
NYC Rat Map - meredithmmyers
http://meredithmmyers.com/ratmap
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foz
I lived in the Lower East Side for 11 years, on Ludlow Street, from 1995-2006.
It was common to see rats on the street at night, and one evening while
walking home, a rat ran towards me and jumped. It landed on my leg, scurried
up and jumped off.

But nothing quite as frightening as finding three rats one evening zipping
around in my kitchen, ripping apart ketchup packets. Or the time my downstairs
neighbors had an angry rat trapped in their kitchen (which was disposed of
with a hockey stick).

I called the NYC Health Department hotline maybe 5-6 times. At that time,
calling the number led to a voice mail menu, and the first options was "if you
would like to report a rat infestation, press 1". This is no joke, some
buildings were really and truly infested.

The city did nothing but to place poison rat traps on the streets. Only once
did someone respond and come to our building, he just suggested that we fill
up all known holes in our building with steel wool. The local hardware store
had bulk packages of the stuff for sale, a popular item.

Our Chinese landlord solved the problem by calling a neighborhood expert. He
brought his gigantic cat, who lived downstairs in the basement for several
weeks. After that, we had no more rat problems for a long time.

~~~
joshontheweb
I love the simplicity of the solution.

I wonder why the cat population doesn't swell and match the rat population.

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dneronique
Stray cats/dogs are incredibly rare in NYC, especially Manhattan. The
structure in place that allows people to report unsupervised animals works too
well.

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maxmcd
Looks like this is the data source:
[http://data.cityofnewyork.us/resource/3q43-55fe?$limit=10000](http://data.cityofnewyork.us/resource/3q43-55fe?$limit=10000)

This map is great in terms of personal use. "Are there rat reports near where
I live?". But would be great to see someone hack together a heat-map or
something that better displays density.

Edit: Here's a quick stab:
[http://jsbin.com/dihiwetoja/2/](http://jsbin.com/dihiwetoja/2/)

~~~
meredithmmyers
Thanks! I am hoping to add a heat map. And yes the data is from Socrata's Open
Data Platform API ([https://nycopendata.socrata.com/Social-Services/Rat-
Sighting...](https://nycopendata.socrata.com/Social-Services/Rat-
Sightings/3q43-55fe))

~~~
sunspeck
Have you considered a chloropleth[1]? Similar effect to a heat map but likely
much easier to implement.

Just shade each of your already defined regions by [sightings/area].

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choropleth_map](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choropleth_map)

~~~
meredithmmyers
I hadn't for this project - to be honest I didn't have a clear plan for this
project, it was just something I threw together in a few hours for fun because
I thought the dataset was amusing :) A chloropleth is a great idea though. If
I find the time to improve this, I'll definitely keep that in mind!

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georgyo
All the polygons are of vastly different sizes, making it very hard to see if
an area has a much denser rat reporting than another. The high numbers cover
larger areas and the low numbers cover smaller areas.

~~~
meredithmmyers
Thanks for the feedback! It's just a simple little app I made for fun and
there's plenty of room for improvement. It is open source so anyone is more
than welcome to pitch in.

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steedsofwar
My parents place had a recent mice infestation. Which funnily enough happened
because my neighbours decided to renovate their attic. So they jumped that
ship and headed for my parents shores. My little sister who lived their at the
time, had the great idea of feeding the neighbours/stray cats, with milk and
other goodies. After a few days the mice were no longer harrassing my parents.

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stephentmcm
I'd hazard I guess that it's merely a few people aggressively reporting
sightings near their home and that the vast majority of the rat population
goes un-reported and is fairly evenly distributed. Unless I'm mistaken and
it's only department employees reporting them, which would still have a bias,
based on worker personality.

~~~
foz
Absolutely not true. The NYC Health Department handles calls directly from
residents, and long-time city residents know that they need to call if they
want the city to do anything to help.

~~~
ponyous
Just read the comment above yours.

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javaistheworst
A similar model for London, especially in the city and along the river, would
be a constant - the old adage about never being more than a few feet from a
rat are spot on. Bear in mind, the officially reported numbers are often a
fraction of the real population. Rats are fairly intelligent creatures and are
adept are remaining mostly hidden, even in the well populated areas.

A friend who makes a very decent income as a pest controller has very
interesting stories to tell about the size of the rat population he
encounters, the shift in their diet over the years (more fat and junk food
remains), and worryingly, their increasing resistance to the wide range of
controls in use today.

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brightsize
I think a heatmap would look good here, one with nice flowing color gradients,
maybe with a separate marker layer over the top. Leaflet-DVF looks pretty
promising for that sort of thing and it comes with nifty markers. Of course a
cute marker icon that looked like a rat would be good too. I'd prefer to see
the building/address info displayed in a marker pop-up rather than on the
left. Map apps are fun, I've made a bunch myself with Leaflet.

~~~
meredithmmyers
Hey, thanks for commenting. I am hoping to add a heat map - I had tried using
[https://github.com/pa7/heatmap.js](https://github.com/pa7/heatmap.js) and the
code is still actually in the application source. Sadly that heat map couldn't
handle the massive amounts of rat data NYC has to offer :) I'll check out
Leaflet-DVF, thanks for the tip!

~~~
saraid216
I'd recommending piping it through a Heroku app. Just request the data from
your app and have the app process the data. It's slightly less transparent,
but it's a lighter footprint on the browser itself.

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efremjw
Two weeks ago, I actually met a city health department employee who focuses on
rat populations in NYC. She was doing a survey of businesses along Avenue C
(Alphabet City) in reaction to complaints of a swelling rat population on
Avenue B. Apparently, Hurricane Sandy had washed significant parts of the rat
population from Avenue C to Avenue B...and with the start of the cold season,
those rats will be looking for warmer places to hang...perhaps on Avenue B.

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mturmon
This is one of those times when the simplest name is really attention-getting.
Good choice.

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minikomi
Wow.. Very cool. Interesting how there are definite clusters here and there.

