Municipal data generation, modelling and portal building

The analysis and visual representation of real-time data and decision-making are essential for governmental organisations at the local, provincial and national spheres. The ability to leverage 4IR technologies to accommodate this need is crucial, especially in the current poly-crisis state of Gauteng and, especially, the City of Johannesburg. Another attribute which feeds into this need is the availability and generation of essential municipal datasets. Highly granular datasets inform highly targeted governance decision-making. Modelling plays a key role in generating new and novel datasets, which are currently not in existence, using AI and machine learning approaches, given the availability of model calibration and validation data sources.

This project seeks to establish a highly dynamic data dashboard to provide real-time information on monthly, quarterly or yearly targets, which COGTA would find useful for their reporting structures (based on a needs analysis). Power BI will be used as the base dashboard technology, and the parameters to report and visualise within it will focus on targets around population growth (yearly) and migration numbers in and out of Gauteng, etc. The COGTA project lead will play a vital role in informing the target variables, which will be incorporated and visualised in the dashboard. Variable datasets, which are requested by the COGTA project lead but are not available for procurement, will be generated by machine learning modelling approaches using available ancillary datasets such as Quality of Life (QoL) datasets, GIS layers and remote sensing-generated datasets.

Intended outputs include a PowerBI Geospatial Dashboard, a user guide and accompanying presentations on the dashboard.