CityGeo is the City of Philadelphia’s geographic information and data-management group within its Office of Innovation and Technology. It helps city departments share information for mapping, analysis and public services, and develops and maintains data portals and applications. Its work spans geographic and statistical analysis, open-data publishing, large data integrations, spatial technology contracts and standards for managing and sharing geographic information.12
The team’s work is citywide: it supports Philadelphia departments and produces tools and datasets for residents and other users. One example is DataBridge, the city’s enterprise platform for integrating and sharing information across departments. CityGeo also built Atlas, which lets users explore information associated with Philadelphia addresses, and developed SOLARrooftops, a tool estimating rooftop solar potential using elevation data and the sun’s path.5611
Other projects apply shared data to specific public needs. CityGeo created a crowdsourcing application for residents to suggest landmarks, with the aim of improving location identification for emergency calls.3 In partnership with other departments, it developed a model that uses city data to identify buildings likely to be vacant, helping staff target field visits.4 The team has also designed public dashboards, including tools for exploring open-data releases and city workforce diversity.107
A City of Philadelphia account published in 2020 said the team had spent approximately a decade building the city’s geographic information system capacity, suggesting work began around 2010; the sources do not give a formal founding date.5 The sources identify Henry Garie as the city’s Chief Data Officer and Geographic Information Officer in 2020, and name project leads and analysts, but do not establish a current head of CityGeo.537