Code for DC

The Rat Hack

Orkin Pest Control recently named Washington DC the third “rattiest” city in America, and long-time DC residents know that rodent populations have been on the rise. Mayor Bowser announced a “Rat Riddance” intitiative in 2016, which aims to reduce rodent populations through changes in commercial practice and community awareness campaigns. In support of these efforts, the DC Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) has been analyzing 311 service request data related to rodent abatement requests and developing models to predict upticks in rat-related complaints in space and time.

The goals for our project are 2-fold:

Develop models that can predict long-term trends in rodent complaints. These models will be complementary to ongoing OCTO efforts.
Build out features on a public-facing 311 data portal that allows users to examine trends in service complaints over time and in their neighborhoods. This data portal will encompass all nuisance-related service complains, not just those related to rodents.

Join the Project

Join the “rats” channel on the Code for DC slack!
Hack with us at the next Code for DC Meetup

Getting Started

Check out our live 311 Data Portal

Clone our project or get started with some starter code as a newbie on our Github project page.

Download our clean 311 Data

Take a look at the ongoing project tasks on our Trello Board

Heatmap for 2006 311 rodent abatement requests

yellow (fewest) –> red (most complaints)