City of Toronto Open Data Initiative

Client: The City of Toronto, OCAD U

Year: 2016-2017

A collaborative open data initiative between the City of Toronto and the OCAD U Visual Analytics Lab to provide a historic snapshot of the fall registration period at various community centres across the city.

The visualizations were created by Jessica Yao, Shaheer Tarar, Siena DeBartolo and Nathan Pilla under the leadership of OCAD U faculty members Dr. Patricio Davila, Isabel Meirelles and Visual Analytics Lab director and OCAD U President Dr. Sara Diamond.

The Data is a Cross Section of what the city experiences every fall

Data for over 1,100,000 registrations for 24,881 courses at 221 community centre locations was collected from the city of Toronto's open data catalogue; cleansed and visualized using a variety of techniques including: graphs, maps and other visual representations.

You can learn more at OCAD U website.

Left: Fall 2015 registrations for courses at the Jimmie Simpson Center are plotted according to the registrants location and colour coded by course type.

While most participants live nearby the facility they use, some choose a centre close to work or childcare. Distance travelled can also be related to transit proximity or unique program offerings.

Jimmie Simpson program utilization 2011-2016