Mapping the homeless for New York City
In
2001 Congress asked the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to take the lead in
requiring communities to develop an unduplicated count of the homeless people.
Congress did this for two reasons. First, it was persuaded that
cities with good data systems (Columbus, New York City and Philadelphia)
did a better job of addressing the problem. Second, it was frustrated by the
almost total lack of reliable national data about homelessness and the impact
of federal spending on the problem. It wanted communities to
have accurate data on homelessness and also use this information to evaluate
patterns of program use and effectiveness. As good data emerged from
communities, Congress asked HUD to use it to paint a more accurate picture of
what was happening nationally. HomelessMapTrac
is the solution that Mobizent is supplying to the City of NewYork.
This solution provides a mobile solution in the field to allow
Outreach providers to collect data on the Homeless and actually map the Homeless using an ESRI based map
on the Handheld. The data i s then uploaded to the Mobizent Back-end system, that provides
a complete medical record of the Homeless and provides an overall city map, again using ESRI map server, that can track
and monitor each homeless person being interviewed throughout the city and
facilitate quick placement The system provides real-time duplication checks to
make sure the same homeless person is not counted twice or more.
Mobizent product HomelessMapTrac
provides front-office and back-office software for agencies that need accurate
GIS information to count, track and monitor the Homeless and analyze the
agencies efforts in reducing and preventing homelessness.
The front-office component of the product HomelessMapTrac
runs on any Windows Mobile handheld device that helps the field workers record
accurate GIS information for all their contacts without having to go back to a
PC or workstation, or having to use paper in the field. The back-office
component of the product HomelessMapTrac is an ASP.Net
based web application that provides business users and analysts with easy
access to accurate GIS information.
HomelessMapTrac is targeted toward assisting Agencies and
their staff to record accurate GIS data and enhance their capability to gather
essential information and identify patterns through analysis of the information
recorded.
Features of HomelessMapTrac
- Validate & record
geo coded data for all locations
- Revealing homeless
population patterns on maps
- Determining patterns
in contacts, services and placements
- Display encampments
and determine hot spots
- Creating adhoc queries based on specific date or date range
- Viewing maps based on
the adhoc queries
Benefits of HomelessMapTrac
- Reduce the margin of
errors
- Capture accurate
location information in field
- Address/ location
validation
- Easy access to
essential information in real time
- Supports informed
decision making
- Provides rich
visualization to enhance analysis
- Increases productivity by providing useful
information