deploy OpenGrid for "internal" use-cases and make it easier to adapt for "open data" cases.

Milestone: Improve Usability

Short Term:

• Printable Maps
• Move Placement of Save Button
• Zoom into Quick Search Results
• Add Tour of Site

Medium Term:

• Remove the need for underscores when using Quick Search
• Circumventing 6000+ data limit
• Performing a Quick Search with an Advanced Search

Long Term:

• Keyboard usage for mobility around the map grid
• Natural Language Processing and you can view the road map for this here
• Share Queries without copy/paste URL

Milestone: Add More Data Sources

Short Term

• Interactive buildings.

Medium Term

• View buildings.json data (GIVA)
• View Census data

Long Term

• View origin-destination data
• View path data

Milestone: Close Platform Gap (#313)

Short Term

• Allow Bubble Plots to be configured against Plenario data
• Configure OpenGrid to use charts with Plenario

Medium Term

• Connect OpenGrid to Plenario layers
• Indexing Filter Criteria in the Advanced Search

Milestone: Incorporate Predictive Analytics

Medium Term

• Incoporate SPUDS predictive engine