PlayaroundNYC: Exploring the Distribution of Playgrounds in NY

Infosthetics has found a fun website called “PlayaroundNYC”, which uses the power of social visualization to see where playgrounds are located around New York city, in the hopes of finding locations in need of more.

The neighborhood playground support map is the result of combining several different types of data sets. First, each playground was assigned a quality rating. Currently quality is mainly determined by nearness to major and minor truck routes. A grid of points were then sampled on the map, by determining the nearest playgrounds, walking distance to these playgrounds, and the quality of these playgrounds. These factors are combined to assign each point an overall rating which estimates how well that area is supported by playgrounds. Lastly, the various support ratings are interpolated to generate the heatmap visual effect.

via PlayaroundNYC: Exploring the Distribution of Playgrounds in NY – information aesthetics.

This story written by Randall Hand

Randall Hand is a visualization scientist working for a federal research lab, aiding researchers to discover the insights buried within their terabyte datasets generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. He also runs VizWorld.com .

Science interactive, newyork