This tool uses open data to create a comprehensive look at gun violence in Philadelphia

On Friday, the Philly-based Initiative for Better Gun Violence Reporting unveiled a tool for a more transparent look at gun violence in the city.

The Philadelphia Shooting Victims Dashboard project uses data from Open Data Philly, is fully interactive and can be embedded into other sites. It takes a wide look at gun violence in Philadelphia starting in 2015 through present day.

Jim MacMillan, founder of the Initiative and current Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow, unveiled the tool at Friday’s Better Gun Violence Reporting Summit at WHYY.

Users can look at specific data points, like age of gunshot victims over time, or number of shootings that turned fatal. They can also opt to look at only shooting involving police officers, or shootings that happened indoors.

Take a look:

The tool shows that so far in 2019, 1,251 people have been victims of gun violence in Philadelphia.

The dashboard was built by AH Datalytics, LLC, a data analytics consulting firm based in New Orleans. Founder Jeff Asher told Technical.ly the project was built over about 15 or 20 hours using business analytics service PowerBI hooked into the city’s open data feed.

The Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists and the Initiative of Better Gun Violence Reporting were collaborators on this project and will “continue working to make gun violence data more accessible.”

“We hope our reporting colleagues find this resource helpful and we never forget that each and every entry represents a real person,” the Institute said of the tool.

Why uniform data on weather, sports but not shootings? @JimMacMillan asks. He’s discussing a new data tool to make Philadelphia’s open records data on gun violence more accessible for journalists #BGVR2019 pic.twitter.com/Hofnte3FMJ

— Errin Haines 😷🧼🧴💉 (@emarvelous) November 8, 2019