Over the past 25 years, the annual Esri GeoConX Conference has become the largest annual geospatial event in the electric, gas and telecommunications industries. At the event, professionals and Esri users from both industries converge to network, collaborate, and learn as a larger, unified community. This year the conference occurs in Chicago, from September 5-8^th.

This year’s conference focuses on how attendees can employ the latest GIS technology to break barriers—from business and technical barriers, to communications and information barriers. While attendees explore products and services with familiar faces on the expo floor, they’ll also discover a lineup of emerging businesses.

The Esri Startup Zone at GeoConX features five Esri Emerging Partners that introduce innovative GIS solutions for electric and gas utility challenges. Be sure to make time to visit these companies!

EXHIBITING STARTUP PARTNERS:

About the Esri Startup Program

The Esri Startup Program is a free three-year program that gives emerging businesses the tools to build mapping and location analytics capabilities into their products. Qualifying startups receive cloud services, software, training and support, content, and other opportunities to help them succeed.

“Esri is committed to the startup community,” said Kurt Daradics, Esri’s Startup Program Manager. “We understand the challenges that emerging businesses face to quickly bring products to market and developing customers. Startups have been transforming our culture and this extends into the enterprise. Esri utility and telecom startups are delivering innovative solutions with intuitive interfaces that extend the value and power of the ArcGIS platform.”

For DataCapable, “Esri’s Startup Program is all about collaboration” said Peter DiSalvo, DataCapable’s Co-Founder and CTO. “The modern utility needs to actively monitor and engage their customers at all levels. Being part of GeoConX is an opportunity for us to share our integration with ArcGIS Online and enable existing Esri utility customers to maximize the value of their current GIS investments.”

Learn more about GeoConX: esri.com/geoconx.

Three new ArcGIS Pro styles for Emergency Management, Local Government, and State Government industries were released this week for ArcGIS Pro version 2.0.

The Emergency Management style contains symbols for critical infrastructure and emergency facilities, damage assessment, debris reporting, and preparedness and response activities.

The State Government style contains symbols for environmental and natural resources permitting; community events, parks, water access, wildlife management, election polling places, healthcare service providers, plant and animal life, restaurant inspections, water quality, and transportation assets.

The Local Government style contains symbols for election polling places, real estate transactions, community events, parks; damage assessment, right of way assets; non-emergency problem reports, catch basins, and fire hydrants.

In addition to symbols, the styles also include color schemes you can use to configure your symbols.

To add a style to your project in ArcGIS Pro:

1. Ensure that you are signed in to your ArcGIS organization.
2. On the View tab, in the Windows group, click Catalog to open the Catalog pane.
3. In the Catalog pane, click the Portal tab, and click All Portal.
4. In the Search box, type Local Government Pro Style, or State Government Pro Style, or Emergency Management Pro Style.
5. Right-click on the style file and choose Add Style. The style file is downloaded locally and added to your project.
6. In the Catalog pane, click the Project tab and expand Styles. You’ll see the downloaded style file.
7. You can right-click the style and click Manage to inspect the contents. The items in the style will appear in galleries as you work with ArcGIS Pro.  

You can also download the Emergency Management, Local Government, and State Government styles. As well as view the Emergency Management, Local Government, and State Government symbols in each style directly from ArcGIS Online.

This is the first of many new symbols we’re developing for the Emergency Management, Local Government, and State Government communities. These new symbols will make it easier for you to produce high-quality ArcGIS maps in your organization.

If you have any feedback, you can reach us at SymbolAdvisoryBoard@esri.com. Happy mapping!

Esri and PubNub have joined forces to bring geospatial developer tools, global maps, and data capabilities to PubNub Functions, making it easy to harness the power of Esri’s mapping APIs and apply it to realtime data. With just a few lines of code that will execute within the PubNub Data Stream Network (DSN), developers can now build and deploy geospatially enabled and extended IoT, web, and mobile apps.

The Power of Esri’s Location and Mapping Analytics

Esri builds ArcGIS, the world’s most powerful mapping and spatial analytics software. ArcGIS applies The Science of Where™ to connect everyone, everywhere through a common visual language. It combines mapping and analytics to reveal deeper insights into data. Esri GIS technology is used by tens of thousands of government organizations around the world, and by 75% of Fortune 500 companies.

The ArcGIS Developer Subscription offers a cost-effective way to license ArcGIS products and access, build, test, deploy, and license developer API’s and SDK’s. Whether you’re building apps or extending the ArcGIS platform, the Developer Subscription has free and for-fee plans specifically tailored to best implement your solution.

Sign up for a free ArcGIS Developer Subscription: developers.arcgis.com.

Realtime Apps Made Simple with PubNub

People expect “always-on” online experiences these days, but building the underlying realtime infrastructure remains very challenging. There are unique security risks, reliability challenges and scalability concerns for realtime infrastructure, which can drastically slow down release schedules.

PubNub resolves all these concerns, by providing enterprise-grade security, 99.999% SLA-backed reliability, and global scalability to support the largest realtime deployments, all via simple APIs and over 75 SDKs. Additionally, the PubNub Data Stream Network offers value added features for application areas like chat/ collaboration, IoT device control, and realtime updates to further accelerate your build and release times. With PubNub, developers and businesses can add realtime functionality without having to build or maintain the backend infrastructure, so you can focus on innovation, not infrastructure.

Access the Functions Catalog: pubnub.com/functions-catalog.

What can you do with Esri Functions?

Esri’s ArcGIS APIs and SDKs allow you to create apps that include mapping, visualization, and analysis via PubNub Functions. ArcGIS for Developers has four ready to use functions; Geoenrichment, Directions, Geocoding, and Reverse Geocoding that you can use on PubNub to support your with your realtime applications (with more on the way!).

Esri Functions:

Geoenrichment: Add demographic, spending, business, and lifestyle data to maps and apps.

The Esri Geoenrichment Service can be used to query and display information from a large collection of enhanced demographic data sets including population, income, housing, consumer behavior, and the natural environment. To see the data sets available check out the data browser, pubnub.com/docs/blocks-catalog/esri-geoenrichment.

Directions: Create point-to-point routing, or build optimized routes that automatically consider traffic.

The Esri Routing Service for directions can be used to find the best way to get from one location to another or to visit several locations. The best route can be the quickest route for a given time of day taking traffic conditions into account, or it can be the shortest route that minimizes the travel distance, pubnub.com/docs/blocks-catalog/esri-directions.

Geocoding: Convert addresses to location, and vice versa.

The Esri World Geocoding Service converts an address or place name to latitude and longitude. For example, if you know the address of a business and want to put it on a map, you can use geocoding to find the coordinates, pubnub.com/docs/blocks-catalog/esri-geocoding.

Reverse Geocoding: Convert geocoordinates to addresses.

Using the Esri World Geocoding Service, you can convert a latitude and longitude to an address. For example, if you are using realtime coordinates, you can use reverse geocoding to find the address for those coordinates, pubnub.com/docs/blocks-catalog/esri-reverse-geocoding.

Coming Soon – Esri Tracking: 

Execute multipoint directions, realtime vehicle tracking, and drive-time based geofencing all with a simple but powerful JavaScript mapping API and a PubNub Function. Get started with the Github repo today. 

Watch the webinar, “Mapping and Tracking Your Users Crave”, showing you the ins-and-outs of realtime mapping, including how to implement geo-tracking, route planning, and more using Esri Features.

Get started today!

Sign up for a free ArcGIS Developer Subscription: developers.arcgis.com.

Access the Functions Catalog: pubnub.com/functions-catalog.

The R-ArcGIS bridge was recently featured in the live training seminar, Go Deeper with Data Analytics Using ArcGIS Pro and R. The topics covered included, how to easily transfer data between ArcGIS Pro and R, an open-source programming language for statistical analysis, and how to access R’s powerful statistical functions from within ArcGIS Pro. This functionality of the bridge allows you to perform an analysis unique to R in complement with ArcGIS tools, and enables streamlined workflows and simple sharing of advanced workflows. Additionally, R users were shown how they can use the bridge to easily access geospatial data and to take advantage of the advanced visualizations and geoprocessing capabilities of ArcGIS Pro.

This seminar is freely available for all to view until September 30^th. Additionally, all the resources used in the seminar have been made available for you to access and to learn from. These materials can be found by navigating to the GitHub home page for the R-ArcGIS Community and clicking on the r-sample-tools box.  It is here that you will find the data, scripts, and some documentation for the live training seminar.

For those looking for extra examples, additional sample scripts and data to be used with the bridge for tools like model based clustering and semiparametric regression can also be found here. In addition to tools created and shared by the R-ArcGIS bridge user community for others to use and learn from. We are always excited to feature community contributions to the R-ArcGIS bridge project, so as you create your own script tools, consider contributing to the GitHub project for the bridge for others to benefit from as well.

Finally, if you are considering getting started working with the bridge for the first time, check out our new installation instruction videos for your current version of ArcGIS Pro or ArcMap.

ArcGIS Pro 2.0+

ArcGIS Pro 1.1-1.4.1

ArcMap 10.3.1+

We hope you enjoy and happy bridging!

This blog article is provided by Marjean Pobuda. Marjean is a product engineer with Esri’s Spatial Statistics team. Questions for Marjean can be sent to: MPobuda@esri.com

Three new ArcGIS Online symbol sets for Emergency Management, Local Government, and State Government industries were released this week.

The Emergency Management symbol set contains symbols for critical infrastructure and emergency facilities, damage assessment, debris reporting, and preparedness and response activities.

The State Government symbol set contains symbols for environmental and natural resources permitting; community events, parks, water access, wildlife management, election polling places, healthcare service providers, plant and animal life, restaurant inspections, water quality, and transportation assets.

The Local Government symbol set contains symbols for election polling places, real estate transactions, community events, parks; damage assessment, right of way assets; non-emergency problem reports, catch basins, and fire hydrants.

This is the first of many new symbols we’re developing for the Emergency Management, Local Government, and State Government communities. These new symbols will make it easier for you to produce maps in your ArcGIS Online organization.

If you have any feedback, you can reach us at SymbolAdvisoryBoard@esri.com. Happy mapping!

Note: These symbols are also available in ArcGIS Pro, see New ArcGIS Pro style files blog for more information.

Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS has several minor, but important updates in the ArcGIS Online Sept 2017 release. The usability of several widgets have been greatly enhanced.

Infographic widget: We’ve listened to the feedback and have improved this widget in several ways. First, the colors of features in the map display can now be matched to their associated values in charts! There is a new “use layer’s symbology” option when configuring the chart display settings. This makes associating data between the map features and in the widget much easier.

Second, for date fields, you can now parse the date values and select the desired time unit to display in the chart. Note that by default (e.g., the automatic option), the widget will examine the values in the date field and selects an appropriate time unit to display.

For example, display date values per day:

Or display date values per hour (if information is available):

Lastly, you can also sort chart data along the x-axis based on 2 options: i) by Label and ii) by Value. When sort by Label is selected, the data is displayed based on the order of the data labels. For example, the damage assessments are listed from left to right in ascending order 1 to 53.

When sort by Value is selected, the data is displayed in ascending order based on the total values for each category type. For example, type 3 damage assessments have the fewest, while type 1 damage assessments have the most.

Bookmark widget: Many new configuration options have been added to this widget. These include: displaying bookmarks as a collection of cards or as a list; displaying bookmarks from the web map; controlling whether end users can create bookmarks with custom thumbnails; and support for custom bookmarks (defined when configuring the widget). It is also possible to reorder the custom bookmarks.

Note that bookmarks from the web map are located at the top of the Bookmark widget and cannot be modified, while end user created bookmarks appear in the bottom section of the widget (below the line) and can be edited.

Filter widget: This widget now includes an option to collapse filters in the display when the widget dialog window initially opens. This can help improve the user experience for the widget, especially if it contains many filters. For example, this filter widget contains 2 expressions. When it first opens, the dialog window appears like this by default:

When the new option: “Collapse the filter expressions (if any) when the widget is opened”, is selected, it will now appear like this:

Smart Editor widget: 3 new features were added to improve the user experience for working with this widget. First, under the General Settings section of the configuration dialog, there are 2 new options:

Show drawing options displays additional editing options when a feature type is selected from feature template list. Under the feature template list, a new dropdown list shows the possible drawing options available.

After a new feature is added, the Smart Editor widget dialog then displays a list of its attribute fields and then you can enter their values. With the Display preset value list on top option, you can make the list of attribute fields appear at the top of the Smart Editor widget dialog, even before you select a feature type from the feature template list. So when you initially open the Smart Editor widget dialog it will now appear like this:

And lastly, to better support feature editing workflows, you can select a feature to view its pop-up, and access the Smart Editor widget directly from the pop-up’s ellipsis button in the lower right corner.

We hope you enjoy these enhancements.

Sincerely,
The Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS Dev team.

During the September 2017 ArcGIS Solutions Release 4 new Solution Products were added to ArcGIS and 33 Solution Products were updated.

New Solution Products

Community Impact enables the public to report short, mid or long-term impacts after a natural disaster to support future resiliency planning.

Community Impact Dashboard presents aggregated information about community impact reports collected by Community Impact.

Community Resilience Surveys enables organizations to collect information about the resilience and vulnerability of key community assets in using Survey123 for ArcGIS.

Mitigation Feedback enables the public to provide feedback on mitigation proposals published by government departments

ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool Updates

The ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool add the ability to provision Parcel Drafter and Resilience Dashboard.

Updated Solution Products

Community Resilience and Hazard Vulnerability Assessment updated the data schema used for analysis.

Crowdsource Manager updated to version 3.22 of the ArcGIS API for JavaScript and fixed bugs. This affects Citizen Science Manager, Health & Safety Reports, and Property Listing Reviewer.

Crowdsource Polling updated to version 3.22 of the ArcGIS API for JavaScript and fixed bugs. This affects Environmental Impact Public Comment, Events Permit Review.

Crowdsource Reporter added the ability to hide splash screen and configuration parameters to enabled opening and closing of the comment period, updated to version 3.22 of the ArcGIS API for JavaScript and fixed bugs and.  This affects Citizen Science Reporter, Health & Safety Reports, and Property Lister.

Debris Reporting added a survey form for collecting debris reports with Survey123 for ArcGIS and updated schema.

Environmental Screening incorporated the Screening widget into Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS Developer Edition, fixed bugs and updated sample data.

Information Lookup search tolerance for map click or location search can now be set in the configuration panel, the loading indicator is now shown until data is loaded to ensure pop ups from all intersecting features are displayed and fixed bugs.  This affects Evacuation Zones and Floodplain Inquiry, Incentive Zones, and My Elected Representative

Local Government 3D Basemaps fixed a Modify DTM tool issue when buffer distance was not a whole number and OS language was Swedish.

Maps and Apps Gallery added support for using the default vector basemap group, improved application of shared theme settings on mobile devices and updated to use version 3.22 of the ArcGIS API for JavaScript.  This affects Common Operational Picture and Events Map Gallery.

My Government Services now displays the next pickup date based on day of the week services is provided for curbside and drop-off services.

Shadow Impact Analysis fixed an issue with EvaluateShadow.tbx issue when meters were used as a unit to derive sun locations.

Park Locator and Water Access Locator updated sample data.

Visibility Assessment added the ability to use point features to identify the observer features and calculate visibility on target features and fixed an issue in visibility panel elevation when units were specified in meters.

Point of Sale and Service Qualification updated the Service Feasibility Widget and fixed bugs.  This provides the ability to calculate geodesic length of routes, the option to convert route lengths to a different unit, support Web App Builder (Developer Edition) 2.5.

Esri recently attended TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, September 16-17^th, 2017. The conference brings together entrepreneurs and next-generation products from across industries and the globe. Before the Disrupt conference started Esri, 750+ developers and a variety of other sponsors gathered for a weekend hackathon.

The goal was to spark innovation via teamwork and competition. Esri provided over 100 hacking teams with our free ArcGIS Developer Subscriptions and credits to catalyze ideas involving maps, authoritative data, imagery, visualization and analysis tools, and more. Developers could use our APIs and SDKs across mobile, web, and desktop to turn these ideas into apps (or at least prototypes, time was tight). In addition, we offered a $5,000 valued prize of cash and software for the best use of Esri technology.

Esri Apps at TCDisrupt SF 2017

There were many exciting results and, in response to recent natural disasters, many ideas focused on aiding disaster relief efforts. This lead to inventive apps with core location components, from drone imagery feature detection to SMS help-request services. That said, our winner “took a different route” and focused on immersive visualizations of driving routes for new drivers. Congratulations to our winner RouteBud! Find out more about them and other prize winners that used Esri below.

RouteBud – Esri Prize Winner

RouteBud is an Android and Unity app built by two high school women, one a senior the other a junior. As new drivers, these women wanted to better understand how to get from point A to B and the safety implications of their route. Using Esri’s routing API and Arity’s collision data API, they were able to generate a route and assess the risk of that route. They then displayed this information in both an Android app using Esri’s ArcGIS Runtime SDK and in a Unity 3d scene with graphics exported from Esri City Engine. With the important contextual information and immersive visualizations, app users can choose the route that, “is best for them based on their personal preferences.”

Again, congratulations to Route Bud for the win! We’d also like to give a shout out to Ground Zero.

Ground Zero – Accenture Prize Winner

Ground Zero is a “full-fledged platform” for disaster relief. The team built a series of innovative, interconnected tools to help streamline and improve relief efforts. They created machine vision algorithms for drones to detect people and an SMS chat bot for victims then combined the outputs of these services onto an Esri map-based dashboard for first responders. And, this was all built on a decentralized block-chain-like ledger to reduce bottleneck request failures on a server. With all these modern (and complex) technologies, the team explains “First responders will always have the information they need in times of disaster.”

To find out more on the hackathon apps view DevPost or check out this TechCrunch article on disaster relief apps from the hackathon. We’ll be joining developers and tech innovators at the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin in December, we hope to see you there too!

You can also join Esri for our Esri Developer Summit Europe, October 24-26^th in Berlin, Germany where we’ll show you how to build cutting-edge apps using advanced mapping technology from Esri. At DevSummit you will be the first to see new tools for geo-enabling your apps to get pro tips from the developers who made them.

Happy Developing!

Hackers on Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF

Esri’s Community Program contributors have added new and updated map layers to Esri’s Online Basemaps.

There is new and updated content for 12 communities. This release takes in several counties, cities and university campuses throughout the United States, as seen in this Story Map.

Living Atlas Community

Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LivingAtlas/

Follow us on Twitter: @LivingAtlas

How do I Use? Combine content from the Living Atlas with your own data. Create powerful new maps and applications!

How do I contribute? Join the growing community of Living Atlas of the World contributors. There are two ways to contribute!

Living Atlas Newsletter: This newsletter will keep you and other members of the Living Atlas user community informed through success stories, examples of applied use, visibility of new content, announcements about events, and other useful resources and information. Subscribe to the Esri News for the Living Atlas Community. You can have the newsletter sent right to your inbox by subscribing here.

If you have previously used any basemap service, you may need to clear your cache in order to see the updates.

If you have other feedback or comments, please post them to the ArcGIS Online Discussion Group and the Living Atlas Discussion Group on GeoNet.

Have you ever received files containing coordinates in Military Grid Reference System (MGRS) or United States National Grid (USNG) format and wondered… “what now?  Can I use these coordinate values as easily as I use XY values?”  If so, we are excited to share that an enhancement in the Sept 2017 ArcGIS Online update introduces new capabilities that simplify working with MGRS/USNG data, so it is now, in fact, as easy as working with XY data.

MGRS/USNG coordinates are commonly used by people involved in public safety, emergency response, national security and other industries.  User’s commonly receive or access CSV and Excel files with these coordinate values and they want to transform these static spreadsheets into interactive, shareable and useful maps — this is now super easy.  You can add CSV files containing MGRS/USNG coordinates directly to the Map Viewer, and you can publish CSV and Excel files containing MGRS/USNG values as hosted feature layers.  There is no credit cost for publishing with MGRS/USNG coordinate values.

Workflow 1: Quick and Easy Drag and Drop

To quickly visualize a static CSV containing MGRS/USNG coordinates, simply drag and drop the file onto the Map Viewer and match the column containing the MGRS/USNG coordinate values in the “Add CSV Layer” dialog.  That’s it!  No need for a column of XY values or address fields.  Once matched, Smart Mapping will analyze your data and transform your CSV file to a useful, shareable information product ready for further analysis, advanced visualization and use in planning and operations.

Simple drag and drop workflow for importing and mapping MGRS/USNG data

Workflow 2: Publishing as Hosted Web Layers

In another quick example, you can publish CSV and Excel files containing MGRS/USNG location values as hosted web layers in your online account.  This workflow provides maximum flexibility, access and use of your data across the system.

From your My Content view, select Add Item, and From my computer.  Click Choose File and browse to the CSV or Excel file on your device and select Open.

Spreadsheet with USNG Values

Add Title, Tags and be sure to check the option to “Publish this file as a hosted layer”.  Match the location fields if not auto-detected and click the Add Item button to complete the publish workflow.

The imported file is uploaded and saved as a new item in My Content and its associated hosted web layer is also created and added as a new item in your My Content view.  You can immediately open the newly created web layer in the Map Viewer.  

Adding direct support for MGRS and USNG coordinates and simplifying the workflow for using them greatly streamlines many common workflows in these important industries.  We have many other exciting features and improvements planned that are of keen interest for users in public safety, emergency management, and national security, so please stay tuned and continue letting us know how we can better support your mission critical needs. 

For more information on topics related to this post, please follow the links below:

• Smart Mapping
• Add Layers
• CSV, TXT, and GPX files
• Publish Feature Layers

Last week we updated GeoPlanner to version 2.4. For this update, we wanted to help you be more productive and better assess the impact of your plans.

Improving productivity involved making the app easier to use by adding tools so you can do more. To help you better understand the impact of your plans, we added dashboard and reporting tools. Let’s look at each.

Improved Productivity

Calculate fields

You can now use a Calculate tool to update attributes of multiple features. You can do this against all or selected features in a scenario or all features across all scenarios. You can build expressions from functions, attributes, and use mathematic and grouping operators. Calculate will help you maintain data integrity and generate values for Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Do more with design layers

We sketch, paint and update attributes in design layers. These layers participate in scenarios and drive KPIs. At this update, you can rename and reorder them in the contents pane. You can also add new or delete existing design types (symbols) within the layers.

This means that you can now start a GeoPlanner project from any template and add, delete and change the symbols available in that project. At this update, most of you will not need ArcGIS Pro or Desktop to create a template. You can do it by yourself, in the app.

Save as Template

Now that you can fully customize your design types or symbols in a project, you’ll create amazing GeoPlanner templates that match the needs of your planning industry or domain. Want to save your project as a template so you don’t have to repeat your customizations in future projects? Now you can with the Save as Template tool in the new Collaborate menu in GeoPlanner’s backstage.

The new Update Project Defaults tool in the Collaborate menu also allows you to share the current state of your web map with your project team. This means that all layers, transparencies and indicators can be standardized for everyone working in the same project. Your project team uses the Reset Project tool, also in the Collaborate menu, to pick up the changes shared by Update Project Defaults.

Reorder your scenarios

We heard from many of you that you need to reorder the list of scenarios in a project. Now you can. This will help you reduce clicks and simplify finding your scenarios.

Assess Impact

GeoPlanner has powerful impact assessment functionality in its dashboard and reports. These tools are the core of the app’s decision support capabilities. You can almost instantly understand the consequences of a design, action, or change.

Composite KPI

We’ve created a new type of indicator, the Composite KPI. These are built from other KPIs and allow you to link different indicators to reveal unseen impacts or create ISO standard metrics. For example, to create the Urban Park Space Per Capita Indicator (ISO 37120, 19.1), you could create one KPI for park area and one KPI for estimated population. You would then create a composite KPI that combines them: park area/estimated population.

Create a constant

Say you have a single value that is used in many different KPIs. You might call these values constants. Until recently, if you wanted to change that constant, you would have to modify each KPI equation that uses it. Now, however, you can define constants within GeoPlanner’s dashboard and then refer to them as a variable in any KPI. Need to update a constant? You change it in one dialog and all KPIs that reference it will update. Not only will this augment the power of your KPIs, but it will make you more productive! It addresses both themes of this blog!

What’s the score?

But wait, there’s more! Earlier in 2017, we introduced a chart report that generates a .csv for planning elements, environmental screening reports, and other information products. You can now streamline this report by hiding its evaluation details. This will show a suitability score per type or feature and allow you to answer the question What are the suitability scores for my features?

Don’t have GeoPlanner? Don’t worry! You can try it for free. Follow these instructions on how to access a free trial. Click on the Don’t have an ArcGIS Online subscription link.

Build a city in less than 5 minutes 

CityEngine is a powerful tool for transforming 2D GIS data into Smart 3D City Models. But what if you don’t have 2D GIS data to start with? No worries, CityEngine has you covered. Last year’s 2016 release introduced the “Get Map Data” tool – which allows you to import terrain, imagery, basemaps, and Open Street Map data directly into your CityEngine scene. And transforming your Open Street Map data into a 3D model is easier than ever with customized rule files for reading & translating the attributes typically found in OSM datasets.

Today we’ll walk through 6 easy steps to get you up & running with the Get Map Data tool. Prefer to watch a video? This tutorial is also available on YouTube. (pssst – don’t have CityEngine? Try it for free here)

Step 1 – Create a new scene

After downloading & installing the software, open CityEngine. The Welcome Wizard will appear, giving you the option to start with a blank scene, create a city from map data, and create an imaginary city. Since we don’t have data to work with yet, we want to create a city from map data.

Click on the create a city from map data option.

Next, pick a name for your scene.  The scene will be saved to your default CityEngine project.

Step 2 – Log-in to ArcGIS Online or Portal

After you create your new scene, you’ll use your ArcGIS Online or Portal credentials to sign in. This allows us to connect to data sources online.

Note: your username is case sensitive, so be aware of rogue upper/lowercase letters! 

Step 3 – Define the resolution of the terrain & imagery

After signing in, the Get Map Data viewer will pop-up.

Before setting the extent of the area of interest, you have the option to choose which basemap you want to download. The default selection is Esri’s Imagery, however, you can also choose between several other basemaps (such as streets, dark theme, light theme, etc.) by clicking the dropdown highlighted below.

You may also want to edit the resolution of the basemap and world elevation that you’ll be importing. The panel on the right side of the Get Map Data viewer allows you to change the basemap resolution, along with the World Elevation resolution. The default for the Basemap resolution is High, and the default of the terrain download is Medium.

This is also where you select whether you’d like to download Open Street Map data networks, polygons, or both. Make sure you check these boxes if you’d like to download street networks and building polygons from Open Street Map.

Step 4 – Select the area you wish to download data from 

After you’ve set the resolution of your basemap/terrain, you’ll search for your area of interest & select the extent. This tells the tool where exactly to download the terrain, imagery, and Open Street Map data from.

Click OK once you’ve set the extent & the resolution of your basemap/terrain, and checked the download Polygons box (to download building footprints within the Area of Interest).

Step 5 – Select the Open Street Map layers you want

Now, you have the option to pick and choose which Open Street map layers you want to bring into your CityEngine Scene.

Note: Buildings & Roads are automatically selected for you if you checked the download polygons and download networks boxes in Step 3.

Click Finish to import the data into your scene.

Step 6 – Click generate to apply the standard Open Street map rule

The terrain, imagery, and building footprint polygons will be automatically imported into your scene. The polygons are still in a 2D format, and need to have a rule applied to make them three dimensional.

With the building polygons selected, click on the Generate button to apply the Open Street Map CGA rule.

The buildings will automatically be extruded utilizing their attribute data. You can change the appearance of the city with different style types, as well as by changing the visualization from “solid color” to “realistic with façade textures”. This can be edited in the Inspector tab.

Play around with the rule & the data, until you get the look you want. Once you have your scene, you can create different scenarios, export to ArcGIS 360 VR, or even share to the web.

Your data & city are looking great! Happy building.

 Follow CityEngine on Facebook & Twitter to get the latest updates. 

The National River Recreation Database (NRRD) is a geodatabase of water trails, Wild & Scenic Rivers, whitewater segments and respective access points and campgrounds in the U.S.  It was conceived to provide a way to:

1. Offer a high-level view of rivers across the nation using attributes important to and familiar to fans of rivers and outdoor recreation.
2. Direct visitors to the definitive, detailed resource for experiences that can help them plan a visit.

National Rivers Project Explorer page – screenshot showing all rivers in the National River Recreation Database

Project

The extent is national, and the data consists of three feature classes.  These feature classes are uploaded to ArcGIS Online as hosted feature layers.  Using REST API endpoints, these layers fuel the map, search engine and database on the nationalriversproject.com website.

The three feature classes are: floatable reaches, access points and campsites.  Floatable reaches are recreational river segment polylines that are referenced from the National Hydrography Dataset.  Access points and campsites are point data showing locations where river segments can be accessed by boat, and where waterside camping exists.

Duplicated feature classes/feature layers are used to create visibility ranges in the nationalriversproject.com map.

Data

River Management Society is partnering with a variety of organizations to bring data into the NRRD. The project has creatively combined GIS and attribute data from: federal agencies, state agencies (departments of fish & game, departments of natural resources), municipal groups (planning groups, tourism & development organizations, regional authorities), non-profit organizations (water trail organizations, environmental non-profits, recreation and conservation groups) and local community organizations.

Methods for adding data:

Each partner’s data situation is different, so a variety of protocols have been utilized.  We have created schemas and templates to ease the process of creating new NRRD data.  For new data going into the database, partners without geospatial technology, staff or capacity can fill out pre-formatted Microsoft Excel spreadsheets with latitude and longitude coordinates for access points and campgrounds, along with the respective attribution. Partners will then also fill out the ‘floatable reach’ spreadsheet which details river sections between access points.  These floatable reaches are created by referencing the access points to the National Hydrography Dataset.

Another method used to add data to the NRRD is retrofitting pre-existing data, and pointing attribute fields from the existing data into the NRRD template.  This has been common and effective with state-level water trail programs whom often already track data on recreational rivers and access points.  Creative field calculating and ArcMap’s Simple Data Loader tool is used to accomplish this.

ArcGIS Pro back-end data view

National Rivers Project website view

Next Steps

River Management Society is currently working with the U.S. Forest Service to bring additional Wild & Scenic Rivers in the NRRD.  Current partnerships exist with several state-level water trail programs to fill in the map for flatwater paddling opportunities in the southeast and mid-west United States. We are also working with the National Park Service to continue bringing National Recreation Areas and National Scenic Rivers into the NRRD.  A long-term goal is to work with national whitewater paddling advocates to bring more whitewater river sections in.

For more information, contact Jack Henderson – jack@river-management.org

Esri’s Community Program contributors have added new and updated map layers to Esri’s Online Basemaps.

There is new and updated content for 19 communities. This release takes in several states, counties, cities and university campuses throughout Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States, as seen in this Story Map.

Living Atlas Community

Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LivingAtlas/

Follow us on Twitter: @LivingAtlas

How do I Use? Combine content from the Living Atlas with your own data. Create powerful new maps and applications!

How do I contribute? Join the growing community of Living Atlas of the World contributors. There are two ways to contribute!

Living Atlas Newsletter: This newsletter will keep you and other members of the Living Atlas user community informed through success stories, examples of applied use, visibility of new content, announcements about events, and other useful resources and information. Subscribe to the Esri News for the Living Atlas Community. You can have the newsletter sent right to your inbox by subscribing here.

If you have previously used any basemap service, you may need to clear your cache in order to see the updates.

If you have other feedback or comments, please post them to the ArcGIS Online Discussion Group and the Living Atlas Discussion Group on GeoNet.

For our users who have been using and exploring Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS Beta – thank you for your invaluable feedback and comments on the Esri Early Adopter community forums! There’s been a lot of activity and we greatly appreciate your input. We’ve also seen some nice dashboard apps built with the beta, keep them coming!

It’s been a couple of months since the last beta refresh and we’ve been listening to your input and feedback. We’ve worked hard to continue to improve and enhance Operations Dashboard to meet your needs and we have a new beta update for you to test drive.

Improved Dashboard Management
When you start to work with dashboards in your ArcGIS Organization, you typically begin on the dashboard home page. Each dashboard is represented as an item card and new functionality has been added to enable you to view, edit, access the item details, and delete (if you have the appropriate privileges) the dashboard item – when you hover the cursor over a card.

Dashboard Authoring Enhancements
When authoring a dashboard, the navigation bar has been streamlined and redesigned for better usability. When you decide to navigate out of edit mode, we’ll prompt you to confirm any unsaved edits so you don’t accidentally lose any changes. The navigation bar is only visible when authoring a dashboard, it will not appear when viewing a dashboard.

This leads to the next big improvement: header-less dashboards. We recognize that screen real-estate can be a premium and requiring a portion of it to display a header may not always be desirable for all use cases.

While having a header-less dashboard is desirable in some instances, other use cases will benefit from having one. A header can be used for things like clearly stating the dashboard’s purpose, adding corporate identity and branding, providing navigation links to other web pages, etc. To meet this need, we’ve introduced a new element for dashboards: a Header panel – this is a fixed area at the top of the dashboard and can be configured. With just a few configuration steps, you can quickly add a header to any dashboard.

Gauges show the value of a single metric. They are ideally suited for showing progress towards an objective, represent a percentile measure such as a key performance indicator (KPI), or simply showing the ‘health status’ of a parameter. Operations Dashboard includes two different types of gauges: i) progress gauges and ii) meter gauges.

Progress gauges convey that something is moving forward or backward. On a progress gauge, a colored band is used to show a current value and this number can be displayed as a percentage or as the raw value. Intervals can also be defined and these can be used to change the fill band color. This enables the gauge to change its appearance as the measured value progresses (e.g., green = good, yellow = ok, red = bad). Progress Gauges can be rendered in one of three shapes: circle, horseshoe, and half donut.

Meter gauges display the amount, level, or contents of a parameter. They also allow for interval ranges to be defined as qualitative ranges (e.g., good, average, and poor). There are many practical real-world examples of meter gauges such as: speedometers, thermometers, voltmeters, ammeters, and pressure gauges. Meter gauges can be displayed in one of two shapes: horseshoe and half donut.

Numbers and Dates

Another aspect of Operations Dashboard that we’ve improved is to provide you with more precise control on how data is displayed in a dashboard.

Unit prefixing is a technique for making a number (large or small) easier to interpret. This can be used to de-clutter and simplify the information being presented on a dashboard. This was subtly introduced with Serial Chart in the last beta refresh, but we’ve expanded its exposure in this beta update.

In addition, a lot of work was done on number formatting. When numeric data is shown in Operations Dashboard, the app will attempt to format and parse the data and render it to conform to the ArcGIS organizational account local settings (i.e., the locale set in the account user profile). For example, a user in Canada or in the United States would expect the number one million with two decimal places to be represented as “1,000,000.00”, whereas a user in Germany would expect “1.000.000,00”, and a user in France would expect “1 000 000,00”. For instances where the built-in defaults do not meet specific needs, dashboard authors can override the default behavior by defining a pattern for formatting numbers when they are displayed in visualizations such as the: Gauge, Indicator, and Serial Chart. Combined with unit prefixing, the display of numbers in dashboards has never been more powerful.

Displaying dates (both date and time) is often important on a dashboard. The elements of a date are: year, month, day, hour, minute and second. Configuring a Serial Chart has been improved to give dashboard authors more control for formatting dates along the category axis. Similar to the work done for displaying numbers, date formatting on a serial chart can be used by dashboard authors to show as much (or as little) information about the date as needed.

When implementing date formatting, we recognized that not all dates are stored in fields of type date. In some datasets, dates are stored in string fields. Some datasets might also have numerical data that is stored in string fields. To meet this requirement, we’ve added date and number parsing functionality when configuring a Serial Chart. When a string field is used to define serial chart categories, dashboard authors can indicate that the strings actually represent dates or numbers, and the chart will automatically parse strings into dates or numbers. Examples of the pattern syntax for string parsing are as follows:

• yyyy
• yyyyMM
• yyyy/MM
• yyyy-MM
• yyyyMMdd
• yyyy/MM/dd
• yyyy-MM-dd
• yyyyMMddHHmmss
• yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss
• yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss

Expect another beta update early next month where dashboard authors will be able to configure highly-interactive dashboards without any programming whatsoever. For now, we hope you enjoy these new enhancements and we’re excited to hear your feedback on the Esri Early Adopter community forums.

Sincerely,

The Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS Dev team

A policy map example that will be featured in the webinar.

Please join us on November 9th at 11:00 AM PST for a free Living Atlas Community Webinar!

Communities use policy maps to identify issues affecting people and serve as backdrop to proposed solutions. The best maps about an issue clearly show where things are working well, and where there is an opportunity to intervene. Communities need good data on those maps to inform policy makers as well as the public. One source of this data is the Living Atlas of the World, the foremost collection of global geographic information.

In this webinar Jim Herries and Jennifer Bell walk through several real-world examples where communities have turned data into meaningful maps that identify trends and make decisions regarding policy. (You can preview an example showing the varying levels of kindergartner immunization rates in this Esri Story Map). Join us to learn how to use the Living Atlas, with its myriad of maps and data layers, to make policy maps and apps that reveal community insights otherwise hidden in the data.

Registration is required.

Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS is an app that monitors assets, events, or activities for ‘at-a-glance’ decision making. It provides key insights about your data on a single screen. The latest beta update now includes the ability to configure interactive dashboards!! Learn more about this release in this GeoNet post.

Checkout some nice example dashboards that were created during holistic testing:

We also have some customers who are already actively leveraging Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS beta to support their business workflows. Click the images below to explore their dashboards. Note: these dashboards were created with earlier beta releases.

Maryland Department of Transportation – Road Construction Dashboard

St. Johns County Public Works Dashboard

You can tryout Operations Dashboard beta now by logging into your ArcGIS Online organization.

We hope you enjoy these new features and please continue to share your feedback with us on the Esri Early Adopter community forums.

Sincerely,
The Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS Dev team

The November 2017 Living Atlas Community Webinar recording is now available!

Communities use policy maps to identify issues affecting people and serve as a backdrop to proposed solutions. The best maps about an issue clearly show where things are working well, and where there is an opportunity to intervene. Communities need good data on those maps to inform policy makers as well as the public. One source of this data is the Living Atlas of the World, the foremost collection of global geographic information.

In this webinar, Jim Herries and Jennifer Bell walk through several real-world examples where communities have turned data into meaningful maps that identify trends and make decisions regarding policy. Learn how to use the Living Atlas, with its myriad of maps and data layers, to make policy maps and apps that reveal community insights otherwise hidden in the data.

Esri’s Community Program contributors have added new and updated map layers to Esri’s Online Basemaps.

There is new and updated content for 38 communities. This release includes several states, counties, cities, facility sites and university campuses throughout Germany, Spain, Suriname, and the United States, as seen in this Story Map.

Living Atlas Community

Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LivingAtlas/

Follow us on Twitter: @LivingAtlas

How do I Use? Combine content from the Living Atlas with your own data. Create powerful new maps and applications!

How do I contribute? Join the growing community of Living Atlas of the World contributors. There are two ways to contribute!

Living Atlas Newsletter: This newsletter will keep you and other members of the Living Atlas user community informed through success stories, examples of applied use, visibility of new content, announcements about events, and other useful resources and information. Subscribe to the Esri News for the Living Atlas Community. You can have the newsletter sent right to your inbox by subscribing here.

If you have previously used any basemap service, you may need to clear your cache in order to see the updates.

If you have other feedback or comments, please post them to the ArcGIS Online Discussion Group and the Living Atlas Discussion Group on GeoNet.

In case you haven’t heard, we released CityEngine 2017.1 two weeks ago! We are super excited about the new features, which you can catch up on in this blog post. Today, however, we’re going to dive deep into the new Visibility Tools! The latest version of CityEngine supports several types of Visibility Analysis directly in your 3D scene. This is an interactive analysis, allowing you to play around with different viewshed scenarios and see the impact on the surrounding area in near real-time. The Visibility Analysis tools display surfaces and structures that are visible and hidden from an observer, allowing you to get a comprehensive view of your scene & the different scenarios within your scene. You can perform visibility analyses of static and dynamic models, streets, and terrain. All Visibility Analysis tools are scene objects that are saved in the scene, allowing you to edit layer details, such as distance, location, and symbology.

There are three new Visibility Analysis tools in CityEngine 2017.1: the Viewshed tool, the View Dome tool, and the View Corridor tool. This blog aims to review each tool, the use cases surrounding the tool, and go through the steps to get started with the tool.

Pssssst – learn more about CityEngine 2017.1 in the 2017.1 release notes. And if you haven’t already, go to My Esri to upgrade to CityEngine 2017.1. Or, if you are new to CityEngine, try it now with a fully functional free trial version.

Viewshed Creation Tool

The Viewshed Creation tool shows visibility from a camera-like observer to a specified target. This allows you to identify visible and non-visible objects in a specified extent. The Viewshed Creation tool can be useful in assessing a view from an existing apartment to a new building site, identifying views to key points of interest, or identifying camera coverage for security purposes. Being able to identify visible and non-visible areas with just a few clicks enables you to quickly iterate on multiple scenarios that best suit your city’s building specifications or security requirements, and understand the impact on the surrounding area.

To create a Viewshed in your CityEngine scene, follow these quick steps:

1. With a scene open, click on the Viewshed Creation tool on the top ribbon. 
2. Next, you’ll drop two points into the scene. The first point you drop will be the observer feature, or what point the viewshed will be created from. Click to start the viewshed tool and a line dynamically displays the Viewshed as you move it to set target, or the second point.
3. After clicking on both of those points, your viewshed is created! You can edit the viewshed by clicking on either the observer or target points and moving them.
4. Everything in green is what can be seen by the observer; everything in red represents what is within the viewshed extent, but not visible from the observer’s vantage point.

Note: you can create multiple viewsheds, and see how they interact with each other. Where the viewsheds overlap, the color will  be yellow. 

You can also edit your viewshed in the Inspector window. After you drop the two points to create the viewshed, you’ll see the object is added to the Scene editor. By clicking on the object in the Scene editor, the layer will become active in the Inspector. The Colorize Scene property allows you to choose whether you want to display the colorized visible or hidden areas in the 3D viewport. The preview shows the view from the observer point, enabling a more comprehensive understanding of the viewshed. You can also manually edit the View Distance, location, and angle of the viewshed in the properties section.

View Dome Tool

The View Dome tool gives you 360-degree visibility from a single spot, and can work with multiple points to show where visibility coverage overlaps. Both the Viewshed and the View Dome tools are designed to easily allow you to identify visible and non-visible areas of your 3D model from one or multiple observer points. You can quick edit the observer point, point of interest, and the field of view in the 3D viewport using handles that become interactive when the scene object is selected. Manual control over these parameters is available in the Inspector, similar to the Viewshed Creation tool.

To create a View Dome, activate the tool on the top left ribbon in CityEngine, and click on anywhere in the scene to set the observer point. Once the point is set, you drag to create the View Dome. Once created, the View Dome is automatically selected, and you can directly adjust its properties, such as the view distance in the Viewport using handles or in the Inspector using input fields.

View Corridor Tool

The View Corridor tool can be used to determine which buildings interfere with a view corridor. View Corridors protect established views from a given observer against building development obstruction. To support this use case, the tool creates a protected view where any scenario building visible in the corridor is colored. This makes it easy for you to design your proposals to fit optimally into your city model, without disrupting the View Corridor.

Note: View corridors are designed to analyze scenarios. It is recommended to create scenarios first before creating the view corridor objects because only buildings in a scenario are colorized by the View Corridor.

To create a View Corridor, follow these simple steps: 

1. Activate the tool in the top left ribbon in CityEngine.
2. Click a point in the viewport to create an observer point. This starts the View Corridor tool and a line dynamically displays the View Corridor as you move it to set the point of interest.
3. Click again to anchor the point of interest in the View Corridor.

Once created, the View Corridor is automatically selected, and you can directly adjust its properties, such as the angles of view in the Viewport using handles or in the Inspector using input fields.

Tip: Not loving the colors of the Visibility Tools? No worries – the symbology for each tool can be changed in the Inspector.  The default colors are: green (visible), yellow (visible by multiple viewsheds/domes), and red (not visible by any). To change the colors of the Analyses, click on the Analyses Layer in the Scene window. The Inspector will automatically open the layer details, where you can edit the name of the layer, visibility, locked, colored, and the layer color.

To see the tools in action, check out this YouTube video!

 Follow CityEngine on Facebook & Twitter to get the latest updates.