The Steps

1. Contacted APD’s public relations staff by phone and email to request access to the accident data fields/dataset.
2. Wrote a formal records request under the Freedom of Information Act that cited relevant North Carolina public records law, specified the fields of data needed, described expected formats, etc.
3. Documented all outreach efforts and follow-ups in a formal call log.
4. Analyzed and cleaned a similar crash dataset from the Raleigh Police Department using R.
5. Created a series of data questions and used R to explore trends, outliers, and correlation between data fields.
6. Built exploratory choropleth and point-in-polygon maps to identify spatial patterns in crash incidents.