SF Brigade’s Data Science Working Group

The past couple of months have been an exciting time for the Data Science Group Working Group (DWSG). The group, which started in January, brings together both professional data scientists and data enthusiasts hoping to improve their skills whilst making an impact. DSWG uses the wealth of open source data made available by SF Open Data and others to work on both its own projects as well as to support other civic hackers at Code for San Francisco. By providing data science expertise they’ve become a central resource to the broader SF Brigade.

One project that the DSWG is currently working on is SF Open Data’s 311 case dataset to understand what agencies tend to respond first, which neighborhoods are served first and what their most common problems are. Another example is ImpactGov, a project aiming to measure the impact of government- funded activities in the Bay Area. The goal of the SF Environment Benchmark project is to visualize building energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in order to encourage building owners and managers to make changes. Sounds interesting? If you want to join our projects, have a problem that big data can help you solve, or want to use or develop your data skills and make a difference, come see us! We meet every Wednesday during Civic Hack Night.

Stay tuned to learn more about our findings!