Town Of Cary Creates Data-Driven Smart Community Through Data Marketplace

[ 14,000 ]

monthly API calls

[ 4,600 ]

monthly downloads

[ 82 ]

datasets

Company profile

Consistently ranked as one of the best places to live and work in the United States, the Town of Cary in North Carolina is home to over 187,000 people. A smart city pioneer, it is focused on using technology to better serve citizens, creating an innovative, sustainable community.

Sector

Public institutions

Location

USA

Data leader

Gregory Power

Data scientist, Town of Cary

Challenges: making data available to all

After launching our Smart and Connected Communities program in 2016, Cary has been deploying a range of smart city technologies, from sensors and traffic management cameras to pedestrian and cycle counters. We wanted to ensure that this data was available to the entire community, including residents, businesses and employees, to maximize its value and usage.

"We’re focused on using technology and data to optimize efficiency and drive economic growth while improving the quality of life for citizens. That means we need to be able to share the data we collect in ways that mean it can be easily used by all our audiences, internally and externally."

Data experience: managing risk and ensuring transparency

The Town of Cary aims to use data to connect our communities, become smarter and increase transparency. With our smart city and business systems producing increasing volumes of data, we knew we needed to share this information seamlessly so it could be accessed and reused by employees, businesses and citizens.

The Town selected Huwise’s data marketplace technology to build our data portal, which went live in 2016. The portal now provides a central one-stop shop for all Cary’s data, spanning areas as diverse as planning, leisure, the environment and geographic information. Users can download datasets, create maps and data experiences, and even suggest new data sources to add.

Due to its location at the heart of three river basins, Cary is prone to flooding due to stormwater surges. To provide an early warning system and to predict flooding, we have installed Internet of Things (IoT) water sensors and rain gauges across the town. Sensors send alerts when levels hit a certain threshold, while the gauges provide rainfall information. This data is shared through an interactive, granular dashboard on the data portal, keeping the community up to date on flood risks. Data is also used for internal decision-making and to collaborate with communities upstream and downstream to assist in their preparedness efforts.
As part of our commitment to making Cary a great place to live, we publish full information about the town’s growth, detailing everything from solar panel applications to new building permits. Accessible via both a dashboard and a drill-down map, it gives full details on what permits have been applied for and their current status. This also increases efficiency as residents don’t need to call for updates on their applications.
At Cary we use our portal to inform residents and better manage risk. As part of this, we launched an innovative smart city project, analyzing wastewater for traces of opioids. This not only provided a more detailed picture of the issue of opioid addiction in the Town, but also helped target actions to where they would deliver best results.

We also help citizens manage risk themselves through a dataset and map of traffic accidents over the last five years. Filterable by factors such as weather and road surface, it highlights where drivers should be extra vigilant.
As part of our commitment to innovation, Cary worked with the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) on a trial of its CASSI autonomous shuttle. All the data from the 12-week pilot was shared via the data portal, with regular updates providing information on metrics such as ridership, number of journeys, and shuttle performance. This gave invaluable insights into areas for improvement and highlighted how rider perceptions around safety changed positively once they’d experienced CASSI. As well as demonstrating total transparency, all of this data has been used to shape the next phase of the program.

Bringing information to life through data stories

To ensure that data is understood and used by all audiences, Cary has created a range of data stories delivering information in context, explaining trends in a visual, accessible way using graphs, dashboards and maps. Subjects range from usage of the town’s greenways and bike trails to a major focus on sustainability, from water consumption to composting food waste and the growth of solar power. All of these stories are backed up by links to the underlying data, enabling data consumers to access and interrogate datasets if required.

Huwise: the complete solution for data sharing at the town of corey

Cary selected Huwise to provide the technology and support for our data portal and is benefiting in particular from three key features.

Wide range of processors

We are now able to streamline data preparation by using Huwise’s built-in processors. These enable imported data to be easily and quickly processed, adding information such as geographic data, correcting text errors, formatting dates, and reshaping dataset content to ensure consistency, reliability and compliance with data governance processes. Huwise includes over 50 processors as standard, all of which can be used without the need to write a single line of code.

Apis to share data internally and externally

Huwise automatically generates a structured API for every dataset added to the data portal, along with an exploration console and reference documentation. This makes it simple to automate the sharing of data, both internally and externally, and import it into applications and visualizations such as dashboards and data stories. We are therefore able to industrialize the creation of products and services powered by our data, increasing productivity and maximizing reuse.

Realtime connector

Cary’s portal provides a central space for data from across our systems, including smart city IoT sensors that cover everything from pedestrian and bike counters to water and stream gauges and noise sensors. Using Huwise’s realtime connector, data can be automatically pushed from sensors and data providers in realtime, ensuring it is always accurate and up to date.

Results: maximizing the value and impact of data

Thanks to our data portal, Cary is connecting its communities, increasing transparency, supporting smart city goals, and building a data-driven mindset internally.

Creating a central space for data

Our technology solutions generate increasing volumes of data in multiple formats. The data portal provides a central, independent space where data can be connected, stored and transformed to ensure quality, reliability and usability. It means data is accessible to all, inside and outside the organization. The portal’s power is demonstrated by increasing usage: it now receives around 14,000 monthly API calls and 4,600 average monthly downloads and has grown to cover 82 public-facing datasets.

Spreading an internal data culture

While it began as primarily an external-facing portal, the benefits of increased data sharing are also being felt internally. For example, planning teams can access census and other data from the portal when creating regular reports, while water quality data powers a monitoring dashboard displayed on a screen in administrative offices. All of this helps develop a data-driven culture that embraces innovation, collaboration and experimentation.

Driving innovation across the community

Data from the portal now underpins potentially transformative new ideas, created both inside and outside the municipality. For example, data can be shared with citizens, startups, researchers or businesses, enabling them to create new use cases that transform the urban living experience and people’s lives.

"Our portal has grown to be the glue for data sharing across the Town, providing intuitive access to reliable, high-quality data through compelling, interactive visualizations and data stories. It is increasing efficiency, boosting transparency, empowering innovation, and enabling us to deliver on objectives to improve our community in ways that we can measure."

"The Town of Cary has a clear vision to use technology to benefit and grow its community. It understands the importance of using data to engage citizens, businesses and employees alike, managing risk and focusing everyone on shared objectives around sustainability and liveability through its user-friendly, interactive data portal."

Macarena Gonzalez

Customer Success Manager

About the Data leader