Snow demand shows up sideways
Residents use available categories, free-text descriptions, and phone calls to describe snow plowing needs when the online form does not offer the exact thing they want.
What this shows
The official category and resident intent do not always match.
The notebook compares the request type residents selected with the free-text descriptions they wrote.
The description field matters
The official request type reflects the menu choice. The resident narrative often contains the real operational ask, especially for snow conditions.
The workflow can be improved
A clearer online route for snow plowing requests would reduce misclassified issues and make winter operations easier to understand.
Method
Keep the notebook, lead with the story.
The original export is useful for reproducibility, but it is not the page most residents should land on first. This story page gives the public-facing interpretation while preserving the raw notebook as an appendix.
How the analysis works
The notebook pulls Syracuse issues from the public SeeClickFix API, keeps fields such as summary, description, status, created date, location, and request URL, then compares selected categories with snow-related language in descriptions.
That makes the core question visible: when residents need snow plowing help, where does their request go in the Cityline workflow?
View notebook appendixSources and next steps
Make winter-service demand easier to see.
This should eventually connect to plow coverage, complaint timing, storm events, and Cityline categories.
SeeClickFix API
Public issue data used in the exported notebook sample.
Open API endpointSYRCityline
The city service-request channel residents use for many public-works issues.
Open city pageSyracuse Snow Map
A companion DataCuse project focused on snow removal progress and plow coverage.
Open snow map