Understanding the challenges we face
This project involves the development and maintenance of a cloud-based community data platform that will incorporate local health, housing, transportation, education, public safety, environmental, and other community information gleaned from regional anchor institutions.
In the first stage of this project – conducted Fall 2019 through Spring 2020 – the team used academic publications and evidence from industry to identify over 400 metrics that should be considered for inclusion in the community data platform. Next, CFC convened and solicited feedback from over 100 community experts representing various sectors in the region to understand how these important metrics (and indeed the challenges we face) are inextricably linked. The team asked respondents from each sector – Housing, Health, Transportation, Education, Public Safety, Environmental, Workforce Development – to review a culled list of 144 metrics and select from among them the ones most important to the work they do and the issues they face. We used this expert community input to create multidimensional models that illustrate the interconnected nature of these “metrics that matter.”
INTERACTIVE FIGURE 1: EDUCATION, HEALTH, HOUSING, AND PUBLIC SAFETY SECTORS
This figure shows the metrics that matter to the community experts in 4 sectors: education (X-axis), health (Y-axis), Housing (Z-axis), and Public Safety (bubble size). Metrics that have higher values (i.e., closer to 1) or are bigger bubbles are deemed more important to the experts than metrics with lower numbers (i.e., closer to 0) or smaller bubbles.
For example:
- The metric “housing affordability” was rated high* by 100% of the experts from the housing sector (depicted as the large green bubble in the top corner). But it was also rated high for a number of other sectors: 78% of health experts, 80% of public safety experts, and 79% of education experts rated this metric high.
- The health metric “mental illness prevalence” was rated highly more often among education experts (100%) and public safety sector experts (80%) than health experts (68.4%).
NOTE: Use options in top right corner. Click and move mouse to rotate or zoom.
INTERACTIVE FIGURE 2: ENVIRONMENT, WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSPORTATION SECTORS
This figure shows metrics that matter to the community experts in the 3 remaining sectors: environment (X-axis), workforce development (Y-axis), and transportation (Z-axis). Metrics that have higher values (i.e., closer to 1) are deemed more important to the experts than metrics with lower numbers (i.e., closer to 0). Note: we only represent 3 sectors rather than 4 sectors as in Figure 1, hence bubble size is consistent (i.e., a fourth dimension is not required here).
For example:
- Once again the metric “housing affordability” is also rated highly by sectors represented in this figure: 100% of workforce development experts, 83% of transportation experts, and 80% of environmental experts rated it as important.
- Continuing with the example offered above, the health metric mental illness prevalence was rated as important to 62% and 84% of transportation and workforce development experts, respectively. The metric was not routinely rated as important among environmental experts (40%).
NOTE: Use options in top right corner. Click and move mouse to rotate or zoom.
These figures demonstrate the substantial overlap of the sectors and interconnectedness of the challenges we face. Though there was mostly alignment between the academic community and the community experts, there were some metrics which one group prioritized over the other. In addition, the community experts were given the opportunity to add metrics that were not part of 144 reviewed. Our team has combined feedback from both of these communities and organized am list of now over 800 metrics into tiers:
- Tier 1 — Metrics that were highly rated by both communities and/or have immediate utility as indicators of post-COVID recovery.
- Tier 2 — Metrics that were rated medium to high by one or both of the communities and/or are not immediate priorities on quantifying COVID-19 recovery or do not align with strategic, short-term partner objectives.
- Tier 3 — Strategic metrics that will be incorporated into the data landscape but are not immediate tactical priorities.
CFC has partnered with Insight, an industry-leading provider of technology and data architecture, to begin construction of an Azure data lake and cloud-based relational database. The goal for summer 2020 is to incorporate the 100 Tier 1 metrics into the platform in advance of an early fall release. Stay tuned for more information on how/when your organization can access the cleaned and aggregated community data.
* A “high” rating is defined as the presence of a metric in a community expert’s top five.
