Recommended Surveillance Locations
Priority blockfaces for proactive surveillance and field verification.
This dashboard integrates 311 service request data from 2018-2025 across three standardized categories.
To reduce repeat reporting bias, service requests were deduplicated using both temporal and spatial logic. Reports occurring within the same blockface-scale spatial grouping and within a 14-day time window were treated as a single signal event for summary analysis.
The operational window below uses processed weekly signal series. The annual chart reflects deduplicated annual signal counts aggregated across blockfaces. Together, they show both short-term signal movement and longer-term burden.
Weekly 311-derived signal trends, 2018-2025, across direct rat reports and enabling environmental conditions.
Deduplicated annual counts across rat, waste, and blight / harbourage categories.
This map shows the spatial distribution of repeated reported rat activity alongside underreported high-risk areas, helping distinguish persistent burden from places where environmental conditions suggest risk despite lower complaint activity.
311 Signal Analysis
This tab visualizes the spatial and temporal distribution of 311 service request signals related to rat activity, waste, and blight / harbourage across Washington, DC.
Counts shown here are deduplicated at the blockface level to reduce repeated complaint inflation and to better represent signal distribution rather than reporting volume alone.
The map displays overlapping signal layers to support comparison of direct rat reporting against environmental conditions that may enable infestation.
Overlapping signal layers across Washington, DC, shown using blockface centroids for faster rendering.
Deduplicated 2018-2025 signal counts, disaggregated by Neighborhood Planning Area within Ward.
Predictive Risk Modeling
This map estimates where rat risk is likely to be elevated at blockface level by combining multiple indicators rather than relying only on complaint counts.
The model uses four main inputs: direct rat-related reporting, waste-related signals, blight / harbourage conditions, and historical persistence of rat activity over multiple years. These inputs are standardized and combined into a composite score that helps identify both currently visible burden and places where environmental conditions suggest likely underreporting.
Predictive strata: Critical indicates high current burden; Silent indicates strong environmental risk with relatively weaker public reporting; Chronic indicates repeated multi-year burden; Routine indicates lower relative concern; and No Relevant Calls indicates no meaningful signal in the modeled period.
This is important because an Integrated Pest Management approach should not rely only on where complaints are loudest. It should also identify places where conditions support rats even when fewer reports are made.
Centroid-based predictive map showing blockfaces classified as Critical, Silent, or Chronic. These locations reflect combined evidence from rat reporting, waste, blight / harbourage, and persistence.
Interpretation note: If Chronic sites appear less visible on the map than in the breakdown below, this may reflect a smaller number of Chronic blockfaces, overlap with other priority locations, or reduced visibility at citywide scale.
Number of blockfaces in each predictive category.
Targeted Surveillance Planning
This tab translates the predictive model into a practical field surveillance plan. The map highlights blockfaces where the combined pattern of rat reporting, waste-related signals, blight / harbourage conditions, and multi-year persistence suggests that proactive field verification is warranted.
Recommended surveillance locations are derived from the Hobsons A scoring logic applied at blockface level. Locations classified as Critical reflect elevated current burden, while locations classified as Silent reflect strong environmental risk with weaker public reporting, making them particularly important for equity-informed proactive surveillance.
The charts and table below help organize these recommended sites by Ward and Neighborhood Planning Area so field teams can plan coverage, prioritize inspections, and identify clusters of likely need.
Recommended surveillance locations disaggregated by Neighborhood Planning Area within Ward.
All currently selected surveillance locations, ranked by composite score.
Program Recommendations and Annual Reporting
This section translates the analysis into a practical public health and Integrated Pest Management response. The main recommendation is to treat 311 as a useful public signal, but not as the sole basis for action. A stronger program should combine resident reporting with proactive surveillance, standardized field assessment, documented follow-up, and routine performance review.
The analysis supports a shift toward a surveillance-based model that prioritizes both persistent reported burden and underreported environmental risk. This means focusing not only on places where complaints are frequent, but also on places where waste, blight, and historical patterns suggest elevated rat risk even when complaint activity is lower.
Annual reporting should therefore go beyond simple service volumes. It should summarize citywide signal trends, high-priority blockfaces, persistent and underreported areas, confirmation and follow-up patterns, recurrence, and equity in proactive coverage. Together, these elements provide a more complete picture of whether the city is reducing rat risk rather than only responding to repeated requests.
Place HTML files in /srv/shiny-server/rats/html and link them here.