This repository covers the data processing part of Amnesty International's Decode Surveillance project. It accompanies the full methodology note.

Full methodology note available in AMR5152052022EN_DecodeSurveillanceNYCMethodology.pdf.

The environment can be installed with [Miniforge/Mambaforge]. It should also run with Anaconda but this has not been test.

• Install miniforge or mambaforge.

• Create a conda environment named amnesty_env: conda env create -f environment.yml or, faster if you have installed [mamba] or are using mambaforge: mamba env create -f environment.yml

(Described in the order of which each notebook should be run)

• This notebook creates a single csv file, counts_per_intersections.csv, containing the appropriate information to allow for calculating the aggregate counts per intersection which would then be used as input for aggregate_counts_over_intersections.ipynb.

• This notebook uses information in counts_per_intersections.csv to calculate summary counts which are included in section Finding summaries of Methodology Note Decode Surveillance.

The following files are found in the data folder. These CSV files contain the volunteers' results as extracted from the microtasking platform.

A Decoder (DecoderID) sees an Intersection (IntersectionId) and tags several cameras (each with an Id -- that's one row) and eventually press "Submits" which makes a submission (SubmissionId).

• Each row is the individual tag at camera seen by a decoder at an intersection with its location/type i.e. building or PTZ/Dome.

Columns:

• DecoderId: Assigned ID unique to the decoder.
• IntersectionId: Assigned ID unique to the intersection.
• SubmissionId: ID unique to the submission of this set of tags by this decoder at this intersection.
• Type: Type of public camera labelled by decoder, when the decoder believes the camera belongs to category: street_light/traffic_signal/road_sign. Empty otherwise.
• Attached: What is the camera attached to: street_light/traffic_signal/road_sign or building or unknown.
• Createdtime: Date and time the submission was created by the decoder.
• Id: Serial unique ID of this tag for this submission.
• Title: Full name of the camera label type along with what the location of the camera: Dome or PTZ camera on traffic signal, streetlight or pole or Bullet camera on traffic signal, streetlight or pole or Camera on building.
• The following columns describe the Point of View of the decoder within the Street View panorama, i.e. where it is looking, in spherical coordinates:
  • Pov.heading: Camera heading in degrees relative to true north. True north is 0°, east is 90°, south is 180°, west is 270°.
  • Pov.pitch: Camera pitch in degrees, relative to the Street View vehicle. Ranges from 90° (directly upwards) to -90° (directly downwards).
  • Pov.zoom: Zoom level of the panorama. Fully zoomed-out is level 0, where the field of view is 180 degrees. Zooming in increases the zoom level.
• Updatedtime: Unknown, not used in the analysis.
• DecoderGenericId: Assigned numerical ID unique to the decoder, coherent accross projects. Bijective with DecoderId.

• Each row is the intersection seen by a specific decoder and the number of cameras for total/each type/attachment/ in this intersection.

Columns:

• SubmissionId: ID unique to the submission of the camera detected and labelled by the decoder at a specific intersection.
• DecoderId: Assigned ID unique to the decoder.
• DecoderGenericId: Assigned numerical ID unique to the decoder.
• IntersectionId: Assigned ID unique to the intersection.
• StartTime: Time the decoder started to look for cameras in a panorama of a specific intersection.
• EndTime: Time the decoder exited the process of looking for cameras in a panorama of a specific intersection.
• n_cameras: Total number of cameras labelled by the decoder at an intersection.
• attached_street: Number of cameras labelled as attached to: street_light/traffic_signal/road_sign by the decoder at an intersection.
• attached_building: Number of cameras labelled as attached to: a building by the decoder at an intersection.
• attached_unknown: Number of cameras labelled by the decoder at an intersection where the decoder is unsure what the camera is attached to.
• type_dome: Number of cameras labelled as attached to: street_light/traffic_signal/road_sign and as type: dome by the decoder at an intersection.
• type_bullet: Number of cameras labelled as attached to: street_light/traffic_signal/road_sign and as type: bullet by the decoder at an intersection.
• type_unknown: Number of cameras labelled as attached to: street_light/traffic_signal/road_sign and where the type is unknown by the decoder at an intersection.

• Each row is the intersections over different areas of NY and its related info e.g.panorama id or whether there is a Traffic Signal present.

Columns:

• IntersectionId: Assigned ID unique to the intersection.
• Url: Internal URL for that intersection within the microtasking platform.
• Borough: Name of the borough of the specific intersection: The Bronx or Manhattan or Brooklyn or Queens or Staten Island.
• TrafficSignal: Indicates whether the specific intersection includes Traffic Lights.
• Lat: WARNING: NOT the Latitude of the actual imagery. Latitude in degrees used to request a panorama from Street View, within [-90, 90]. This is only the latitude requested, not that of the actual imagery. For that, see panorama_url.csv's GoogleLat column.
• Long: WARNING: NOT the Longitude of the actual imagery. Longitude in degrees used to request a panorama from Street View, within [-180, 180]. This is only the longitude requested, not that of the actual imagery. For that, see panorama_url.csv's GoogleLong column.
• PanoramaId: ID of the intersection panorama (spherical image) in Street View. Used for any call to Street View API panoid argument.
• ImageDate: Date of photography of the Street View panorama.

• Each row is the PanoramaId along with its unique Latitude and Longitude as obtained from Google (GoogleLat, GoogleLong).

Columns:

• PanoramaId: ID of the intersection panorama (spherical image) in Street View. Used for any call to Street View API panoid argument.
• Lat: WARNING: NOT the Latitude of the actual imagery. Latitude in degrees used to request a panorama from Street View, within [-90, 90]. This is only the latitude requested, not that of the actual imagery. For that, see GoogleLat column.
• Long: WARNING: NOT the Longitude of the actual imagery. Longitude in degrees used to request a panorama from Street View, within [-180, 180]. This is only the longitude requested, not that of the actual imagery. For that, see GoogleLong column.
• GoogleLat: Latitude in degrees of the actual Street View panorama obtained from Google Street View API using the PanoramaId, within [-90, 90].
• GoogleLong: Longitude in degrees of the actual Street View panorama obtained from Google Street View API using the PanoramaId, within [-180, 180].

• Borough Boundaries (Water Areas Included) obtained from NYC.gov Planning's Political and Administrative Districts webpage, retrieved on 2021-12-20.
• Added in this repository for ease of reproduction.

The following files are found in the data folder. They contain the result of the aggregation of the volunteers' answers, for each intersection.

• Contains aggregated counts over all intersections characterised by a unique PanoramaId.
• Generated in aggregate_counts_over_intersections.ipynb.

Columns:

• PanoramaId: ID unique to the Street View panorama of the intersection.
• The following columns describe the median number of cameras at the intersection according to the 3 decoders:
  • n_cameras_median: Total number of cameras.
  • attached_street_median: Number of cameras that is attached to a street_light/traffic_signal/road_sign.
  • attached_building_median: Number of cameras that is attached to a building.
  • attached_unknown_median: Number of cameras that is attached to an unknown location.
  • type_dome_median: Number of cameras of dome type.
  • type_bullet_median: Number of cameras of bullet type.
  • type_unknown_median: Number of cameras of unknown type.
• The following columns represent the level of agreement amongst the three decoders, this could be either: Unanimous or 2 vs 1 or All disagree:
  • n_cameras_agreement: Number of total cameras.
  • attached_street_agreement: Number of cameras attached to a street_light/traffic_signal/road_sign.
  • attached_building_agreement: Number of cameras attached to a building.
  • attached_unknown_agreement: Number of cameras of attached to an unknown location.
  • type_dome_agreement: Number of cameras of dome type.
  • type_bullet_agreement: Number of cameras of bullet type.
  • type_unknown_agreement: Number of cameras of unknown type.
• Lat: Latitude in degrees of the actual Street View panorama, from panorama_url.csv's GoogleLat, within [-90, 90].
• Long: Longitude in degrees of the actual Street View panorama, from panorama_url.csv's GoogleLong, within[-180, 180].
• geometry_pano: Point-geometry of the panorama for ease of plotting.
• BoroName: Name of the borough the specific intersection is found in, with respect to the query json from NYC.gov website.
• URL: URL of the Street View panorama.
• ImageDate: Date of photography of the Street View panorama.

See folder analysis/ and Makefile therein.

The analysis is done in Jupyter notebooks using R. Detailed installation instructions, including where to place the data files, will be uploaded at a later date, but the content of the notebooks represents the full study and allows for analysis.

You will need to obtain an API key for the US Census, available here, and paste it in analysis/prepdata.R line 8.