Boston Safety Data

Boston 311 call data covers 311 nonemergency calls made to the Boston 311 call system. For more information, visit the BOS:311 resource.

Note

Microsoft provides Azure Open Datasets on an “as is” basis. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, guarantees or conditions with respect to your use of the datasets. To the extent permitted under your local law, Microsoft disclaims all liability for any damages or losses, including direct, consequential, special, indirect, incidental or punitive, resulting from your use of the datasets.

This dataset is provided under the original terms that Microsoft received source data. The dataset may include data sourced from Microsoft.

Volume and retention

This dataset is stored in Parquet format. Starting in 2011, Boston provides its 311 data in different files, one file resource for each different year. The data is updated daily. The 2023 dataset contains about receives daily updates, and it contains about 313-K rows (179 MB) in total as of 2019. You can use parameter settings in our SDK to fetch data within a specific time range.

Storage location

This dataset is stored in the East US Azure region. For affinity, we recommend allocation of compute resources in the East US region.

Additional information

This dataset is sourced from the government of the City of Boston. For more information, visit the Boston dataset site. For dataset licensing information, visit the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (ODC PDDL) resource.

Columns

Name Data type Unique Values (sample) Description
address string 140,612 " " 1 City Hall Plz Boston MA 02108 Location.
category string 54 Street Cleaning Sanitation Reason of the service request.
dataSubtype string 1 311_All "311_All"
dataType string 1 Safety "Safety"
dateTime timestamp 1,529,075 2015-07-23 10:51:00 2015-07-23 10:47:00 Open date and time of the service request.
latitude double 1,622 42.3594 42.3603 This is the latitude value. Lines of latitude are parallel to the equator.
longitude double 1,806 -71.0587 -71.0583 This is the longitude value. Lines of longitude run perpendicular to lines of latitude, and all pass through both poles.
source string 7 Constituent Call Citizens Connect App Original source of the case.
status string 2 Closed Open Case status.
subcategory string 209 Parking Enforcement Requests for Street Cleaning Type of the service request.

Preview

ataType dataSubtype dateTime category subcategory status address latitude longitude source extendedProperties
Safety 311_All 4/27/2021 11:45:49 PM Enforcement & Abandoned Vehicles Parking Enforcement Open 51 Gardner St Allston MA 02134 42.3535 -71.1285 Citizens Connect App
Safety 311_All 4/27/2021 11:43:43 PM Sanitation Missed Trash/Recycling/Yard Waste/Bulk Item Open 4 Putnam Pl Roxbury MA 02119 42.3298 -71.0883 Self Service
Safety 311_All 4/27/2021 11:37:19 PM Enforcement & Abandoned Vehicles Parking Enforcement Open 36 Raven St Dorchester MA 02125 42.3177 -71.0546 Citizens Connect App
Safety 311_All 4/27/2021 11:30:00 PM Sanitation Missed Trash/Recycling/Yard Waste/Bulk Item Open 58 Bicknell St Dorchester MA 02121 42.2984 -71.0834 Constituent Call
Safety 311_All 4/27/2021 11:10:20 PM Enforcement & Abandoned Vehicles Parking Enforcement Open 2000 Commonwealth Ave Brighton MA 02135 42.3394 -71.1585 Citizens Connect App
Safety 311_All 4/27/2021 11:06:00 PM Noise Disturbance Loud Parties/Music/People Open INTERSECTION of Lewis St & North St Boston MA 42.3594 -71.0587 Constituent Call
Safety 311_All 4/27/2021 11:05:00 PM Enforcement & Abandoned Vehicles Parking Enforcement Open 1 Nassau St Boston MA 02111 42.3486 -71.0629 Constituent Call
Safety 311_All 4/27/2021 11:00:55 PM Code Enforcement Poor Conditions of Property Open 17 Mercer St South Boston MA 02127 42.3332 -71.0492 Citizens Connect App

Data access - Azure Notebooks

# This is a package in preview.
from azureml.opendatasets import BostonSafety

from datetime import datetime
from dateutil import parser

end_date = parser.parse('2016-01-01')
start_date = parser.parse('2015-05-01')
safety = BostonSafety(start_date=start_date, end_date=end_date)
safety = safety.to_pandas_dataframe()
safety.info()

Data access - Azure Databricks

# This is a package in preview.
# You need to pip install azureml-opendatasets in a Databricks cluster. https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/data-explorer/connect-from-databricks#install-the-python-library-on-your-azure-databricks-cluster
from azureml.opendatasets import BostonSafety

from datetime import datetime
from dateutil import parser

end_date = parser.parse('2016-01-01')
start_date = parser.parse('2015-05-01')
safety = BostonSafety(start_date=start_date, end_date=end_date)
safety = safety.to_spark_dataframe()
display(safety)

Data access - Azure Synapse

from azureml.opendatasets import BostonSafety

from datetime import datetime
from dateutil import parser

end_date = parser.parse('2016-01-01')
start_date = parser.parse('2015-05-01')
safety = BostonSafety(start_date=start_date, end_date=end_date)
safety = safety.to_spark_dataframe()
display(safety)

Examples

Next steps

View the rest of the datasets in the Open Datasets catalog.