Using data to anticipate city problems
Earlier this year, Smart City Consortium (SCC) organized an Internet Economy Summit whereLilian Coral, Chief Data Officer of Los Angeles GeoHub,spoke about gathering and utilizing open data, sharing with the audience her experience and insights gleaned from the American smart city.
During the forum, Coral said her major responsibilities were to answer what was happening at the moment and to forecast what would be happening in future.
The GeoHub was launched by the Los Angeles government last year. The online portal provides location-based data which contains real-time geographic information, such as traffic blackspots, temporary road closures, accidents, etc., obtained from various government departments.
This enables government agencies, public and private organizations and mobile applications developers to access the latest information. At the same time, the public is encouraged to develop mobile apps to facilitate information update.
By “data”, we are talking about spatial data or geospatial data, information about the geographic distribution in regard to income, crime, traffic, fires, illnesses, parking lots and more, that can be mapped.
It can also be accessed, visualized, manipulated and analyzed through the use of application software with which the government and the public can tackle many of the problems of urban life.
For example, the Clean Streets Index set up by CleanStat allows the public to rate the cleanliness of each street in LA based on four factors: litter, weeds, bulky items and illegal dumping. Different colors in the map show the cleanliness for public monitoring as well as the government’s strategic resources deployment.
As a result, the street cleanliness has been greatly improved. In the fourth quarter of 2016, nearly 90 percent of the streets scored the highest marks of cleanliness, while streets which were rated as “not clean” and “somewhat clean” decreased in number by 80 percent.
An online tool allows users to track the ongoing and upcoming road works, so as to avoid traffic congestion, while another tracks the progress of the road work, ie. resurfacing and slurry seal projects.
By opening data to everyone, the city’s Mayor Eric Garcetti hopes to “make city operations more efficient, stimulate partnerships between the city and the community, and give residents a greater controlling stake in government.” It can also boost the creativity of Angelenos to relieve the problems bought by economic downturn and climate change.
