Rodent inspection rates and sanitary conditions of rooftop drinking water in NYC post-quarantine

Mohammad Sarker

Site link: https://mohammad-sarker.github.io/Sanitary-Conditions-of-NYC/  

Abstract:

This project's theme is in the area of health/covid. My focus is whether or not rodent inspection rates show more infestations and if rooftop drinking water is less sanitary during the pandemic, which will quantitatively measure New York City's current sanitary conditions. Data Science assists my approach in researching this topic because there are numerous statistical tools that are necessary for developing significant insight like pandas for cleaning my data, matplotlib for visualizing it, and SQL for filtering. My datasets compile data entirely from NYC, and it relates to the city because this state has had downgrades regarding sanitary procedures in the last year. I'm analyzing trends that are exclusive to NYC that are relevant to the overall health of citizens.

Overview:

I believe there's a significant correlation between decreases in compliant rodent inspections during and after the pandemic. I also hypothesize there to be an increase in unsanitary rooftop drinking water due to quarantine. To anaylze my data, I made use of pandas which is effective in reading CSV files, and I attempted to visualize the data using matplotlib. Cleaning the data for null or empty entries helped me minimize my computer's worload.

Datasets:

Rodent Inspection (click rodent image for link to dataset): This dataset contains data for inspections and intervention visits in NYC. Some locations indicate more inspections, although that doesn't correlate to higher rat populations, solely more inspections. The columuns detail different logistics such as date or type of inspection, as well as whether or not a follow up was required. The data is managed by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Division of Environmental Health.   

Rooftop Water (click water tank image for link to dataset): This dataset contains data for rooftop water inspection. Water stoare tanks are inspected annually and for different types of sediment or other contamination. This includes boroughs and other information about necessary measures. It's managed by the New York City Health Department.

Techniques:

I stored the data in a dataframe and filtered it using sql and plotted it using matplotlib. I discovered compliance inspections directly rival the number of bait inspections, or other types as well. Compliance inspections make up 16% of the rodent inspection data, which is slightly less compared to previous years. After some initial analysis, sediment buildup seems to be the most recurring issue for rooftop water. However, overall results show that most routine checkups either meet the required standards or boast no immediate danger. We can conclude that New Yorkers have been generally more hesitant about allowing inspections directly in their homes, although sanitary conditions have been largely favorable as there are no steep increases in correlation. My research has been successful in showing that NYC isn’t in dire straits due to the pandemic regarding these health precautions.          Rat Chart

Citations:

Rodent Inspection Data    Rooftop Water Data