Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Esri President Jack Dangermond on Friday unveiled Los Angeles’ newest tech innovation, called GeoHub. It’s expected to provide location-as-a-service technology (LaaS) to relay real-time data and mapping to the city and its residents and businesses.
At a press conference on Friday that was also broadcast live online, Garcetti said the portal will “help us reinvent the way we relay our services and broaden our ability to engage residents and businesses to improve the quality of life in their city.”
The service, which can be found at http://geohub.lacity.org/, has eight categories to explore: Business, Boundaries, Infrastructure, Planning, Recreation and Parks, Safety, Schools, and Transportation. Each category has real-time data on important, citywide information. For example, the Boundaries category includes maps of county, city, forest and school district boundaries, while the Infrastructure category will bring up maps of cellular, paging and communications towers, as well as sewer pipes.
“It’s not just city workers that can use GeoHub,” Garcetti said. “It’s all of us, from everyday Angelenos to students, researchers, business owners and journalists.”
According to the mayor’s website, there are more than 500 types of map data available on the site. The city of Los Angeles also plans to develop three “flagship” applications from GeoHub’s information: “Streetwize,” which will show all of the permitted activity on the city’s public right of ways; “The Road to 2400,” which will track the city’s progress in paving at least 2,400 lane miles per year; and “Vision Zero High Injury Network,” which could improve pedestrian safety by providing users with information such as where schools and high-speed streets intersect.
Esri, the company on which GeoHub’s software is built, has its products used in more than 350,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, according to Mayor’s office.
“We are thrilled to partner with Mayor Garcetti and the city of Los Angeles to launch a data insight model that includes powerful collaborative and do-it-yourself mapping tools,” said Esri President Jack Dangermond. “Our hope is that other communities around the world will follow Mayor Garcetti’s lead and enable public works, transportation, health services and other agencies to share location data and analysis in real time.”
