By George P. Hassett

Daily life in New England‚Äôs most densely populated city can have its share of headaches and frustrations.  However, perennial urban nuisances such as noise, traffic and unleashed dogs can be solved with cooperation and interaction between residents and city officials, according to Stephanie Hirsch, director of the city‚Äôs new ResiStat program, an offshoot of the SomerStat program.

SomerStat, which is modeled off of Baltimore’s CitiStat program, is a database-driven management tool that requires city departments to track information about all of their activities and to examine that information aggressively. City officials gather and process raw information such as financial records and departmental reports. This information is entered into a database, which allows the departments and city staff to track the details of municipal operations from the time it takes to fill a pothole to how much money is being spent on overtime pay. The SomerStat staff then analyzes the data and presents trends and statistics at regular meetings of the department heads.

“SomerStat has helped the city do more with less and use data as a tool to make real-time decisions in neighborhoods,” said Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone.

ResiStat is an attempt to further zero in on chronic resident frustrations and bring possible solutions back to neighborhoods, Hirsch said.

“The goal is to bring the data collected by 311 and SomerStat to the neighborhood level, share the data with residents, hear their concerns and bring them back to city departments. Then we bring the actions the city took back to the neighborhood,” she said. “We want the process to continue and continue until all the neighborhood problems are solved.”

“The public becomes the problem-solvers,” Curtatone said.

Ward 6 Alderman Rebekah Gewirtz has already hosted a ResiStat meeting for the Davis Square neighborhood. She said residents enjoyed having a better sense of where safety incidents and noise disturbances take place in their neighborhood.

“It’s a way for more direct communication between the people and the city,” she said.

Hirsch said ResiStat meeting have already been organized in the Ten Hills neighborhood by Ward 4 Alderman Walter Pero and in Ward 2 by Alderman Maryann Heuston. In Ten Hills, residents were mainly concerned about the lack of up keep on the state-owned property surrounding the Mystic River.  That issue, is complicated because it cannot be fully addressed by city departments alone, she said.

“Some issues involve the state and are out of the city’s control, but we can lobby the state to make the changes to relieve neighborhood frustrations,” Hirsch said.

Hirsch said ResiStat will break the city down into 20 neighborhoods and address each area‚Äôs issues.  However, she said, most residents regardless of neighborhoods have the same three gripes: noise, traffic and dogs, but in different orders of priority. In Davis Square, neighbors complain of rowdy bar patrons while residents surrounding Perry Park are concerned about traffic.

The city received a $21,000 grant from The Boston Foundation to increase resident involvement in evaluating city services and budgets. The city and the Research Bureau will use the money to develop new ways to incorporate resident interests and insights into the evaluation of city services at the neighborhood level.

The grant will help expand the ResiStat program to other parts of the city, city officials said.

Tackling longstanding urban plagues such as traffic will not be easy but it can be done in Somerville, Curtatone said.

“It is ambitious, but it is doable and it is going to help Somerville grow as an efficient, innovative city,” he said.