In 2020, Indiana college student Ethan Williams (20 years old), was killed by a stray bullet while sitting on the stoop of his Airbnb in Bushwick. With the latest uptick in shootings, burglaries, and assaults, the safety issues tourists face when visiting NYC are a real problem. As a tourist, how do you choose a safe neighborhood if you are not familiar with the city and have limited time and resources?
My team and I introduced a solution to this problem. We added an additional filter to the AirBnB listings called the Crime Score to identify safe and unsafe areas in NYC. By aggregating NYPD crime reports of all NYC precincts and the current Airbnb rental locations, we developed ETL code, a data model, database and dashboard of the five NYC boroughs with their respective crime score to identify unsafe and safe areas.
With a clear understanding of the crime rates and incidents that occur in each NYC area, Airbnb can inform the customers of safe neighborhoods, adjust the price or remove locations of unsafe neighborhoods, and look for new properties in safe neighborhoods. The Crime Score could also act as a marketing value add-on as more people are shifting towards safety-conscious culture. From the risk-mitigation aspect, Airbnb could minimize the threat of lawsuits. The Crime Score also insulates Airbnb from any legal actions as they have undertaken due diligence to educate their patrons on any safety issues with properties that are listed on their platform. Moreover, properties with low safety ratings can be removed off the platform as a preventative measure. Additionally, as a precautionary measure, Airbnb can recommend safety tips custom-tailored to people for the specific neighborhood and specific crimes.
This data and analysis could be useful for many other businesses in the city of New York. Our team could expand the scope of the project in the future and advise companies such as Zillow, Yelp, Waze, Uber/Lyft Drivers, and StreetEasy as well as restaurants or other businesses looking to open up in new locations.
The full report and presentation can be downloaded here:
To explore the Dashboard created for non-technical users click here.
You can also find the code for the technical users here.
A special thanks to all the members of Group 3: Jenny Le, Qing Li, and Ovais Shah, it was a pleasure working with you!
Comentários