The difference between proactive and reactive resource allocation may be a life.

For about half of the children who die from maltreatment, child welfare agencies aren’t aware there’s a problem until a fatality report, estimated Dyann Daley, the founder of the Texas nonprofit Predict Align Prevent (PAP). Between 2013 and 2017, 34 children died of this cause in Richmond, Va., for instance.

To prevent instead of react to those deaths, the Richmond Department of Social Services contracted Daley and Ken Steif of Philly-based civic tech consulting org Urban Spatial to create a geospatial data tool that predicts where child maltreatment will most likely take place. The code is public on Github so others can use it as a blueprint.

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