This Location Platform Will Put L.A. Services on the Map, Literally
Los Angeles, California Jorg Hackemann / Shutterstock.com
The nation’s second-largest city is making more of its data navigable.
The city of Los Angeles’ open data became markedly more actionable Friday with the unveiling of GeoHub, which Mayor Eric Garcetti’s administration is calling the first-ever municipal location-as-a-service platform for real-time information and mapping.
“By giving people better access to information, anyone can see how their city is doing,” said Garcetti, speaking at the La Kretz Innovation Campus.
GeoHub accomplishes that through its portal and apps using more than 500 types of urban map data available—overlaid on ArcGIS software from Redlands, California-based tech company Esri.
With GeoHub, a firefighter on a mobile device can pull up data on a 911 call, as well as the location of all nearby hydrants, sewer lines and streetlights anyplace, anytime.
The Street Wize app launched in tandem with GeoHub tracks all permitted activity in public rights of way, while the Road to 2400 2015’s stated goal of paving 2,400 lane miles per year.
Everything from libraries to parks can analyze how citizens use their services, while the public can see where their fellow Angelenos are living above and below the poverty line in large numbers.
L.A. runs on geographic data, said Esri President Jack Dangermond, maps being central to public safety planning for years and millions of dollars spent to maintain and use such information with apps. But in the past departments were also responsible for their own data.
City Hall’s hope is that map data layers pooled from more than 20 agencies will make GeoHub a decentralized place for interdepartmental collaboration. Crowdsourced information will make for a community GIS, and local developers and startups will ideally build more apps for the map.
“These are policy issues that, by bringing all of this information together, can help not just policy people but also NGOs,” Dangermond said.
Coming on the heels of L.A.’s Wednesday announcement of a comprehensive metro-area travel planning app, GeoHub is yet another way the city is making the most of open data with limited resources.
Garcetti has made government transparency and accountability a pillar of his administration and said there’s very little data the city can’t legally share on GeoHub.
“I would say 99.9 percent of our data is something that we could and would share,” Garcetti said.
Dave Nyczepir is a News Editor at Government Executive’s Route Fifty.
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