Rachel Haot of the Open Gov Partnership reports, “From hackathons to social media, open government is transforming the way that Mayor Bloomberg’s administration and New York City government serve the public. And there has been no greater testament to open government’s potential than the strategy and innovation in action during Hurricane Sandy. Learning from our experience during Hurricane Irene, in the days leading up to Hurricane Sandy’s landfall in New York City, government technologists reached out to the data science community to share recently updated hurricane evacuation zone maps based on up-to-the-minute flooding projections.”

She continues, “To ensure wide  public access to this valuable information, the City’s IT Department immediately published the data to the City’s Open Data portal, enabling developers and designers to develop emergency maps and applications. For the second consecutive year, the City also partnered with organizations such as WNYC.org, The New York Times, and Google’s Crisis Response team, which developed a customized New York City-centric Hurricane Sandy map featuring evacuation zones, shelters, food distributions centers, warming centers, recovery centers and more resources.”

Read more here.

Image: Courtesy Open Gov Partnership