Case Study: City of Chicago achieves a smarter, safer city with MongoDB

Chicago Uses MongoDB to Create a Smarter and Safer City

The City of Chicago needed a way to break down data silos, move beyond manual cross‑referencing, and get real‑time, geospatial insight into everything from 311/911 calls to sensor feeds so staff could respond faster and make the city more livable. Leaders wanted not only to modernize internal workflows but also to open data to the public and enable new, predictive uses of city information.

Chicago built WindyGrid on MongoDB’s flexible document model and real‑time analytics to combine diverse datasets into a single, evolving platform. The result: interactive maps, alerts, and dashboards that surface correlations (e.g., rodent complaints linked to sanitation or building violations), speed incident response and event management, and lay the groundwork for a predictive SmartData platform — while publicly released datasets have spurred community innovation.

City of Chicago

Rahm Emanuel

Mayor, City of Chicago