Issue
In Texas, crash data is available to agencies through the CRIS data system. By following the steps included here, you can download and unzip data files suitable for import into Crash Magic. You also have the option to FTP the data to our servers rather than using the browser interface. That process is described in href=”http://www.pdmagic.com/kb/ShowKBArticle.cfm?id=301″>http://www.pdmagic.com/kb/ShowKBArticle.cfm?id=301
Explanation
The instructions in this article are for obtaining data for Crash Magic from the CRIS data warehouse website.
Important: You will need to have created an account beforehand with CRIS to get a username and password. You can do that by going to the link below and creating an account
https://cris.dot.state.tx.us/public/Register/app/registration/selectRegistrationType
Choose the following option:
Logins expire after 180 days of non-use, but can be recreated.
Solution
To request the data, go to: https://cris.txdot.gov, and login with your user name and password. then choose Create Data Extract at the bottom of the screen. Then you will be brought into a page that lets you pick the type of data format you wish. Follow the instructions listed below. In this example, we’ve requested data for Grand Prairie, TX.
Select Public, then XML from the drop down boxes. Then hit Continue.
Select the agencies you wish to include in the data request. Hit Continue.
- Once on your machine, it will need to be unzipped using 7 Zip (if you try to unzip with Windows, it will won’t work as Windows currently doesn’t have the option to unzip using a password). If you don’t have 7 Zip – it is free to download.
- During the unzip process it will ask you for a password, enter the same password as you logged into the CRIS system with. At that point, several files will be extracted to your machine, including another zipped file, which is the file you’re going to import into Crash Magic.