OpenCity.in has been a public data commons for more than seven years now, and currently has 825 datasets with more than 6000 datasets. We also conduct regular datajams where people from diverse backgrounds come together to analyse the data related to specific issues.

The coming together of data as well as experts lends to creation of ideas and projects that go beyond our platform, and reach and help millions understand their civic governance. As we wrap up 2024, here are some projects that OpenCity has glad to have played a small part in

WhoIsMyNeta.com

In the lead up to the General Elections 2024 OpenCity had called for participants to a virtual datajam where participants were expected to come up with Instagram reels on specific issues. One of the teams, made up of Pravar Chaudhary of bengawalk.com, Vivek Mathew and Aman Bhargava came up with the idea of a website where you can click on a constituency and find out details about what the incumbent MP had been up to in the past five years. The website is whoismyneta.com and you can access the reel here.

Lakes and Streams of Bengaluru

OpenCity.in conducted a datajam on “Lakes in Bengaluru” on the 7th Dec 2024. One of the participants in the datajam was Ellen Brock, a consultant geospatial data scientist. Ellen continued working on the lakes data and came up with this interactive map of lakes and streams in Bengaluru. The data used is the lakes and streams map contributed by Rashmi Kulranjan and Shashank Palur of WELL Labs. Ellen has also made the code public which can be accessed here.

Cityofficials.bengawalk.com

How to know which police station your home falls under, and where the police station is? Which BWSSB division supplies water to you and whom to contact if you are facing issues? These are among the many civic issues addressed by Bengawalk’s latest website: cityofficials.bengawalk.com. While it is not an OpenCity.in project, or came out of our datajams, some of the data used by the site is from OpenCity.in. Bengawalk’s instagram reel also gives you a brief tutorial on how to use the site.

Chennai Flooding

Shanthala Ramesh on instagram made a post on the extent of flooding in Chennai from the 15th to 20th October 2024. She used data on the previous flooding points and flood inundation zones on OpenCity, combined with flooding locations as per news reports to correlate historic data with current situation. You can see the post here.

Reach Out to Us

The data by itself has a limited role to play unless it is used by people to analyse it, and create visualisations on what the data means for a lay reader to understand. Initiatives like the above go a long way in bridging the last mile between public data and readers.

If you or anyone you know has done a data based project either using OpenCity.in data or any other public data, do reach out to us by email or tag us on our social media handles(Instagram, LinkedIn and X). We’d be most happy to showcase the data