Today, most government organizations have some type of GIS programs in place. They vary from being in their early stages, to the rebuilding or tuning-up phase, to being completed and changing as new technologies and applications emerge. This workshop is designed to provide guidelines for managing your GIS program. It will look at the various organizational and technical issues program managers must address in order to develop a successful GIS program.
The discussions will include managing all aspects of a GIS program from staffing and budgeting to procuring technology and working with vendors. A variety of real world examples will be presented showing a range of GIS programs and their implementations. This course presents an overview of successful and unsuccessful techniques for implementing GIS.
Learning Objectives: Specific topics include
This is an abbreviated version of the full-day URISA workshop on GIS program management. Rather than compressing all the content into a half-day, the discussions will primarily focus on program development, budgeting, staffing and planning.
Audience : GIS Program Management is intended for anyone embarking upon a GIS program, involved with a less-than-successful GIS, or who is seeking ways to improve a successful implementation.
As geospatial professionals we are now able to work in a dynamic, 3D, virtual environments, moving towards a continuous representation of reality - but much of the data that makes up this brave new world still needs to be field captured. While not all of the data capture falls under the strict definition of the "practice of surveying" there may be legal considerations for some elements, expertise in determination of spatial accuracy and precision, and best practices in data capture that a deeper understanding of realms of surveying and geodesy can provide.
Audience : This session will be a brief primer on the elements of surveying and geodesy that geospatial practitioners may encounter; how to frame specifications and contract work with surveyors, what types of work fall under the legal realm of surveying, and what methods and best practices can be applied to your own work.
Learning Objectives: Specific topics include
Data collection
Geodesy
Boundary
Surveying Licensure
This 4-hour intro to ArcGIS Online and Esri Collector will show how ArcGIS Online works, what its capabilities are and how to publish a map service and share it with your group. A field exercise using the Esri Collector App will also be included.
We encourage you to bring your own smart device with the Esri Collector App installed, as we will not be providing dataloggers for this session. We will have some Trimble R1's and R2's available for those who want to experience higher-accuracy data capture with their own devices.
Please bring appropriate clothing for the weather conditions as we will be going outside. Whether you are considering implementing ArcGIS Online for your organization or are actively using this tool already, you will find this workshop valuable to your organization and application.
Audience: Field Personnel, Field Supervisors, GIS Technicians/Managers
Learning Objectives:
ArcGIS Pro is an essential application for creating and working with spatial data on your desktop. It provides tools to visualize, analyze, compile, and share your data, in both 2D and 3D environments. The presentation will address many of the key ArcGIS Pro concepts and help you understand how it can be leveraged within the ArcGIS platform.
Esri is bringing their Hands-On Learning Lab to the Washington GIS Conference. The Lab offers free training for conference attendees who want to experience areas of Esri software that may be new to them. Attendees will receive approximately 45 minutes of individual self-paced training consisting of a recorded lecture followed by a hands-on software exercise. Esri staff will be available for help or questions. No registration required. First-come, first-serve.
See the available lessons here: http://www.waurisa.org/conferences/2016/G65271_Hands_on_Learning_Lab_Flier_7.pdf
Do you ever wish you could map the addresses or coordinates in your spreadsheets directly in Microsoft Excel? Would you like to have a dynamic map that you can query, zoom, and pan around directly in your PowerPoint presentation? Esri Maps for Office “brings geography” into your Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides and leverages the analysis, visualization, and sharing capabilities of the ArcGIS platform. Learn how to map your spreadsheet addresses, coordinates, or geographic places directly in Excel; geoenrich your mapped data using Esri’s demographics and lifestyle data; perform basic spatial analysis; share your results as an ArcGIS Online web map; and open your dynamic, interactive web map directly within your PowerPoint presentation.
The 2015 Western Washington Regional Aerials project presented unique challenges in data accessibility for review and quality control. The orthophotography project involved around 100 participating agencies, a 3rd-party QC vendor, project administrators, and the GeoTerra production team. To facilitate communication, production, and review, GeoTerra created a series of internal and external web applications using ArcGIS Online (AGOL). As GeoTerra does not license ArcGIS Server, all imagery and vector layers were hosted on AGOL, which necessitated a thorough understanding of aspects of AGOL, such as security, feature editing settings, tiled imagery creation, and group settings. As web mapping novices, our learning curve was steep, but as we are nearing the end of the project, we have found AGOL to be an integral tool in our workflow. Our presentation will cover some of the ways we’ve used ArcGIS Online for communication and production, including lessons learned and challenges faced.
Buried pipeline systems are often severely damaged by earthquakes. As seismic waves propagate through the earth, differential displacements in the earth can result in pipeline damage. In some areas, permanent ground displacements on the order of up to several meters can destroy buried pipelines. It is common for over 1000 pipeline failures to occur in water systems after a major earthquake. This pipe damage can result in water system failures that make it difficult to fight post-earthquake fires and restore water service to residential, business and industrial areas reliant on water service. The amount of water system damage can be estimated by overlaying pipeline systems with the expected ground shaking intensity and permanent ground displacement. Damage algorithms that relate buried pipeline damage to ground shaking intensity and permanent ground displacement are used to estimate pipeline damage. These damage estimates can then be used to estimate water system performance, restoration time and to develop seismic mitigation strategies and measures.
Esri has released a beta version of its app, Drone2Map for ArcGIS. The app converts raw still imagery from drones into 2D and 3D orthorectified products. Drone2Map processes drone obtained imagery into orthomosaics, digital surface models, and 3D point clouds and meshes. The app can also be used in the field for rapid imagery processing so that users can verify the value of the imagery captured and avoid return field collection trips.
Come and learn how to use Drone2Map for ArcGIS to process, use, and share imagery—all within ArcGIS.
What’s Happening Now at the Tacoma Widget Factory?
Users want interactive maps that work equally well on both desktops and mobile devices. The public wants the map to perform a single focused, intuitive task. Staff wants the map to perform an infinite number of focused, intuitive tasks. Developers want an application development process that is easily scalable for both simple and complex implementations. Does a "magic wand" exist to make this possible? No, but see how the City of Tacoma is trying by using Web AppBuilder with custom widgets to meet both public, staff, and developer needs. This talk will focus on widgets for adding and identifying map data.
Forest fires are major concern in many parts of the world. Wildfires can cause extensive damage, both to property and life. One of the important activities for minimizing losses from wildfires is to identify spatial locations where the volume and structure of fuel in the landscape can be modified such that it reduces the intensity of wildfires. Until recent times, delineating the spatial location for forest fuel management was performed manually, based on the knowledge and experience of experts. This method is obviously very subjective and the results, including the effectiveness (the ability of the plan to reduce the hazards posed by wildfire) and efficiency (the ability of the plan to achieve its level of effectiveness at minimum cost) of the fuel treatment plans produced, differ from individual to individual. A more objective and reproducible procedure that reliably produces efficient and effective plans is desirable. The present research aims at developing a program which implements improved heuristic algorithm based on global search optimization techniques and GIS principles for obtaining optimal and realistic results to address the issue. This will help GIS evolve and transform the world by effectively mitigating wildfire hazards.
While series of steps are involved in the process of developing this heuristics algorithm, one of the initial tasks is to randomly generate hundreds of initial solutions. The goal is to generate solutions similar to what human wildfire management experts would prescribe. While training the computers to imitate human intelligence, the efficiency of these operation becomes a greater concern. Different tactics used to develop an automated program for spatial region growing which can imitate expert prescriptions and results obtained will be presented. Insights into efficiency of the region growing algorithm i.e. obtaining realistic, contiguous regions in acceptable computational time and trades offs involved with different approaches will be discussed.
Message/Instructions: This is an ongoing research which involves several components. 'Spatial region growing' is one of these several components. Currently there is no GIS software that can be incorporated into this study for region growing. For this research, a program has been developed and several tactics experimented with, for automating the process of 'region growing' to match human expert prescriptions. Results obtained using each of these approaches and tradeoffs involved will be presented. The best approach will also be discussed, which could potentially be applicable to other spatial contiguity problems.
Washington GIS road warriors – bring your running gear and roll out of bed Wednesday morning for a group fun run. We’ll meet at 6:15 am in front of the Murano, then run at an easy pace and you are welcome to run as much or as little as you like. We’ll plan on being back no later than 7:30 am or so, so there will be plenty of time to freshen up and get some breakfast at the Convention Center before the day’s activities begin. Joggers, power walkers, bikers, unicyclists, and roller-bladers are welcome too!
Esri is bringing their Hands-On Learning Lab to the Washington GIS Conference. The Lab offers free training for conference attendees who want to experience areas of Esri software that may be new to them. Attendees will receive approximately 45 minutes of individual self-paced training consisting of a recorded lecture followed by a hands-on software exercise. Esri staff will be available for help or questions. No registration required. First-come, first-serve.
As part of a proposed Voluntary Stewardship Program with the State of Washington, Skagit County has been faced with tracking vegetation changes in riparian areas within Agricultural zones. The process of heads up digitizing can be very time consuming and in many cases subjective. In addition a challenge is that the monitoring needs to have a start date of 2011. Josh Greenberg has been working with Pictometry International with a new process that creates a 3D surface based off the oblique images captured by Pictometry flight products. A test location in Skagit County was used to determine if this 3D photo derived surface (PhoDar) can be helpful for monitoring vegetation change. Preliminary results proved very successful but need some additional work before final use.
The Washington Geological Survey’s mission is to provide geologic, hazard, and earth resource information to the public for use in land management, public safety, research, and other decision-making. LiDAR data has long served as a transformative foundation dataset to help accomplish these goals and can further satisfy the growing needs across Washington State for high resolution terrain data to support forest resource monitoring, land use planning and a diverse range of other applications. Legislation passed in 2015 granted the Division of Geology and Earth Resources (DGER) funding to collect LiDAR data for mapping geologic hazards. With the goal of producing the highest quality LiDAR data, DGER is actively engaged in multiple large-scale LiDAR collection projects in western Washington, collaborating with a variety of local partners to participate in the USGS’ 3D Elevation Program (3DEP). Using the experience from this project, DGER is now developing a LiDAR focused program to aid in building strong funding partnerships and to improve rapid-response capabilities for collection of LiDAR in the rest of Washington State. To support this work, the program will also develop a rigorous methodology for evaluating data quality and production. To ensure this information is available to decision makers, researchers, and the public alike, DGER is pursuing several options to host a web portal where the available repository of LiDAR projects—point clouds and derivative products included—can be easily accessed and downloaded.
Since migrating to an Enterprise GIS, collaboration within Island County departments and with Island County Emergency Services Communications Center (ICOM) has been greatly enhanced. This in turn has led to greater efficiency and accuracy in assigning new addresses and new roads in Island County. With a new workflow leveraging GIS and both the Address Management and Attribute Assistant Add-ins, a once lengthy manual process has turned into a well-documented procedure where both parties use the same data layers and work together on editing.
Web GIS has pulled us through a paradigm shift from managing GIS using customized solutions and specialized staff to “putting a front-end” on GIS making it available to a broad range of knowledge workers. Using simple mapping tools and template applications, any computer user in an organization now has the capacity to create geospatial information products for decision making. Self-service mapping – yes, it’s happening! What could possibly go wrong?! This presentation will explore why Web GIS matters through case studies that highlight how it delivers the powerful capacity of spatial thinking and decision making to benefit everyone in your organization. We’ll discuss common concerns about Web GIS and what to do about them. As with any paradigm shift, the willingness to manage the potential chaos that comes with change is at the core of a GIS professional’s success in supporting the new world of “GIS for everyone.” Let’s take a fresh look at how Web GIS can strengthen your role as a GIS professional enabling “the masses” authoritative access to spatial decision-making resources.
"What impacts do community gardens, web-mapping technologies and the use of social-networking have on access to fresh foods?"
"The current lack of information on parking pass requirements and resulting parking violations may be mitigated by creation of a mobile application that would provide parking pass need at users' given outdoor recreation location."
1. Rachael Brown (Student GIS Certificate)
2. Garrett Stone (Student GIS Certificate)
3. Angela Vincent (Student GIS Certificate)
...
Launching and managing an effective ArcGIS Online Organization takes some planning. In this session we will discuss the techniques and best practices that can help make your experience with ArcGIS Online a success. Topics include using groups effectively, branding your organization, and creating useful information products, setting up an Open Data site and using administrative tools.
Whether we are a lone analyst in an organization or a GIS manager we all strive to provide innovative and effective solutions. We all enjoy seeing the technology we are passionate about being used and leveraged. But there are methods and processes we can do as GIS professionals that will help make these projects and implementations a success.
This presentation will be a discussion, tips and tricks that help in building successful solutions. We will not focus on project management but discuss what GIS professionals can do to contribute to a successful project
This collaboration session will showcase and explore use cases of Web GIS, Story Maps, The Cloud, Augmented Reality, and leveraging the Esri platform. Prizes will be awarded to attendees for participation. No technical experience required but helpful. Kick back, be entertained and see the world through the corporate lenses of First American Mapping Information Services (FAMIS).
