Data Day hackathon: 4 projects using Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance statistics

The hackathon added on to Friday’s fourth annual Data Day appeared to be the missing piece: a meaningful start to analyzing the tens of thousands of data points compiled by the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance-Jacob France Institute and figuring out how community statistics about crime, education and demographics, for instance, can lead to positive change.
Read Technically Baltimore’s coverage of the addition of the hackathon.
Here are four projects that were, at least, begun on Friday during the nearly eight-hour hackathon:

1. One group had begun organizing all the BNIA-JFI Vital Signs data for inclusion in a searchable database with an accompanying API for use by app developers.
2. A team of three from the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School was using Vital Signs data to assemble an economic profile of historic Jonestown (where the Phoenix Shot Tower is located). Jonestown is the location for the pilot project of the Carey School’s “CityLabs” platform, a collaboration between the Jonestown community and Carey School faculty and students to make Jonestown a “premier Baltimore neighborhood.”
3. Another group started marshaling the pieces for a community plan for the Old Goucher neighborhood, so community leaders there can begin thinking about streetscaping the area.
4. The final group worked with the Pigtown Main Street Association on a preliminary mapping project, with points along Washington Boulevard indicating the types of retail stores that were already open in the neighborhood. The point was to use the BNIA-JFI data to determine what types of new stores would do well in Pigtown given the neighborhood’s demographic makeup and present retail offerings.