New York City two years ago more than doubled its $1.45 million budget for pruning trees, adding $2 million after a spate of injuries and deaths caused by falling tree limbs in parks and along city streets.
Now the city comptroller’s office says it has developed a way to identify potential problem spots much sooner and provide city agencies with “an early warning system” to help them improve services “and make our city safer,” whether the problem is falling tree limbs, unfilled potholes, medical malpractice or civil rights violations by the police.
The initiative, called ClaimStat, stems from a database of thousands of claims that are made against the city by people who seek compensation for injuries they say were the city’s fault.
ClaimStat was modeled after the New York Police Department’s renowned CompStat program, in which police commanders use computers to map and respond to patterns of criminal activity, the comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, said in a report to be issued by his office on Wednesday.
“One of the things, I think, that was significant about CompStat is that it sort of challenged the notion that nothing could be done about rising crime,” Mr. Stringer, a Democrat elected to his job last year, said in a phone interview. “So rising claims don’t have to be inevitable, just like crime doesn’t have to be inevitable,” he added.
ClaimStat, his office said in a statement, would identify patterns in claims made against the city to “highlight both troubling trends and best practices.”
It was unclear on Tuesday how various city agencies would use the data.
