Here’s an interesting article covering how improvements in food safety can be traced directly to open data initiatives. Snip:
Chicago health officials and their partners are also using social media to increase the reporting of suspected food-related illnesses. For example, using the city’s FoodBorne Chicago application, health officials are mining the tweets and online reviews of consumers who mention being sickened by food establishments and contact these consumers to file a report with the CDPH. Developed in partnership with the Smart Chicago Collaborative, this program’s innovative use of social media has increased reports of food poisoning and identification of restaurants violating health codes, according to the report “Health Department Use of Social Media to Identify Foodborne Illness — Chicago, Illinois, 2013–2014,” published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Other cities, such as New York, are testing similar uses of consumer rating websites such as Yelp.
