ESRI UC 2020 Day 3

 Day 3 started with a fun class - ArcGIS Solutions for Defense. Can I just say this session blew my mind?! It was so cool to see the software being used in a different way than I had ever used it before. However, there were some tools highlighted that I can see useful in other projects. 

  • Coordinate conversion (hello CAD)
  • Distance and direction
  • Visibility analysis

Military symbology editor is available in Pro only. There is also a defense toolbox you can download that contains a range fan tool, incident analysis tool, and a beach landing tool. They demo'd each of these, and it was so cool. The visibility analysis using DEM and observation points. They also showed a generate grid from point tool, which was so slick and easy. I can see a use for this with creating missing person grids on the spot. They also showed web app builder defense capabilities. These tools do not work in a disconnected environment. The US Army is not using Pro. So, the things to look up and download are ArcGIS Solutions for Defense and ArcGIS Solutions for Intelligence (both are free).

The next class I attended was Emergency Management Solutions for State and Local Governments.  This can be found at solutions.arcgis.com.  It only works in Pro. There are flood impact tools. The living atlas has USGS flood gauges. You can export incident data into FEMA forms! This one is a long, long time coming, and so important. Check out the operations response and incident viewer. DHS has living atlas layers, like schools. You can now create print layouts in pro. Other solutions to check out are flood impact analysis, community, hazards, emergency management, response and recovery/damage assessment and storm debris recovery. You can generate depth rasters for 3D flood damage.

Next was Plenary #3. Jack showed the new living atlas indicators of the planet. Some are live feeds, there are experience builder templates, geo-cards to sustainable development goals. National Geographic partnered with ESRI to educate youth and get GIS into schools. They want to give youth a modern view of geography. There is a map maker interactive on their website with 20 GIS projects for students. These show projection issues, changing waters, and doesn't require a login.

There is a new "Teach with GIS" beta site by ESRI. Jack encouraged us to be the architects of change, and described the next generation as "gengeo." They are the next generation of change. Jack said that "the women are leading better" in stats, speaking about covid.

My next class was Building Web Applications in AGO. There are new zone look up and nearby web apps. The attachment viewer supports multiple attachments. Express set up apps will be available in enterprise in the next release.

My final class was Best Practices: Designing Thematic Maps by my two favorite wizards. They talked about using proportional text, and showed a variety of presidential election voting results maps. These were so interesting. They showed how using the same data but displaying it differently, completely change the map. Every map was so different. It just shows how knowing your data and what it is that you want to communicate with your map to your end users is SO important! They said each map showed "different shades of the truth," and "it's not a hack if it works." They showed an amazing land/water boundary that I have to look up and start using. Projectionwizard.org will help you find projections. Terrain tools download on AGO, and a 3D hillshades tool. There is a new book coming out that talks about 101 ways to map the same dataset, and a the same election maps and more are shown in it.  Their parting words was to make sure your map is legible.


It was a short and sweet week.  ESRI did a great job hosting over 80,000 GIS professionals from all over the world FLAWLESSLY. The classes were good, but I definitely missed hearing from other professionals in my field, instead everything was all about ESRI. It definitely had a lesser feel being remote, and not surrounded by thousands of my peers, but I was grateful to be able to still attend. Until next year!

Check out the best video you'll ever see if your life here.

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