Last weekend the DeveloperWeek Hackathon took place where IBM hosted an IBM Bluemix Challenge. The winner of our challenge was the project “Hedge (Housing Edge)” developed by Evan Pun, Dong-han Yao, Zachary Zeleznick, Emma Marriott, Jae Young Ryoo, Ryan Ma and Emily Le.
“Hedge (Housing Edge) is a web application that helps a renter/buyer visualize healthy spaces and housing affordability in your community. Cost of living is easily defined by housing prices, but what is the cost of living on your health for a particular neighborhood? We use heat maps (a choropleth map with 574 blocs) to reveal where problem spots may be in a city, as well as accessibility to what is most important to the user, at a sub-neighborhood resolution. Users can simultaneously select multiple metrics (like asthma rates, proximity to green space, and proximity to a farmer’s market), and the heat map will change to reflect desirability based on the combined values. As the user hovers over each of the 574 blocs, a popup reveals an overall “Livability Index”, as well as individual subscores of each metric, if applicable.
Additionally, we use IBM Watson to highlight the top 3 most desirable blocks based on the Livability Index of the user selected metrics.
All of our map visualizations are generated from official city and government provided data and streamlined into a clean and intuitive interface. Datasets were normalized and given a corresponding color on the heat index. All datasets were obtained from DataSF, the largest online repository of data published by the City and County of San Francisco, and verified with public available public health information.”
The screenshot shows Watson’s recommendations for places with proximity to garden, air quality and affordability in San Francisco.
Check out the presentation to find out more.