311 Data – Noise complaints and Organics Complaints

For my final data journalism analysis piece, I decided to look at the wards most affected by prominent complaints in bylaw services and solid waste collection. I focused on noise complaints and organics, respectively.

First, I’ll discuss how I got my data. Since we were already working with the Ottawa 311 data, I exported results of the 2013 and 2014 fiscal years from MySQL into a CSV file and put that onto a master sheet on Excel. Excel doesn’t confuse me as much, which helped. I would have done the same for the 2015 data but I noticed inconsistencies with the noise results so I went to the City of Ottawa open data and downloaded the 311 data by month individually, January to September, and put all of that on a master spreadsheet.

Noise complaints were at their most prominent in 2013, where it garnered 12,312 calls in the fiscal year. In 2013, the most prominently noisy ward was Rideau-Vanier with 2,607 complaints. Councillor Mathieu Fleury attributed this to the ByWard Market and the University of Ottawa, since they are so busy. The Somerset ward came in second with 1,612 complaints and the Capital ward in third place with 1,020 complaints. The “quietest” ward was Osgoode, with only 68 complaints throughout the year.

From January 2013 to September 2015, there were a total of 30,789 complaints. 6,507 of those complaints were from the Rideau-Vanier ward, about 21.1 per cent. This means that, roughly, one of five noise complaints came from Ward 12. The next highest number of complaints, Somerset with 4,262 complaints over the time frame, accounts for 13.8 per cent of the total complaints. Though, the data does suggest there are less complaints in the Rideau-Vanier ward – as the amount of phone calls dropped roughly 16 per cent in 2014 from the year before, which a matter of about 424 less phone calls. Here’s a visual:

Consistently throughout the years, Rideau-Vanier, Somerset and Capital wards have been the Top 3. And in 2013 and 2014, the quietest ward has been Osgoode. But in 2015 thus far, the quietest ward has been Ward 5, West Carleton-March with only 57 calls so far this year.

So Osgoode has been on the rise, with 68 complaints in 2013, 83 complaints in 2014 and 93 complaints in 2015 with three months still to go. While it’s surely miniscule (as the 244 total complaints only account for 0.0079 per cent of the total noise complaints over 2013 to September 2015), it’s something to keep an eye on as it is no longer the quietest ward. Here’s a visual:

Also, in the last three months of 2013, there were 14 noise complaints and there were 23 noise complaints in the last three months of 2014 for Osgoode. This suggests a 61 per cent increase, and seems to suggest there will be 37 more complaints by the end of 2015, meaning that the number of noise complaints for Osgoode could be around 130.

While noise complaints are a pressing matter in the crowded, downtown areas like Rideau-Vanier and Somerset, organics in solid waste collection garners the most complaints and phone calls in suburban areas like Barrhaven, Capital ward and Kitchissippi. These wards vie for the most complaints a bit more so than the lop-sided noise complaints of the Rideau-Vanier area. This is because Barrhaven accounts for 7.7 per cent of the total calls, while Capital ward and Kitchissippi both account for approximately 6.6 per cent. Here’s a pie chart to show how close everything is:

I chose organics because it is a growing problem in terms of complaints, as in 2013 there were 10,526 complaints, in 2014 there were 12,653 and this year, there have been 11,758 complaints. That number is about 1,500 complaints above the same point of complaints circa Sept. 30, 2014.

One interesting trend is the rise of the complaints in the Orleans ward. In 2013, the ward had the 11^th most complaints with 426. In 2014, it jumped to 5^th most complaints with 678 – and has maintained the trend this year, where it now stands in 5^th place at 732 complaints. Here’s a bar graph to show the trend: