Surveying & Engineering Special Interest Group Newsletter

Welcome to the Surveying-Special Interest Group newsletter, a periodic publication from the ESRI survey team. Each issue provides a glimpse of industry news, upcoming events, reminders, and information about integrating surveying and GIS.

In this Issue

• 2008 ESRI Survey & Engineering GIS Summit
• ESRI UC and SEG Summit Reviews
• Special Offer for ACSM Members
• Industry News
• Software News
• Training Announcements
• Calendar: Key Events

2008 ESRI Survey & Engineering GIS Summit

Save the Date
It's never too early to start planning your itinerary for the annual ESRI Survey & Engineering GIS Summit (SEG Summit). The 2009 SEG Summit will take place July 11-14, in San Diego, California. Join more than 400 surveyors, engineers, and GIS professionals and find out how you can enhance core business practices and expand opportunities with cutting-edge technology. Attending the conference will give you the opportunity to hear from geospatial experts, become savvy with the latest GIS technology through training sessions, and learn about applications and solutions that can impact your business development.

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ESRI UC and SEG Summit Reviews

See What You Missed
Did you miss the 2008 ESRI Survey & Engineering GIS Summit or the concurrent ESRI User Conference (ESRI UC)? We hope not, but if you did, see what POB magazine and GPS World have to say about the world's largest gathering of GIS professionals. These media outlets joined dozens of other industry-leading publications and Web sites that reported on the ESRI conferences in sunny San Diego.

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Special Offer for ACSM Members

Bundle Up This Winter with ArcView
We would like to help members of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM) get started with GIS. The ArcView for ACSM Members Special Offer will introduce you to GIS or expand your current capabilities with a range of materials that includes

• ArcGIS ArcView desktop software (single use)
• ESRI Virtual Campus online training
• GIS Tutorial, Second Edition, which includes a media CD-ROM
• A to Z GIS, an illustrated dictionary of geographic information systems

These materials will assist you in integrating GIS into your workflows by providing a platform on which you can store, retrieve, visualize, plan, and share survey and other geographic data for your organization. Read more.

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Industry News

Get a Firm Grasp on DFIRMS
As part of its mission to reduce loss of life and property from natural disasters and all types of hazards, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) oversees the production of the nation's Digital Flood Insurance Rate Maps (DFIRMs), all of which are produced in GIS formats. Learn how one GIS-focused engineering and surveying firm works in tandem with FEMA to streamline the production of these life-saving maps using ArcGIS. Read the full article.

Determine Your GIS ROI
The Business Benefits of GIS: An ROI Approach is an eagerly anticipated methodology book from ESRI Press that helps GIS practitioners complete a return on investment (ROI) process that clearly demonstrates how, when, and where the implementation of a GIS could create business value for your organization. While many companies are increasingly concerned with doing more with less and need a way to evaluate and compare all potential business opportunities, The Business Benefits of GIS provides an original methodology for translating the use of GIS into specific, measurable terms that can be ascribed a monetary value. Read a sample chapter of The Business Benefits of GIS.

Graduate with Options
Offering a surveying program since 1947, the Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT) in Klamath Falls, Oregon, recently improved its geomatics department by overlaying its surveying and GIS curricula. OIT integrated the two specialties into a single new geomatics department, providing students with a choice of surveying or GIS options for their degree. Due to the marriage of both surveying and GIS courses within the new curriculum, students who select the GIS option will gain a strong knowledge and background of surveying and vice-versa. By joining the curriculum, OIT, a school responsible for producing 60 percent of the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) approximate 300 cadastral surveyors, recognizes the potential of GIS as a tool for managing survey work. Read more.

Download GIS Day Web Buttons
Spread the word about the tenth anniversary of GIS Day by adding one of the five new GIS Day Web Buttons to your site. These colorful buttons will signify your GIS Day support and encourage others to join the global GIS Day celebration. Web page templates are also available for download. Register your event today.

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Software News

Share Your Maps in a Snap
The quickest way to share maps you create in ArcMap with the rest of the world is to simply export them to PDF. ArcGIS 9.3 has new and improved functionality for exporting maps to Adobe PDF including map layers and location information for end users with Adobe Acrobat 9 or Reader 9 software. These enhancements are available as a free downloadable patch for ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Server, and ArcGIS Engine. Read the article.

Enlist a New Toolbar Extension
Drafting Tools for ArcGIS is a sample extension that presents a new toolbar to ArcMap users. The Drafting Tools toolbar streamlines the editing experience for drafting professionals, surveyors, and engineers. Behind the scenes, the drafting tools intelligently manage the storage, editing, and display of primitive points, lines, and polygons. Users can commence drafting without needing to precreate data, define coordinate system settings, set up layer properties, manage edit sessions, select target layers, or specify edit tasks. Drafting Tools for ArcGIS was developed and tested with ArcGIS 9.3 and will work with ArcView, ArcEditor, or ArcInfo licenses. Download the toolbar.

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Training Announcements

Watch ArcGIS Survey Analyst at Work
Designed for those who want to explore the new features included with the Cadastral Editor portion of ArcGIS Survey Analyst, Introduction to the Cadastral Editor in ArcGIS Survey Analyst 9.2 demonstrates the Cadastral Editor's advanced functionality for building and maintaining cadastral land records systems based on a standard data model and common workflows. Viewers of this free 60-minute online training seminar should be familiar with working in the ArcGIS editing environment including use of the Editor, COGO, and Advanced Editing toolbars. Try it now.

Become a Cadastral Editor
The ArcGIS Survey Analyst: Maintaining Land Records Using the Cadastral Editor training course is for experienced ArcGIS users who want to create, update, and manage accurate and seamless cadastral networks from survey plans and electronic subdivision data via the Cadastral Editor workflow inside the Survey Analyst extension to ArcGIS. This ESRI Virtual Classroom instructor-led class is useful for GIS, land record, and survey professionals who work with cadastral datasets and survey information. Prerequisites include Introduction to ArcGIS I or Learning ArcGIS Desktop or equivalent knowledge. Register Now.

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