City of Denver Team Conducts Revenue Analysis for the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure
Introduction
The City of Denver Team worked closely with data analysts at Slalom Consulting, a business and technology consulting firm headquartered in Seattle. Specifically, the team conducted revenue analysis for government agencies under the City of Denver municipal government and examined the resiliency of Denver. This article details their Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Project.
The Case Team Lead for the City of Denver Team was Tom Biasi ‘22. Joriam Martinez Parra ‘22 collaborated with Slalom Data Analysts Eric Nielson and Maryiam Veisi to understand the impact of COVID-19 on the main revenue streams for Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI).
Methodology & Findings
The project examined the General Fund portion of DOTI’s total revenue. Out of DOTI’s many revenue streams, the General Fund was the main tangible, data-driven source. In order to further simplify projections and allow for the construction of a flexible, extendable framework, the team focused on specific revenue generators. These included the Highway User Tax fund, Meter Permits (Meter Bagging Permits and Parking Meters), Occupant Permits (Special and Street), Parking Fines, and Parking Lots.
The team obtained dashboards and spreadsheets on monthly and daily data for the 5 main revenue streams and examined the impact of COVID-19 on the collection of revenue for each stream. In doing so, Parra, Nielson, and Veisi identified reduced automobile mobility, cancelled sporting / non-athletic events, reduced construction activity, and suspension of parking enforcement as the main independent variables affecting the revenue streams.
Next, the team analyzed the percentage reduction in revenue at certain thresholds of these effects. For events, the expected reduction of attendees was calculated using public information and data from DOTI. Using Google data on community mobility for the County of Denver, the team then calculated cumulative public mobility scores for different sectors, with different weights for each reduction — retail, parks, workplaces, etc. This allowed them to predict how changes in these core variables would affect the revenue streams for the department over the next year.
To create a more user-friendly interface, the team converted these effects into interactive toggles on newly generated dashboards and spreadsheets. These dashboards simulate differing conditions in accordance with social distancing measures and restrictions due to the pandemic. All updated projections were then presented on a monthly and daily line chart comparing the new projections to previous projections, previous years, and a scenario in which the pandemic had not occurred. A table of the monthly projections for each revenue stream, their respective reductions, and toggles was also generated.
Case Team Lead Tom Biasi reflected on his experience leading the team: “The work accomplished by Slalom, the City of Denver, and the HDAG team was a great display of private, public, and academic enterprises coming together to solve pressing problems during COVID. The Harvard students on my team worked nonstop with the client to fully understand the scope of the use case and to create stellar deliverables that will help Denver in the short and long term.”
This article reports the work of Harvard College Data Analytics Group’s COVID-19 Crisis Response Team. Edited by Kelsey Wu.