UPDATE - and the winners are!!! 

 

For the TreesCount! Data Jam, NYC Parks will unveil NYC’s latest urban forest dataset, the most spatially accurate map of New York City’s street trees created to date. Join NYC Parks, BetaNYC, TreesCount! partners, tree care volunteers, and other civic hackers to improve our understanding of, and plan for the future our City’s urban forest!

We are looking for data scientists, statisticians, developers, designers, visualizers, cartographers, and quants. Bring your skills, questions, and creativity to this data jam!

 

For the day, we will tackle the following five challenges.

  • How has NYC’s urban forest changed over time — comparing 1995, 2005, and 2015?
  • How can we visualize Street Tree Census Data to improve our understanding of the urban forest and help educate New Yorkers? 
  • What relationships can be drawn between the Street Tree Census Data and other environmental and economic indicators in New York City?
  • How can we use the Street Tree Census Data to more efficiently plan for the long term health and growth of the urban forest? 
  • How can we use Street Tree Census Data to better engage with and target the efforts of community stewardship volunteers to improve the health of the urban forest?

 

Now, it is your turn to help us transform the data gathered thus far, into actionable insights. Whether you are new to hacking or experienced, bring your data expertise and join us for NYC’s first TreesCount! Data Jam.

 

Schedule of Events

8:00 AM - Doors open for registration and breakfast
9:00 AM - Morning Kickoff session begins (This will start on time!)
10:00 AM - Team and challenge formations
10:10 AM - For workshop ticket holders, class begins
4:00 PM - Close of registration of hacks
5:00 PM - Hacking ends
5:30 - 7:00 PM - Closing session featuring hacks and workshop showcase

Eligibility

The TreesCount! Data Jam is open to all. You must be present to accept any prizes. If a participant is under 18 years of age, they must have the written consent of their parents or guardian to participate in the Data Jam.

 

Requirements

All submitted projects will be judged by our esteemed judges.

A project must include the following:

  • Project Name
  • Challenge you are addressing
  • Project Mission / Objective (Not more than 50 words)
  • Project Team Members & Role (Not more than 5 members)
  • A Screenshot or URL of Project

 

Projects will be scored on the following:

 

Product
A data product, will be judged upon its usefulness, interface and creativity. How well did this project address the challenges? A score of 0 - 10 will be awarded by each judge. 

Analysis
How impactful was the solution? A good project will apply sophisticated statistics or machine learning to derive interesting insights from the dataset. Projects will be judged upon technical strength, complexity, impact of derived result and innovation. A score of 0 - 5 will be awarded by each judge.

Visualization
A good project will find interesting ways to look into a dataset or combine information from multiple data sources. Projects will be judged upon design aesthetics, value add, and complexity. A score of 0 - 5 will be awarded by each judge.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

Grand Prize

Win a lunch with Minerva Tantoco, Chief Technology Officer, Amen Ra Mashariki, Chief Analytics Officer, and Mitchell J. Silver, NYC Parks Commissioner! Gain insight into the City’s technology, analytics and parks initiatives from these New York City leaders. As heads of key City agencies with a diverse range of skills and experience, it will be a lunch to remember!

Best Change Over Time Project

Individual challenge winners will be able to connect their Data Jam work directly to the City’s urban forest with a gardening kit that includes a stool, bag, and gardening tools.

Best Education / Visualization Project

Individual challenge winners will be able to connect their Data Jam work directly to the City’s urban forest with a gardening kit that includes a stool, bag, and gardening tools.

Best Environment + Economic Indicators Project

Individual challenge winners will be able to connect their Data Jam work directly to the City’s urban forest with a gardening kit that includes a stool, bag, and gardening tools.

Best Plan for Health & Growth Project

Individual challenge winners will be able to connect their Data Jam work directly to the City’s urban forest with a gardening kit that includes a stool, bag, and gardening tools.

Best Stewardship Project (2)

Individual challenge winners will be able to connect their Data Jam work directly to the City’s urban forest with a gardening kit that includes a stool, bag, and gardening tools.

Honorable Mention

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

How to enter

To participate in this event, you need to register via eventbrite and attend. We will have same day registration. Should you need childcare, you will need to pre-register for a limited number of slots. We are excited to work with Sitters Studios. Childcare is free to all partisipants.

 

Data

NYC TreesCount! Data was collected by 2,300 volunteers going street-tree to street-tree. Watch a quick tutorial on how the 2015 TreesCount! data was collected.

For the day, we will explore NYC's 2015 TreesCount! street tree census data compares it to previous street tree census data. Our lense are these five challenges.

NYC Parks has pruned several open data sets for you. Dig into the MillionTreesNYC block planting locations, the 1995 data, 2005 data (geospatial and tabular), or 2015 data.

The 2015 data is broken up into two data sets, tree census data (geospatial and tabular) and census block-face data (geospatial and tabular). As NYC Parks ensures all of the collected data is accurate, you can overlay the tree census data on top of the block-face data. Here is a copy the TreesCount! 2015 tree census data dictionary.

Also, here is a handy map to see total block edges mapped.

Judges

Minerva Tantoco

Minerva Tantoco
Chief Technology Officer, NYC Mayor’s Office of Technology + Innovation

Liam Kavanagh

Liam Kavanagh
First Deputy Commissioner, NYC Parks & Recreation

Lindsay Mollineaux

Lindsay Mollineaux
Deputy Chief Analytics Officer, NYC Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics

Liz Barry

Liz Barry
Co-Founder, TreeKIT

Jessie Braden

Jessie Braden
Director, Spatial Analysis and Visualization Initiative, Pratt Institute

Andrew Hill

Andrew Hill
Chief Science Officer, CartoDB

Judging Criteria

  • Judging Criteria
    Submissions will be judged based on the quality of their proposals that leverage NYC Parks data to address the five challenge questions.
  • Product
    A data product, will be judged upon its usefulness, interface and creativity. How well did this project address the challenges?
  • Analysis
    A good analysis project will apply sophisticated statistics or machine learning to derive interesting insights from datasets. Projects will be judged upon technical strength, complexity, impact of derived result and innovation.
  • Visualization
    A good project will find interesting ways to look into a dataset or combine information from multiple data sources. Projects will be judged upon design aesthetics, value add, and complexity.

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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