SFFD Efficiency Visual Analysis

Jiadong Wu & Xue Feng

Does it Make a Difference when You Call 911?

Response Time Comparison among Rich and Poor Neighborhoods


Story Behind This Theme

Criminal Mind [S14E07]
"Marcus and his brother think that where you live not only determines your quality of life but your quality of care".
"Your zip code determines your fate. That's why they're moving these people back and forth".
"They're trying to show us the disparity in response times. That's why they call 9-1-1"
"Yeah, rich neighborhoods get faster care than poor neighborhoods"
"They called 9-1-1 9 times, and for whatever reason, it tooks the ambulance 27 minutes to get there . Tom was pronounced dead at the scense"

Caption

The above is a heat map that visualize the SFFD respnse efficieny among Top 5 "Rich Neighborhoods" and Top 5 "Poor Neighborhoods" in San Francisco. This heatmap is designed to discover potential social injustice on the waiting time after calling 911. The vertical axis shows the ten neighborhoods I picked in purpose. The top 5 neighborhoods on the y-axis is Top 5 "Rich Neighborhoods" in San Francisco, and the bottom 5 neighborhoods on the y-axis is Top 5 "Poor Neighborhoods" in San Francisco. The horizontal axis indicates hour of the day in order to narrow down the time range for further comparison. In addition, the color encoding the average SFFD response time during each hour of the day for every neighborhoods, and the color legend is also included in the Prototype within range through 3 minutes to 15 minutes.

Interpretation

With the intention to discover potential social injustice, I've compared the average response time through this heatmap. Fortunately, we didn't discover the social injustice on SFFD response time among "Rich Neighborhoods" and "Poor Neighborhoods" in San Francisco. To be specific, as we can see on the heatmap above, there are not much difference of SFFD average response time among "Rich Neighborhoods" and "Poor Neighborhoods" in San Francisco. Even though Bayview Hunters Point and Visitacion Valley having a relatively long waiting time period, it still in a acceptable range of 15 minutes.
As a result, I conclude that there is no difference on waiting time after calling 911 in San Francisco whether you live in a "Rich Neighborhood" or a "Poor Neighborhood" in San Francisco.