This week I decided to explore the Active Restaurant Heat Map dataset from the City of L.A. This dataset caught my attention, because for one I love food and am always excited to find new places to eat out. Furthermore, I’m naturally interested in where there are higher concentrations of restaurants/ popular restaurants relative to where I live. The dataset displayed a map of LA, where the user could navigate and look through all the different restaurants that LA had to offer. In this specific data set, the ontology is organized in a very straightforward manner. Under the map are several categories that give more information regarding the businesses. If you go on and scroll through the categories you can see that they include the: Location Account #, Business name, dba name, street address, city, zip code, location description, mailing address, mailing city, mailing zip code, naics, primary naics description, council district, location start date, location end date and lastly the location (latitude and longitude).
I can see a vast audience that this ontology would be useful to. First off if someone new to the Los Angeles area wants to find restaurants in general, this would be a very sensible option. A possible second audience that would find this ontology useful would be potential restaurant owners/ buyers. If they want to successfully look into their competition by looking at the demographics and location of where their potential restaurant would be, it would be advantageous to explore this data set. Lastly I could also imagine that the government would find this helpful. If they need to construct certain buildings or public offices, etc, they could utilize this ontology. Especially thanks to the application of a map where you can physically navigate through certain neighborhoods and pinpoint the actual landscape of the area, anyone gain a lot of knowledge from this dataset.
The dataset thoroughly lists all the active restaurants along with their locations, and several other types of information. One aspect that I noticed that they left out was overall ratings of the restaurants. Personally I would find this very helpful as a customer and potential buyer. I would be able to gauge the quality of the restaurants from these ratings and as a buyer I could see which areas do better than other areas. I could then strategize where I want to target and then buy that location. Ratings would surely help expand the information in a positive way however I do understand that ratings change on a consistent basis and therefor it would be a lot to update every now and then.
If I were to start over with the data collection for the Active Restaurant Heat Map I would change the map so (like google earth) you could physically see the streets and buildings via satellite. I would add this specific feature because it would be extremely helpful for those that aren’t in the area or would just like to see what the places surrounding look like. In its entirety, I really enjoyed this dataset and I found it extremely useful with a plethora of knowledge. I would certainly recommend this to any foodies or people that are just interested in restaurants around LA.