Articles filed under Data Stories – Guest Blogs

Toronto’s parking ticket dataset — 37 million records across 17 years — is one of the largest municipal enforcement datasets […]

Jinesh Dutt and Rishabh Kaushick are recent graduate Master students at Northeastern University Toronto. Under the supervision of Dr. Omar […]

When we think about open data, we often think about government-published datasets—like transit schedules, water quality data, or demographic information.

This post explores the trends in renewable energy installations on City-owned buildings and facilities in Toronto over the past decade.

A great example, partnership and arguably a great use-case of how open data is used in big Cities. One of […]

Back in 2011, Toronto’s City Council took action by approving a strategy to reduce lead in our drinking water. Fast forward to 2014, and the City began to take action. Read on for more analysis.

This post explores issues of equity, access, and demand surrounding licensed child care spaces
throughout Toronto’s 25 wards.

Following the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 pandemic proclamation in 2020, 81% of deaths from COVID-19 in Canada occurred among long-term care residents. Since Toronto recently experienced high influenza and COVID-19 activity, it is critical to evaluate disease outbreaks in Toronto healthcare facilities.

Welcome to our newest blog post, where we’re exploring a game-changer in Toronto’s public transit scene! Meet time2reach, an interactive transit map created by university student Henry Nguyen.

Dive into the world of ‘Open Water Data,’ a must-have digital companion for every open water swimmer and enthusiast. Developed by Mitch Bechtel, this platform offers real-time data on water quality, temperature, and weather conditions for beaches in Toronto and around the globe.

BikeSpace is a crowdsourced web app where cyclists can anonymously report bicycle parking issues across Toronto. The application allows users to pinpoint where new and better bike parking could be added – in both private and public locations.

In this blog post: Matt Elliott, Publisher of City Hall Watcher newsletter and Toronto Star contributor, shares his experience of how the city’s Open Data Portal transformed his reporting during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kaviani offers a deep-dive into the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) public transportation system. His comprehensive data analytics report scrutinizes subway, streetcar, and bus delay times from 2014 to 2022.

In this captivating blog post, Ingrid, a local resident, shares her personal journey of uncovering the impact of noise pollution on her life and her quest to better understand and quantify its effects.

Lisa Chen reached out to the open data team with the visualizations she created from two open datasets: Toronto Neighbourhood Boundaries and Youth Wellness Resources.

The Office of the Lobbyist Registrar ensures the public disclosure of lobbying activities and oversees the regulation of lobbyists’ conduct. The City of Toronto publishes this data through the Lobbyist Registry Disclosure Site and through the Open Data Portal.

In this tutorial, we analyze walk times from every address point within the City of Toronto limits to the closest Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) Stops. TTC stops can include subway, LRT, street car and bus. The analysis uses Pandana to perform the network distance calculations on a new open data set called the “Pedestrian Network” that our team created in conjunction with Transportation Services to better understand walkable access to various amenities across Toronto.

The weather is finally warming up and Torontonians are venturing outside to catch some sun. One thing is for certain: we love our bikes, and we’ll ride them everywhere. The Open Data team’s own Yizhao Tan decided to work with the open data provided by the City to better understand how Torontonians use bike share. Learn more about how Yizhao uses data visualization and analysis libraries, as well as data cleaning tools, to demonstrate how to turn cycling open data into insights.

The City of Toronto publishes data on building permits going as far back as 2000. Excited about this, we at the Open Data Team asked ourselves: how might we learn from the Cleared Building Permits? Could we use it for improving our understanding of Toronto and how we deliver services to the community?