The Ontology:
The “Listing of Active Business” dataset of the City of LA is organized into 16 categories which include: Location Account Number, 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 Location (in GPS coordinates).
Point of View and Described Phenomenon:
The dataset was originally created by the Office of Finance to keep a monthly updated record of the registered businesses active in the city of Los Angeles, but this data can be useful for essentially anyone. For instance, residents or nonresidents of Los Angeles can search the dataset for businesses around their location, new businesses they want to check out, or businesses of a certain type of service they need, and so on. I personally filtered the dataset through the “Primary NAICS Description” category to search for “Full-service restaurants” since I am always interested in trying new food and restaurants in the Los Angeles Area. The “Primary NAICS Description” category is useful to filter for anyone searching for businesses in a specific category.
Current or new aspiring business owners can also utilize this dataset to view information on business competitors in an area. New business owners can determine whether an area contains many businesses in their market, or whether there are businesses that will complement their business. The data can also be used by analysts to make economic models to determine the status and growth of businesses in Los Angeles.
The dataset tells us the dense amount of businesses existent in Los Angeles. The dataset records a total number of 6816 currently active businesses in a single city of Los Angeles, reflecting its status as one of the most prosperous and economic booming cities in California.
What’s left out?
Since the dataset only records the currently active business in Los Angeles, there is no information on past businesses in Los Angeles that have ceased operations. Without this data, we cannot determine the rates at which businesses conclude operations, or the change in businesses types in Los Angeles over time. Furthermore, many businesses in the dataset have missing informations for multiple categories.
A New Ontology and Point of View:
If I were to describe a completely different ontology, I would probably also include links to the businesses’ websites and links to their Yelp or Facebook pages. With these data, users can get more information on what the businesses do and customer reviews on the businesses. This data would be more useful and catered to consumers of the businesses.
Hi! I really liked your ideas for a new ontology and point of view, your ideas would make it more user friendly for people with little experience with websites like this. Overall I think you analyzed the website very well and described it very well.
I really enjoyed reading through your blog post. I was trying to figure out who this dataset would be useful for as I was reading it and it didn’t even cross my mind that it would be helpful for prospective business owners in that area. I like the idea of them being able to look at locations and determining whether or not it is a good fit for them by looking at surrounding businesses.