A neat visualization up on Wired.com visualizes a week’s worth of calls to New York City’s 311 line, and segments them into categories by time of day.

You can see some interesting, although not alltogether unexpected trends, like:

  • Noise complaints increase at night (party!)
  • Taxi complaints in the week hours of the morning
  • Illegal parking complaints during lunch hour

And lots more. If you’re not familiar with the NYC311 Idea:

There was something fitting in this unlikely connection, since 311 is designed to re-create some of the human touch of small-town life in the context of a vast metropolis. Eighty percent of calls connect to a live rep within half a minute, after a brief recorded message summing up the day’s parking regulations (a major topic of 311 queries) and other relevant news. Also crucial to the 311 ethos is the idea of civic accountability: By giving New Yorkers an easy way to report broken streetlights or graffiti or after-hours construction, the service helps them play a role in solving the problems they see in their own neighborhoods.

Read the full article for a great ‘success story’ about how data collected via the 311 line led to the discovery of the source of a new odd odor (Syrup) that pervaded the New York air.

What a Hundred Million Calls to 311 Reveal About New York | Magazine | Wired.com.