A review of the Los Angeles GeoHub

The Los Angeles GeoHub represents, in many ways, the next generation GIS data portal. It is in my view what a data portal should be, and given the population and areal size of Los Angeles, that the portal is robust makes it even more impressive.  The data user can search the city’s open data site, and also do something that not all sites allow:  “Explore all data”.  At the time of this writing, “exploring all data” resulted in 554 results, which one can then add to “my favorites” for later investigation and download.  One can also explore the data by category, including business, boundaries, health, infrastructure, planning, recreation and parks, safety, schools, and transportation.  Most data sets can be downloaded as a spreadsheet, as a KML file, or a shapefile.  These layers include grasslands, fire stations, cell phone towers, road work projects, traffic, parcels, and dozens and dozens more–even bus stop benches and other treasures.  Each download is quick and painless.

A unique and very useful characteristic of the GeoHub is that each layer lists the number of attributes, which are easily displayed on the site.  Another wonderful feature is that each layer is displayed above its metadata listing as a web service inside ArcGIS Online, which can be opened immediately in ArcMap or ArcGIS Pro or streamed as a GeoJSON or GeoService as a full or filtered data set. Applications based on the data can also be accessed on the site, such as the CleanStat clean streets index and the social determinants of health app.  And yet there is even more–charts can be generated straight from the data, and a whole set of ArcGIS Online mapping applications that the city has generated are displayed in a gallery here.  Because of these applications, the site can be used effectively even by someone who is not familiar with how to run a GIS to understand Los Angeles better and to make smarter decisions.

If you are a data user, explore the data on the GeoHub today.  If you are a data administrator, consider using the GeoHub as a model for what you might develop and serve for your own data users in your own location.

Los Angeles GeoHub results from examining cell phone towers.  Note the many data-user-friendly items and choices to stream and download.