Chicago Utility Dig Ticket Notifications with Location Data

811 Chicago dig ticket notifications alert utility companies to planned excavations. Records include columns for location (LATITUDE, LONGITUDE, STNAME), timing (REQUESTDATE, DIGDATE), and involved parties (PRIMARYCONTACTFIRST, PRIMARYCONTACTLAST). The Chicago Department of Transportation maintains this dataset, which was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyze spatial patterns of excavation requests using LATITUDE, LONGITUDE, and Community Areas columns.
• Forecast utility marking workload by modeling notification volume trends from REQUESTDATE and DIGDATE.
• Identify high-frequency excavation requestors by aggregating records on PRIMARYCONTACTFIRST and PRIMARYCONTACTLAST.
• Assess emergency excavation rates by filtering the EMERGENCY column flag.
• Correlate excavation activity with demographic data by joining on Census Tracts or Zip Codes.

Strengths

• Dataset includes 30 distinct columns covering location, timing, contacts, and administrative boundaries.
• Provides geographic join keys like Census Tracts, Zip Codes, Wards, and Community Areas for spatial analysis.

Limitations

• Data contains duplicate dig tickets (DIG_TICKET#), requiring deduplication for accurate excavation counts.
• Sample size and total row count are unknown, limiting assessment of statistical power.

Provenance

Source

Chicago Department of Transportation via data.cityofchicago.org.

Collection Method

Collected from the 811 Chicago dig ticket notification system.

Freshness

Updated to April 2026.

Geography

City of Chicago, Illinois, USA.