Inspections are cyclic; how does prioritizing them help?

[orborde]

Inspections are cyclic; how does prioritizing them help?

[tomschenkjr]

I think you have a good grasp on the protocol, but yes, some loose ends to cover on how the inspection regime works. The primary intent with this repository is to help sort canvas inspections, which is one component of the food inspection manager's job. The predicted values also provide guidance any other time the manager is potentially interested in re-inspecting a restaurant

The food inspection manager is known to re-inspect restaurants if they've proven to be problematic in the past. By prioritizing riskier restaurants earlier, we can reduce exposure to the riskier restaurants and check them off our list of restaurants that need to be inspected at least once (which has been a problem in the past), but that doesn't preclude them from follow-up visits.

The food inspection manager has discretion about this, but she'll also be able to use the predicted probabilities to help her prioritize follow-up visits. Earlier identification of failures will give ample time for follow-up.

One important piece of information for the manager are resident complaints, which are reported through through 311. However, under-reporting has always been an issue as people don't know how or don't care to report to the city. So, this is where our Foodborne Chicago program is designed to help combat under-reporting through social media text mining. In which case, reports through 311 (or Foodborne) can be mediated by looking at the predicted probabilities to help prioritize the follow-ups.

Is it perfect? No, because the scenario you painted could happen. Though I don't think it'll "cancel out", but a scenario that can happen time-to-time which we may be able to combat through re-inspections and resident complaints. That is, even if it does happen, there are mechanisms to deal with it. The current inspection protocol is designed to cover a minimum base, and then allow follow-ups on top of it as resources and time allow.

In time, it will be interesting to see if our ordinances and protocols will begin to evolve based on new capabilities like this predictive model is available to them. Already, it's been interesting as Risk 2's are now considered in the same bucket as Risk 1's because it's possible the former can be riskier than the latter. As long as our predictions are accurate, we'll be able to fit into a variety of inspection regimes.

[orborde]

Ah, okay. It sounds like there is a pool of "discretionary" inspection resources beyond those provided for the cyclic (canvas, IIUC) inspections in the form of "follow-up" inspections, and that those can be concentrated on predicted-high-risk businesses. And that (per the Tribune article) the current inspection resources are not sufficient to cover even the canvas schedule, meaning that better prioritization of canvas inspections allows better choices about minimizing the impact of the shortfall.