Harnessing the power of machine learning to reduce adoption wait times

Many animal shelters are going through a tough time. They are experiencing capacity problems and some of have already reached the limits of what their space and resources will allow. The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the effects, pushing some shelters beyond their limits.

I lead a team of four Data Scientists in a comprehensive analysis of the Austin Animal Center’s intake and outcomes logs. Collectively, we trained a model to identify dogs most “at risk” of experiencing exceptionally long adoption wait times. We then deployed the model to a web portal connected to PetFinder’s API to help connect future dog parents to pups with the highest risk of remaining at shelters or in foster homes the longest.

Check out the web app to find an “at risk” dog in your neighborhood or..

View our analysis of the data on GitHub or through an interactive Tableau dashboard.