Bureau of INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Geographic Information Systems

GIS mapping capabilities offer a powerful tool for illustrating the impact of specific policies on different geographies and neighborhoods throughout the City. The Comptroller's Office has developed GIS applications to support the visualization and analysis of information associated with many issues that are important to the City including: auto insurance, noise and air pollution, banking regulations, affordable housing, transit system repairs, claims processing, and health care. As an example, in the health care area, when the State authorized the closure of five hospitals in New York City, the Comptroller’s Office of Policy Management joined forces with the agency’s technology support team to create borough-based maps that showed the location of every hospital in the City, and the impact of potential closings. The maps included metrics for patients seen at each hospital’s emergency room and the number of in-patient clinic visits and hospital admissions.  This geographic analysis clearly outlined that some neighborhoods had been hit hard by hospital closures, and, in several cases, the remaining hospitals slated for closure did not have excess capacity.  This type of analysis revealed critical information regarding potential patient wait and travel times associated with emergency room in-patient, and out-patient services.  The GIS maps can assist advocates, planners and other stakeholders to assess the health care needs in specific communities.

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