Repository for DogCityZg - interactive map of all dog-related content in Zagreb, Croatia Since his emergence over 200,000 years ago, modern man has established homes and communities all over the planet, often in the company of a particular species of animal: Canis lupus familiaris, or man's best friend, the dog. Today in Zagreb, one in five households has a dog, and the community of dog owners is large. Zagreb offers a variety of dog-related content, but public information about them is in most cases not available or well hidden to users. Currently, public places for dogs (including dog parks and green areas where you can walk your dog off-leash) are marked on the Zagreb geoportal as points without additional information. The same places are also marked on 22 static maps in pdf format on the city's website. The locations of dog waste bins are also shown (and outdated) as tabular pdf files on the City's services website. Recently published research data on this topic was more informative and available for download and re-use.
Our goal was to create a web platform that would provide dog owners with valuable information in one place. Using R, an open-source programming language mainly used for statistics, we created an interactive map with the leaflet package with various content of interest to dog owners. We integrated this map with locations of dog parks and green spaces for dogs, dog waste bins, contacts of vets, dog groomers, dog hotels and pet shops into a website.
On the map, each city district is given a "Dog friendly Score" based on the content within its boundaries, which is visible when you hover over the district. If you click on the district, you will get detailed information about the individual content. The higher the district's score, the greener its colour. This information is a good guide for new dog owners, tourists and visitors with dogs when choosing their (temporary) home. Zooming in reveals all the content and clicking on a specific shape opens a pop-up with additional information. For parks or green spaces, information on the safety of the place (last occurrence of poisoning) is displayed and these places are marked in different colours. For shops, the opening hours, phone number and website address are displayed if available.
In addition to the map, you can contact the DogCityZg crew directly through the platform. You can let us know if we have missed a particular place, if our information is out of date or simply share your opinion and give us tips on how to improve the website. Driven by the desire to simplify our lives and ensure the welfare of our beloved pets, we very much hope to make this a reality soon.