My Word with Douglas E. Welch

Looking toward the new year, I am making an effort to be more civic-minded and taking more interest in my city, country, state, and country.

Today aI am highlighting the wealth of data available at data.LACity.org. This is public data collected by all the city’s systems and shared online in database format. Today’s resource is a database of all 311 calls (and 311 app requests) for 2020 (and the past, should you wish). 

Have you ever wondered if someone had reported that abandoned sofa on the curb yet? How about the graffiti on the corner or the illegal dumping in the empty lot? Now you can get updated status of these reports and add your own if no one has reported it yet.

MyLA311 Service Request Data 2020

You can slice and dice this data however you wish. I am setting up some custom views for monthly reports and reports by Zip Code and Council District, but they haven’t been approved for public access yet. (Probably the holiday slowing everything down.) Still, you can add filters to limit the data to just your area of interest.

There is a lot of interesting data here that Neighborhood Councils could make use of and it is fairly easy to use.

You can also map the data in various ways, like this…

Check it out!

So, just what is “civics” anyway?

Civics is defined as: the study or science of the privileges and obligations of citizens.

Civic education is the study of the theoretical, political and practical aspects of citizenship, as well as its rights and duties. It includes the study of civil law and civil code, and the study of government with attention to the role of citizens―as opposed to external factors―in the operation and oversight of government. — League of Women Voters of Delaware.

In order to have the government we want, we need to both understand and engage in civics activities in our local communities. I am dedicated to doing better in 2021. How about you?

(All links confirmed as working – June 23, 2016)

As is common, we are in a drought again, here in California, and this makes the occurrence of wildfire more likely and also increases the damage that wildfires can do in the landscape and in populated areas. In an effort to stay in touch with the wildfire situation here in California, I have collected a set of resources to keep me informed when fires break out. While I live in the middle of the San Fernando Valley and fairly free from the direct danger of wildfire, fires in the surrounding areas can cause large problems with evacuations, smoke plumes, and ash and also directly affect friends and family who live in or near wildlands

I noticed this year that 2 major map-based information sites are no longer available. This is a big loss, as they tried to show active burn locations, fire perimeters and more for each incident and provided a large amount of easily interpreted data. I hope that they come back online before too long (as one web page suggests.) They were great resources.

“CAL FIRE is a State agency responsible for protecting natural resources from fire on land designated by the State Board of Forestry as State Responsibility Area (SRA). CAL FIRE also manages the State Forest system and has responsibility to enforce the forest practice regulations, which govern forestry practices on private and other non-federal lands. Two major themes are attendant to the CAL FIRE mission. One is the protection of the State’s merchantable timber on all non-federal lands from improper logging activities and the other is the protection of the State’s grass, brush, and tree covered watersheds in SRA from wildland fire. CAL FIRE is a “conservation agency” with origins stemming from the “Conservation Movement” of the last century.”

Cal Fire provides a number of online resources:

• Cal Fire Official Twitter Feeds
• Cal Fire on Facebook
• Current Cal Fire Incident Information and Map
• Current Cal Fire Incident RSS Feed

“InciWeb is an interagency all-risk incident information management system. The system was developed with two primary missions:

Provide the public a single source of incident related information
Provide a standardized reporting tool for the Public Affairs community
A number of supporting systems automate the delivery of incident information to remote sources. This ensures that the information regarding active incidents is consistent, and the delivery is timely.”

InciWeb Resources:

• Photographs, News, Maps and more
• Current Fire Incident Information – Searchable and Sortable
• InciWeb Twitter Account
• InciWeb RSS Feed
• Google Earth KML of current fire incidents

Yuba.net Fire Information

PreventWildfireCA.org Fire Infomation