Long Branch Dashboard

Abstract

In conjunction with the UMD iConsultancy and the INST490 staff, we partnered with CHEER (Community Health and Empowerment through Education and Research) to create a Long Branch community dashboard. CHEER is a community-driven, non-profit organization focused on serving communities across Maryland. The organization works with communities by identifying their essential needs and goals. For this project, CHEER needed assistance in developing key performance indicators that accurately aligned with goals for the Long Branch community. We were asked to create an all-encompassing dashboard using CHEER’s identified goals and publicly available datasets to show precise key performance metrics and potential solutions to community issues. After reviewing the scope of work, we met with CHEER and Long Branch representative, Reemberto Rodriguez. Rodriguez was our main contact in the organization throughout the semester and participated in most meetings throughout the semester. He outlined project deliverables and provided documentation and additional datasets that gave insight into the Long Branch community and its issues. He also highlighted many of CHEER’s stakeholder goals: equitable food, affordable housing, neighborhood attractiveness, parking, public safety, and affordable business. Rodriguez emphasized that the final deliverable should focus on as many of these goals as possible. Throughout the semester, we discussed different formats for the final deliverable. In the early stages, we planned to create our dashboard using CHEER-provided software. This idea never came to fruition, and Rodriguez suggested a simple Google document that could serve as an infographic for the community. This method would reduce the dashboard’s interactability and wouldn’t be as intuitive for Long Branch community members. We agreed to create the dashboard using Google Sites, a tool that allows users to create their own web pages through Google Cloud. This approach accommodates embedded, interactable data visualizations and other key point measures that represent the community. This platform enabled us to focus on CHEER’s identified goals and make an intuitive and sustainable tool that serves the Long Branch community.