Brief - adubrock/PDX911Calls GitHub Wiki

Currently, Portland residents can only view up to 100 police calls that have happened within the past 24 hours. This website would allow users to view and search all police calls within the database from its inception.

The target audience of the website is Portland-area adults and anyone who would like to be more aware of any criminal activity happening in their area. Users will use the site initially via their desktops (see Phase I, below), then have the ability to view through a more mobile-friendly interface in Phase II (see below).

Another target ‘audience’ is the Portland Police Bureau itself. Phase III of the project would save the bureau money in several ways:

  1. By allowing users to purchase police reports online, effectively eliminating the person hours involved tracking down hard copies of police reports.

  2. By providing the Bureau with a database to populate with reports, so that officers can file their reports via an easy web-based interface.

The look and feel of the site should have a warmer feel than the current Bureau site. Searching for criminal activity may cause some anxiety in the user, and the interface doesn’t need to add to that. At this point, we’re exploring different sites to see what look and feel is best.

I currently don’t own the domain, but could purchase one, if necessary. Publicity for the site will happen via online social media, direct contact with the bureau and other local agencies, and word-of-mouth.

Here are the projected phases of the project:

###Phase I### Basic website emulating what current bureau website does now, but storing information. Dynamic interface that essentially uses only two pages: the home page and a search result page.

Improvements over current bureau page:

  • Stores police calls into db so that more than the previous 100/24hrs can be viewed.
  • Searchable information by keyword: date (day, month, or year), street name, or zip code so searchers could hone in on what they want to find.
  • Prettier interface

###Phase II### Would integrate the following upgrades:

  • Make search function chainable.
  • Provide account/sign-in so that you can specify an 'alert' area, and then receive email and/or SMS updates if a call of a specific type is made in your area.
  • Provide link to bureau website to “file a police report”

###Phase III### Would integrate the following upgrades:

  • Provide a mobile-friendly version of the site.
  • Provide a link/information within each call listing to “purchase/get police report on this call.” This step would integrate user authorization and a paywall and would only be implemented if the Police Bureau wanted this ability.

##Technical Overview##

This project will not require any authentication and has no security, privacy or other special data integrity requirements. It will not be sending or receiving an email, text messages, or phone calls in the initial version, but may in the distant future. We will be using the Nokugiri gem to consume the public XML feed of the last 100 Portland 911 calls. Additionally, we will be using the Geocoder gem and Google Maps API to map calls and give the user a visual representation of where the 911 calls around Portland are occurring.

We plan on developing this application using outside in and test driven development. Using RSpec and Capybara, we will start with integration tests, and then have those guide us in writing our software as well as individual unit tests. We will be shooting for 100% test coverage of our models and a 25% test coverage for our views and controllers.

##Project Management##

The management team of Paul Ogden and Andrew DuBrock will spearhead this project. As residents of two Portland quadrants with high police-call incidents (N and NE PDX), these two both personally see the value in having police calls stored in a searchable database. As soon-to-be-graduates of PCS (Portland Code School), this project will be a good test of their skills.