As 2025 begins, DDS is making significant strides toward advancing transportation equity and safety by leveraging community-sourced data on unreported accidents across DC. Over the past two weeks, DDS has made substantial progress across a range of initiatives, from migrating OpenMHz to OpenAI’s Whisper for transcription to submitting grant applications and building a dashboard with the Observable framework. These efforts are driving us closer to our goal of implementing more equitable and effective traffic safety measures through data.
A key focus during this period has been migrating our current OpenMHz handler to OpenAI’s Whisper as part of the transition away from Deepgram. This new logic was deployed as AWS Lambdas and integrated with newly created tables and S3 buckets. Lambdas were successfully deployed through DDS’s pipeline to a new test table. This progress is a crucial step toward deploying the OpenMHz Whisper transcription logic into production.
In terms of school zone data, DDS has made significant progress resolving an issue with the school zone scrape. A missing table in Redshift has now been created, solving the problem. Furthermore, DSS is exploring the integration of a pre-trained model into the deep learning experiments.
On the grant side, the DCHSO grant application has been finalized and is currently under review. Securing this grant will ensure continued funding for our ongoing research. Additionally, DDS has been awarded Digital Technology Smart Infrastructure Seed funding, which will use data science to optimize civil infrastructure for diverse urban needs and promote community involvement in infrastructure management. This funding will also allow DDS to extend its platform beyond DC to other regions, expanding both its impact and application.
Looking ahead at the coming week, DDS’s top priorities are to continue refining the OpenMHz to Whisper logic and implementing a pre-trained model into the deep learning experimentation, both of which will significantly enhance future analysis. The goal is to deploy the new logic into production in the upcoming weeks.
The DDS team continues to make steady progress, overcoming challenges and adapting to new situations. Our collaborative approach, fostering teamwork, clear communication, and problem-solving, remains central to our success. Whether through code reviews, brainstorming sessions, or seeking help when needed, remaining aligned with both individual and collective goals. This ongoing collaboration allows us to drive meaningful progress toward a more data-driven and equitable future for DC.
Together, we will keep improving DC through Data Driven Streets!
– DDS
Leave a Reply