Chicago Urban Traffic Crash Dashboard

Digital Twins are no longer just for buildings and infrastructure—they’re increasingly being used to represent the complex, dynamic behaviors of urban systems. In this project, I set out to build a lightweight, browser-based digital twin that visualizes and analyzes real-time traffic crash data in the city of Chicago.

The goal? To explore how open data, spatial analysis, and interactive web technologies can converge into a tool for urban safety assessment, public engagement, and data-driven planning.

Why Traffic Crashes?

Traffic accidents are a major urban concern. Their distribution across time, space, and crash type can reveal underlying vulnerabilities in road design, land use, and behavioral patterns. Analyzing these patterns in an interactive and spatial context helps policymakers and communities make smarter, faster, and more equitable decisions.

Chicago provides a rich dataset of reported crash incidents through its open data portal, making it an ideal case for this prototype.

Project Overview

The Urban Traffic Crash Digital Twin is a web-based GIS dashboard that displays the latest 1,000 traffic crash records from Chicago in a 3D hexbin map. Built entirely with Vanilla JavaScript, Mapbox GL JS, and Turf.js, the platform includes:

Hexbin Aggregation
Crashes are aggregated into hexagonal bins, where the color and height reflect the crash density in each area.
Real-Time Data Loading
Data is dynamically fetched from Chicago’s open data portal and cached in the browser for fast performance.
Advanced Filters
Users can filter crashes by:
- Hour of day (dual-ended time slider)
- Date range
- Crash type (e.g., “No Injury”, “Injury / Tow”)
Interactive Exploration
Zoom in to explore individual crash points and click to see detailed information such as crash conditions, location, injury severity, and more.
Responsive, Mobile-Friendly Design
The app is fully responsive with collapsible panels, clean UI, and intuitive user interactions.

Tech Stack

Component	Tool/Library
Mapping	Mapbox GL JS
Geospatial Ops	Turf.js
Logic	Vanilla JavaScript
UI	HTML5 + CSS3
Data Source	Chicago Open Data

Use Cases

This digital twin prototype demonstrates potential use cases such as:

Urban Planning & Road Safety Analysis
Identifying hotspots for intervention and redesign.
Public Transparency & Awareness
Engaging citizens through accessible and visualized open data.
Academic Research & Policy Design
Supporting temporal-spatial crash studies with interactive tools.

Why Traffic Crashes?

Project Overview

Tech Stack

Use Cases

Email: m.vahidiborji@gmail.com

Call:+989337166554