Yesterday the City of New York launched the ability for citizens to send images and video directly to their 911 and 311 systems.
On the 311 side, people can submit for six types of service requests:
- Report graffitti in City Parks: I’m not sure why they make the distinction about Parks here — probably has something to do with budgets (yay for the Park District!) and technology.
- Report ADA complaint in Parks: Parks again, ADA complaints are pretty visual, though
- Report dirty vacant lots: Citywide
- Report broken/defaced public pay phones: Huge advertising money maker
- Report missing/damaged
street sign: extremely dangerous conditions reported to the Department of Transportation - Report pothole, street, highway & sidewalk construction complaint: this one’s a gimme — the most common things that people see as they walk through their city. See Directgov for prior art. A few other examples — Fix My Street being the grand-daddy of them all.
On the 911 side, it’s not exactly a real-time process. Essentially, the caller indicates to the 911 operator that they have images and/or video that relates to the report. Then “a detective from the Real Time Call Center will personally call the victim or witness and provide a Real Time Crime Center address to which the photograph or video may be sent.”
The real deal here would be a feedback loop. If a user uploads a picture of a broken pay phone, why shouldn’t a City employee upload a proud, time-stamped picture after they fix it?
The other real deal is if they stream these photos onto the Web so that citizens can be more informed and third-party services like EveryBlock can do interesting things with the data.