Getting Started with the Memphis Data Hub

New to datasets? Never made a bar chart before? Or just want to learn how to interact with this platform? Welcome! We’re glad you are here. In the Memphis Data Hub you'll find an array of assets designed to communicate how the City uses data in everyday decisions, how that data has improved our performance, and the data itself! This guide will detail the different components of the site so you can find and understand what is most important to you. Let's get started! 
At the top of the homepage, you see five widgets: Performance, Public Safety, Open 311, Civic Assets, and Capital Projects. Under Additional Resources, you can find the Data Catalog.
1. Performance: this is our performance dashboard where we track key performance indicators that align with the Mayor’s 5 priorities: Good Government, Public Safety, Neighborhoods, Youth, & Jobs.  There are 2 main parts to the performance dashboard:
Measures
These are the individual goals we are tracking. Each measure has 6 key parts: (1) The color of the outline represents its status: green: on track; yellow: near target; red: needs improvement; and blue indicates that we are simply measuring this metric. (2) The title explains what the goal is (3) the blue number indicates the most recently available performance indicator (4) this section tells you when the data was last updated note: most of our measures show the aggregate monthly performance and are updated about 2 weeks after the end of the month (5) this is the target for our goal (6) you can read more about the goal and how it measures by clicking this link.
Goal Pages
After clicking "read more here" on the measure, you are taken to what we call the goal page. On this page, you will find more information on (1) how we measure this goal (2) the historical performance (3) related measures to this goal. In order to give you the most robust picture of our performance, there may be several different data points to consider. For example, we have a goal of filling 95% of potholes requests within 5 days so we show you the percent of times we meet this goal on the metric. Under related content, you can see the average days it takes us to fill a pothole and the number of pothole requests we receive per month. 
2. Public Safety: This is an interactive map that allows you to see what incidents have occurred in your neighborhood or near your work.
Incident Information
(1) Enter your address in the search bar to see service request activity around your home. (2) You can create an alert to notify when you when an incident has occurred in your neighborhood. (3) This panel on the right gives you more information about the selected incident type. (4) You can filter the map by a specified date range here or (5) you can filter by specific incident types here, grouped by parent category.
Aggregate Maps & Boundaries
Under (1) Map Options, you have the ability to (2) add/change the boundaries (3) aggregate the data to create either a heat map shown below or a choropleth map which aggregates the data to the chosen boundaries and color codes it based on number of requests. (4) You can also download just the selected data of your choice here. These are all additional ways to customize the maps and see the trends that are important to you!
3. Open 311: This is the same interactive map as Public Safety but with service request data. This tool allows you to see what activity is going on in your neighborhood from code enforcement violations to potholes to curbside trash requests. 
Service Request Information
(1) Enter your address in the search bar to see service request activity around your home. (2) You can create an alert to notify when you when a new service request has been opened in your neighborhood. (3) This panel on the right gives you more information about the selected service request. (4) You can filter the map by a specified date range here or (5) you can filter by specific request types here, grouped by department. (6) And as always, you can download the raw data here!
Aggregate Maps & Boundaries
Under (1) Map Options, you have the ability to (2) add/change the boundaries (3) aggregate the data to create either a heat map shown below or a choropleth map which aggregates the data to the chosen boundaries and color codes it based on number of requests and (4) add places of interest such as fire stations or schools to the map. These are all additional ways to customize the maps and see the trends that are important to you!
4. Data Catalog: This is a catalog of all available public City of Memphis data. Here you can download the data in several formats, create charts and maps, and see basic information, the metadata, about each dataset.
Search the Data Catalog
Once you're in the Data Catalog, you can (1) search for a specific dataset using keywords like "fire," "service requests," or "libraries" or (2) filter by one of five categories: good government, jobs, neighborhoods, public safety, or youth. While we have the Data Catalog pre-filtered to only show datasets, you can also select different types of assets to see such as charts or maps. Clicking on a dataset will take you the the dataset's primer page, which you can learn more about in the next section! Don't see the dataset you were looking for? Be sure to suggest a dataset here. 


Dataset Primer Page
Each dataset has what we call a "primer" page that contains specific information about that dataset, called "metadata." This includes (1) the title and description (2) when the data was last updated (3) how often the data is updated and what each row of data represents; and (4) column descriptions. You can also (5) view the data, download the data, or visualize the data. These video tutorials will help get you started with filters, bar charts and more! Note: some datasets are "incident level" which means each row of data represents a specific incident; others are aggregated to a monthly total to tell you how many incidents happened that month. In this case, each row represents an entire month's worth of data