DOB Safety Violations: New York City Building Code Penalties

Newer civil penalties issued by the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) through the DOB NOW system. The dataset includes violations for devices like boilers and elevators, with geographic and administrative details for each case. It is distinct from older DOB violations and summonses adjudicated by OATH/ECB.

Use Cases

• Mapping violation density by neighborhood using Latitude, Longitude, and Borough.
• Analyzing violation types and status trends over time using Violation Type, Violation Status, and Violation Issue Date.
• Assessing enforcement cycles and deadlines by linking Violation Number to Cycle End Date.
• Correlating violations with specific properties or buildings using BBL (Borough-Block-Lot), BIN, and Street.
• Reporting to community boards or council districts using Community Board and Council District columns.

Strengths

• Contains detailed geographic identifiers including BBL, Latitude, Longitude, and Census Tract (2020).
• Cross-platform presence on Socrata and Data.gov signals official importance and reliability.
• Columns suggest a clear link between violation records, specific devices (Device Type, Device Number), and property identifiers.

Limitations

• Metadata conflicts: last updated dates differ between platforms (2026-04-03 vs 2026-04-05).
• Critical metadata like row count, license, author, and precise time range of data is unavailable.
• The description notes potential duplication of some records with an older DOB Violations dataset.

Provenance

Source

New York City Department of Buildings (DOB), published via data.cityofnewyork.us.

Collection Method

Issued or payable through the DOB NOW system for civil penalties.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-04-05 according to Data.gov.

Geography

New York City, New York, United States, with granularity to the property and neighborhood level.