This was presented at mySociety's TICTeC Local 2019 conference, which was held on 1st November 2019 at City Hall in London. More details on the conference can be found here: https://tictec.mysociety.org/local/2019

1. Automating environmental
impact analyses in New York City

2. Hi! I’m Jonathan Pichot
Technologist in government
Passionate urbanist
Product Manager and Developer
at NYC Planning Labs
@_pichot

4. Civic Tech
Improving the way government builds technology
Plan Tech
Using technology and data for better planning outcomes

5. or, the story of CEQR App
Civic tech story
Public sector entrepreneurship story
Future of planning story

6. Responsible for public land use review (changes to zoning)
Proposing land use changes (aligned with mayoral priorities)
Provide data and long-term planning resources across the city
Responsible for much of the environmental review

7. Proposals that increase density (ie. change zoning) are required to
analyze the environmental impact of that increased density
The definition of the “environment” in this context is broad:
urban design, air quality, public health, transportation
(19 technical chapters)

8. Analyses range between qualitative and quantitative assessments
Urban Design chapter is very qualitative,
Open Space is more quantitative

9. Output of process is a report (EIS/EAS) that discloses the proposal’s
affect on the environment, broadly defined
In most cases, all this analysis is done by environmental consultants
hired by applicants, but that work has to be double checked by the
relevant city agencies.
This process expensive, time-consuming, and convoluted.

14. This is Mona.
Mona’s job was to verify the work of
consultants producing the Public Schools
analysis, determining if there is enough
school capacity for future residents.

15. Much of the work was finding miscalculations, or where a consultant
missed an important piece of data
Lots of back and forth, emails, copies of copies of Excel
Computers are good at these things

16. As it happened, before joining Labs, I worked on the same team as
Mona
I was looking for a new project
We decided to prototype a tool to save her time (initial mandate)

18. Within a few months, early prototypes were getting rave reviews:
“This is the future of CEQR”
“We need this yesterday”
Mona’s workload was also improving

19. Officially launched to Public Schools consultants October 2018
- Became the official way to deliver analyses to Mona for review

23. Continued good reviews after launch, running user testing sessions
with consultants.
Every meeting was a good meeting:
“You just saved me 3 months”
“Thank you”

24. CEQR App, and yours myself, officially joined Labs.
Hired 3 new team members
(data engineer, full-stack developer, interaction designer)
“Teams before tech”

25. Project becomes bigger then tech: policy and business improvement
Leadership supports agile, iterative development to policy and
methodologies, not just digital product
Cross-disciplinary team: web developers, designers, data engineers,
policy and technical experts, business improvement analysts

26. Working model just as important as technical output:
Development team (biweekly sprints)
Working group (biweekly)
- Includes director of EARD, Director of Business Improvement
Steering Committee (quarterly)
- Agency director, head counsel, COO

27. Methodology
Improvements
New and better data
Related technical
products and
initiatives
Technical Manual
Revisions
CEQR App

28. Publicly launched Public Schools analysis in October 2018
> 100 users with 1 project or more
2 projects per user (median)
~ 50% less time (~ 8 hrs / project) per analysis with CEQR App
~ $1000 / project savings
~ $200,000 savings

29. Transportation chapter
- Transportation Demand Factor memo
Air Quality chapter
- Mapping stationary polluting sources

33. Thank you!
https://labs.planning.nyc.gov
@nycplanninglabs