Heatmaps are cool

Heatmaps show data in a format that’s quick and easy to understand — so when Bromley Council asked us if we could add them to their FixMyStreet Pro data dashboard, we agreed it was a great idea.

mySociety developers got to work and put together a prototype which worked so well that we’re planning to roll it out to any other client councils who want it.

Now, when Bromley staff log in, they can either see the normal map view of their borough, or they can switch tabs to see a heatmap overlay.

Toggle between reports and heatmap on FixMyStreet Pro

By default, the heatmap shows every report from the last month, so the initial view will look something like this:

Bromley FixMyStreet issues plotted on a heatmap

But the heatmap also responds to the dropdown filters at the top of the page, so you can adjust it to see any combination of dates, categories and status. For example, you might want to see reports about graffiti, made since the beginning of the year, which have been fixed. That would look like this:

Heatmap showing fixed graffiti reports in bromley on FixMyStreet Pro

As you’d expect, the hotter the colour, the higher the density of reports, with the cooler blue showing where they are least concentrated. Staff can even see interesting things like everywhere a request has been made for a new tree to be planted:

tree planting request in Bromley on FixMyStreet Pro

Heatmaps are just the latest in a series of features we’ve been working on: you can keep up with them all on the FixMyStreet Pro blog.

If you’re from a council and you’d like to benefit from these many new developments, you can find out more here.

 

1 Comment

  1. Brian O'Donovan

    Fantastic idea. I’m going to forward this to South Gloucesteshire Council and ask them if they’d be interested.