Signal 4: “Old School” Mappers and New Tech
Los Angeles recently took another step toward the Open Data future by releasing locational data and pre-created maps that anyone can interrogate and integrate, through its new GeoHub. The clearinghouse for location-based Open Data allows anyone to freely explore, analyze, visualize, and share data sets, as well as maps and apps built with the data. As a recent Forbes article on the release explained, these maps can help public servants, advocates and others see intersections between issues such as emergency services and power supply, homelessness and police activity.
The GeoHub categorizes more than 500 data sets into areas such as schools, safety, health, infrastructure, and transportation, and makes data available in CSV, KML, Shape, and JSON formats. The site also highlights maps and apps developed with the available data. One example, a “story map” about the growth and current state of LA’s tech industry, shows the power of taking a table of business data, and visualizing it geographically to reveal patterns of co-location, proximity to transit and clustering of sub-sectors. All of these trends are easily observable — and not just to city planners — as soon as the data is mapped, and the more people that have access to mappable data and mapping platforms like the GeoHub, the more insightful maps we will all be able to see in the future. LA’s move to push the open data envelope is an exciting one, and the GeoHub’s motto of “Let’s make our great City even better, together” summarizes the motivations for Open Data perfectly.
partial screen shot of a “story map” on the LA tech industry created with open locational data (http://lahub.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=326872b3726b4e79a85b7a6f98367ec3)
The Forbes piece also tells the story of Jack Dangermond, who built the GeoHub, decades after creating popular GIS company the Environmental Systems Research Institute, better known as ESRI. Their ArcGIS mapping system is ubiquitous in planning circles — it still has 350,000 clients globally — and its longevity in the rapidly-changing tech world is impressive. Though ESRI has been around for decades, it is a forward-looking company, with a recent conference focused on the theme of “applying geography everywhere.” Dangermond has seen for decades the potential power of mapping, and now sees excitement around the trend of democratization of mapping.
Understanding the geospatial nature of data, for everything from siting new bus routes to understanding disease outbreaks, has always been essential in problem-solving in urban contexts. However, the opening of data and mapping platforms so that more citizens can be involved in this type of analysis and problem-solving, is new and exciting. The connection between enterprise software like ESRI, and free sources like the LA GeoHub, helps empower everyone to engage in this discussion.
