Pitchfest ’25 Projects

Built Environment

The Department of City Planning (DCP) is seeking help to develop a citywide walkability index to analyze walkability, engage communities, and support future land use policy.
The Department of City Planning (DCP) is seeking help to study heat in privately-owned public spaces (POPS) to guide future design, standards, and regulations for public spaces.
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is seeking help to modernize Local Law 97 planning tools into more stable, interactive tools that support robust scenario planning.
The Department of Design & Construction (DDC) is seeking help to study data requirements for scoping building electrification and energy upgrades, which will improve project prioritization.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) is seeking help to understand what conditions lead to rapid asphalt deterioration at bus stops.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) is seeking help to understand how e-bike user behavior differs by facility type and location.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) is seeking help to study the relationship between a particular DOT public realm or bicycle project and health outcomes.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) is seeking help to infer transit trips from app-based GPS data by matching it to transit stop locations and archived times.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) is seeking help to leverage machine learning to detect errors in Automatic Traffic Recorder (ATR) data.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) is seeking help to develop a computer vision traffic counting prototype that outperforms existing counting methods.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) is seeking help to study the wider impact of the Open Streets program in post-pandemic NYC.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) is seeking help to collaborate on designing stated preference (SP) surveys and graphics for the 2026 Citywide Mobility Survey.
The Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC) is seeking help to test strategies for redirecting for-hire vehicle pickups and drop-offs to improve curbside safety and efficiency.

Natural Environment

The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is seeking help to identify opportunities to align development incentives towards improved water management.
The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is seeking help to study the causes of late winter diatom blooms in the Croton watershed.
The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is seeking help to explore seawall design and deployment to transform the social and environmental wellness of coastal communities in NYC.
The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is seeking help designing and implementing a low-cost monitoring pilot for rain gardens at a neighborhood scale.
The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is seeking help to deploy a public-facing, real-time map of water outages, advisories, and planned construction impacts.
The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is seeking help to validate performance of its predictive AI model for identifying high-risk water main segments to improve the model’s utility for capital planning and emergency response.
The Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice (MOCEJ) is seeking help to study how energy cost burden impacts New Yorkers across factors of housing, health, and other livelihood factors.
The Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice (MOCEJ) is seeking help to develop climate hazard infographics that deploy across digital platforms for the benefits of NYC communities.
The Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) is seeking help to conduct experiments to test park visitor counting methods through mobile and sensor data.
The Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) is seeking help to design a scalable urban wood reuse system for park-removed logs that can be processed into marketable lumber and wood products.
The Department of Sanitation (DSNY) is seeking help to design a digital voucher system that replaces a paper-based process to improve efficiency and accuracy.
The Department of Sanitation (DSNY) is seeking help to study the scope of food waste in NYC to inform strategies that reduce edible food waste and strengthen food system resiliency.

Administration

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is seeking help to leverage traffic camera data to measure parking occupancy and fluctuations in greenhouse gas emissions.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is seeking help to develop a large language model that can extract valuable OMB data from approved projects and develop robust ROI analyses for climate-related budget requests.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is seeking help to understand the return on investment for NYC’s heat and flood resiliency work.
The Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) is seeking help to study how safely and effectively renewable diesel can be used as an alternative to heating oil.
The Office of Technology & Innovation (OTI) is seeking help to evaluate advanced privacy methods for enabling data sharing in support of New Yorkers’ access to public benefits.
The Center for Innovation through Data Intelligence (CIDI) is seeking help to analyze Emergency Housing Voucher (EHV) data to understand program utilization, housing supply dynamics, and tenant decision-making across rental assistance options.

Health

The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) is seeking help to establish data standards and a hosting platform for storing, sharing, and visualizing data related to lead-contaminated consumer products.
The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) is seeking help to develop a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) to inform the agency’s response and preparedness plans for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) is seeking help to study the racial and ethnic differences among older New Yorkers who fall to help refine outreach, education, and prevention programs.
The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) is seeking help to implement whole genome sequencing (WGS) workflows in their cloud-based enterprise data platform.
NYC Health + Hospitals (H+H) is seeking help to study compound risks for medically vulnerable New Yorkers in flood-prone zones to improve healthcare resource allocation.
The Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health (OCMH) is seeking help to design and prototype a virtual reality (VR) mental health training module for frontline city staff who regularly encounter individuals in emotional or psychiatric crisis.
The Mayor’s Office of Food Policy (MOFP) is seeking help to a scope for bulk milk systems that help reduce milk waste, packaging, and emissions.

Public Service

The Department of Social Services (DSS) is seeking help to conduct user research and analysis to better understand the needs and experiences of food pantry and community kitchen clients.
The Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) is seeking help to conduct user research about their current contract management process to identify opportunities for improvement.
The Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) is seeking help to analyze participation trends in the Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) to inform policies that improve program quality and access.
The Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) is seeking help to evaluate and scale its Economic Development model to strengthen job growth, entrepreneurship, and long-term wealth-building in underserved neighborhoods.
The Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) is seeking help to assess the impact of the SafeGrowth pilot on community safety and determine its potential for citywide expansion.
The Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) is seeking help to develop prototypes and recommendations for discoverDYCD 3.0 that improve how parents, youth, and community members access and apply to programs.
The Department for the Aging (NYC Aging) is seeking help to study the impact of their community-based services on cognitive health among older New Yorkers.
The Department for the Aging (NYC Aging) is seeking help to create and improve arts-based programming for older New Yorkers.

Public Safety

The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) is seeking help to study crime data to inform efforts to reduce incidents of sexual violence and implement long term public safety solutions.
New York City Emergency Management (NYCEM) is seeking help to incorporate AI-driven transcription and summarization tools and develop a protocol for staff to reduce labor and time needed to produce accurate call records.
New York City Emergency Management (NYCEM) is seeking help conducting user research on flood protection measures among private property owners to understand knowledge gaps and develop floor protection toolkits.
New York City Emergency Management (NYCEM) is seeking help to develop a plan for integrating nonprofit labor into disaster recovery efforts in a way that reduces costs, improves services delivery, and creates meaningful benefits for the nonprofits involved.