Initial Situation
The City of Wolfsburg is developing dynamically and strategically driving forward change processes to successfully address far-reaching challenges in fields such as mobility, housing, and the economy. To shape these changes in a data-driven way, the City of Wolfsburg's Department of Data, Strategy, and Urban Development relies on a close connection between data-based insights and urban planning development.
One of the department's core tasks is the analysis, preparation, and provision of statistical data. For this, the City of Wolfsburg relies on the data science language R and R Shiny, the leading framework for dashboarding and data visualization. One example of a Shiny application in use in Wolfsburg is an app for analyzing accident statistics, featuring map visualizations of particular accident hotspots.
Goal
The people responsible at the City of Wolfsburg wanted to professionalize the processes surrounding the development and deployment of their Shiny applications, in order to further advance data provisioning and visualization with R Shiny in line with a DevOps approach.
Solution
For this project, the City of Wolfsburg relied on eoda's leading expertise in R and R Shiny, along with individual support in the form of a coaching program.
As part of the coaching, eoda's experts examined the entire development cycle of the City of Wolfsburg's R Shiny applications. The focus was on answering the question of how Shiny applications can be developed to be secure and reproducible for use by a broad group of users. On the development side, this included, for example, the use of version control systems such as GitLab and the optimization of processes for team collaboration.
On the deployment side of the Shiny applications, the focus included, among other things, the introduction of containerization solutions such as Docker and the associated requirements for the applications.
The eoda coaching program included, among others, the following formats:
- Pair programming
- Code review & refactoring of scripts created
- Training sessions to convey data science content
Result
Delivering data faster, more efficiently, and more reliably with R Shiny: this is what the City of Wolfsburg achieved with eoda's support. With a clear view of the requirements for professional data products, eoda identified key levers in the City of Wolfsburg's development processes and initiated concrete optimizations in line with a DevOps approach.
"eoda's data science coaching stands out through excellent technical expertise and focused, personable consulting at eye level. eoda responded flexibly to our requirements and supported us exactly where the greatest potential lay for us. This allowed us to significantly advance our processes — from conception through development to the deployment of our Shiny applications."
Dr. Uwe Meer
Deputy Head of Department and Head of Statistics | City of Wolfsburg | Stadt Wolfsburg
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Your expert on Data-Science-Trainings:
Dr. Martin Bober
training@eoda.de
Tel. +49 561 87948-370
