ArcGIS Online continued evolution – Part 2

Continuing the exploration of the ArcGIS Online December 2012 release, Part 2 focuses on enhancements in the areas of publishing,  sharing and administration, and printing. The previous post in the series looked at new functionality added to the ArcGIS Online Map Viewer.

From a hole in the Ozone Layer to a career in GIS

Image source: nasa

Do you remember the ‘hole’ in the ozone layer? Basically, after finding out CFCs were bad we made the change to non-aerosol.  It was a defining moment in my early school days. At the time, I thought the world was doomed.  Then I won the Premier’s Science Award for my year 6 science project – an educational board game about the ozone layer. Coincidently, the game featured points on an image of the globe with associated attributes (trivia) that facilitated a path to save the earth. The message was clear: collect and share information and you will save the Earth!

Ozri 2013 – Have you budgeted your attendance?

Around this time of year, many of our users are working on their budgets for the upcoming financial year.

I thought I’d share with you what many people do – which is budget now for their attendance at Ozri – Esri Australia’s annual user conference.

Planning ahead makes sure that you don’t miss out on any learning opportunities or key events – such as Ozri – that will assist in your professional development – and maximise your organisation’s GIS investment.  With GIS technology – and its scope for application – changing at such a rapid pace, keeping up to date with the latest developments is a must for any geospatial professional.

ArcGIS Online continues to evolve

The main purpose of this, and a couple of following posts is to provide an update on the continued evolution of the ArcGIS Online platform, and to explore some specific enhancements that were made in the December 2012 release. However, before diving in to that, I want to step back from the functionality and reflect for a moment on the bigger picture.

During the second half of last year, I had an opportunity to view ArcGIS from the outside world and gain some fresh perspective on ArcGIS in the Enterprise – something I’ve spoken about many times at various Esri Australia events in various different contexts. With the benefit of this new lens, a couple of “trees” really stood out for me that I’d previously been too deep in the forest to really appreciate.

Top Tips when Approaching Geodesign

Last week I attended the Geodesign Summit at Esri’s headquarters in Redlands, California. The keynote speaker, Bran Ferren, offered his top “tips” to keep in mind when employing geodesign concepts. I thought I would share them here, as best as my note taking skills recorded anyway!

Do no harm. This is part of the United Nations code of conduct. The principle was developed by Mary B. Anderson in the 1990’s. In terms of Geodesign I interpret this to mean ” geodesign practitioners should strive to minimize possible long term harm through short-term design decisions, provide design solutions that support recovery and long-term development of damaged eco-systems/human landscapes”.  An underlying idea here is to consider the long-term consequences of what you are designing.

Tackle long term problems and take the time to create a public dialog about the problem. The idea here is to build consensus among relevant actors.

Tell your story in a compelling way – visually and verbally. If this is done well, Geodesign advocates can become inspirational role models.

Educate people in Geodesign – to communicate and inspire people to imagine and create a vision for a new future.

Design the future for future generations. If we take a long term approach - the benefits will be seen by our children and our children’s children. Leave them with something alive and joyful and healthy.

As an example, check out the City of Boston’s use of GIS to map renewable energy projects.

For more information about Geodesign see Esri’s Geodesign resources here.

Keera P.

GIS rookies brave the classroom

Last month a few members of Esri Australia’s Marketing and Communications team decided it was time we immersed ourselves in the world of GIS. It was time for a training course!

We brave few warily gathered our belongings, left the safety of the office and embarked on our GIS adventure. Destination: ArcGIS II: Essential Workflows. It is worth mentioning that we had never used ArcGIS software before and until working at Esri Australia, had no idea what GIS was. We were heading into the land of the unknown.

2012 – A big year for training!

Well it’s December again – and what a busy year it’s been in Training at Esri Australia!  There’s been a change at the helm, with Laura Berman moving to the role of Partner Manager, and my transition from Senior Trainer to Training Manager.  Millie Chen - our Training Coordinator - has returned from maternity leave, and we have a number of new trainers who’ve started this year.  Exciting times!

One of our major achievements this year has been the certification of our trainers.  We now have 26 trainers certified in Esri software (Desktop, Developer, Database and Server) and CompTIA accredited (CTT+ – Computer based education certification).  We also have two accredited Telvent trainers who can teach ArcFM courses.  The level of experience required to gain this accreditation is critical for delivering the highest quality GIS training for you, our clients.

Feed the world

Our guest blogger, Charles Pauka, is the Editor of Position magazine and  Spatial Source.

Today’s blog comes from Charles Pauka, the Editor of Position magazine and Spatial Source - Australasia’s source for surveying, mapping and geoinformation.

Feeding the world’s masses is going to be an ever-increasing challenge. From the current 6+ billion today, the Earth’s human population is said to increase to more than 9 billion by 2050, well within the lifetime of many in our industry.

Beyond graphs and charts: Esri Maps for Office

To all those that have been in the clouds…Esri Maps for Office is a free add-in for Microsoft Office 2010 and can be downloaded when an ArcGIS Online for Organisations subscription is purchased.

Don’t have an ArcGIS Online for Organisations account? Signing up for a free trial subscription will also make the Esri Maps for Office add-in available – as many of you have already discovered!

Esri Maps for Office was launched at the Esri User Conference in July 2012 under the banner of Spatial Analytics. This product is part of a suite of location analytics products, like Esri Maps for IBM Cognos and Microsoft SharePoint that deliver geospatial capabilities directly to your business systems. Watch these videos to see how location analytics can change the way you work!

Now let’s discuss how you can make Esri Maps for Office work for your organisation…

ArcGIS Online supporting Disaster Response in the Philippines

On Dec 5th (which coincidentally was World Volunteer Day!) UN OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) activated the Digital Humanitarian Network to collect and geotag all relevant tweets that contained video or images about Typhoon Pablo (Bopha).

The idea was to highlight areas most effected by the typhoon so first responders were efficiently deployed. A summary of the deployment can be found here.  As part of the exercise, The Standby Taskforce (one of the volunteer groups who joined the deployment) created a spreadsheet detailing the metadata for each tweet.

The resulting spreadsheet was saved as a .csv file and visualized using ArcGIS Online. This gave The Standby Taskforce a way to visually confirm the location of tweets, weed out incorrectly located tweets, and resulted in a more accurate representation of the data. You can access the map by clicking on the image below.

The videos and images related to each tweet are accessed by clicking on the “More info” link.

The SBTF is exploring different ways to visualize datasets like this one – if you have any ideas it would be great to hear from you!

Keera P.