BikeSafe CU – An interactive application that visualizes bike safety metrics in Champaign-Urbana

NOTE: This is an interactive visualization. Bikers can use this application to help determine safe routes and be aware of potential biking hazards or historical problem spots. Potentially, urban planners can use the tool as they make plans for better bike infrastructure. The application allows bikers to identify specific places where there have been accidents or thefts around CU and where hazards to biking are located. When a user clicks on a data point, additional detail is shown. Options to show the different datasets separately and aggregate the data into heatmaps are on the right. Data sources are the Champaign County GIS Consortium, CCRCP, and Neutral Cycle bike shop. More information on data and sources can be found on the ‘About’ tab. I, with a team of five other classmates, made this application using the programming language R as a final project in Urban Planning 494 – Civic Tech & The Digital City. This visualization was made by myself and Sharaj Sundararaman, Nick Bohm, Rafsun Mashraky, Jackie Guerrero, and Mike Hao (submitted with their permission). Our professor, Bev Wilson, provided guidance for the project. Ope