R-ArcGIS Bridge Highlights from the 2025 Esri User Conference

Now that we’ve all had a chance to catch our breath after an invigorating Esri User Conference, the R-ArcGIS Bridge team wanted to take a moment to reflect on the experience and share resources, highlights, and what’s next for the project.

UC Presentations & Resources

This year, we had the pleasure of presenting in both the Demo Theater and Open Platform Spotlight Theater, where we showcased some of our favorite ways to use the R-ArcGIS Bridge:

• Building geoprocessing tools for ArcGIS Pro using {arcgisbinding}
• Reading, publishing, and modifying feature services in ArcGIS Online with {arcgis}
• Working with Survey123 attachments and geocoding using {arcgis}
• Creating beautiful web apps with easy-to-use UI elements from {calcite}

All of our presentation materials are available in this UC 2025 GitHub repository for you to review and try for yourself. We also built an ArcGIS Dashboard to visualize the “happy places” you shared with us during our sessions using Survey123:

Hearing from You

Our favorite part of UC is connecting with you – learning how you’re using the R-ArcGIS Bridge, hearing your ideas, and seeing the creative ways you’re applying R and ArcGIS together to solve real-world problems.

At our kiosk in the Showcase, we heard about the custom R script tools you’ve built for ArcGIS Pro, showcasing the power and flexibility of integrating R directly into your geospatial workflows. Others described innovative data engineering pipelines powered by the {arcgis} package, highlighting how it’s helping streamline complex spatial data tasks. We also heard about fascinating use cases where specialized R packages are being used alongside ArcGIS for advanced analyses – like landscape fragmentation modeling – demonstrating the depth and creativity of the R spatial community.

Across these conversations, some common themes emerged around what you’d like to see next:

• More tutorials, documentation, and training resources.
• Community toolboxes and examples of R script tools for ArcGIS Pro.
• Continued development of the {arcgis} metapackage to support other services such as routing.
• In-depth presentations on creating ArcGIS Pro toolboxes.
• Demos that integrate {arcgis} with ArcGIS Dashboards and other web apps.

What’s Next

We’re already working on new features and resources to support your workflows and expand the R-ArcGIS Bridge. Our current projects include:

• Researching the feasibility of adding an R kernel to ArcGIS Notebook Server, which could enable R notebooks in ArcGIS Enterprise.
• Simplifying access to feature services and items in ArcGIS Online and Enterprise by accepting item IDs, portal URLs, as well as the feature service URL in {arcgislayers}.
• Accessing portal user and group information with the new arc_user() and arc_group() functions.
• Working with items and downloading their data (such as shapefiles geojson files and more) using arc_item() and arc_item_data() in {arcgisutils}.
• Expanding learning resources, including new blogs and documentation.

Thanks for an amazing User Conference! We’re energized by your enthusiasm and ideas, and we can’t wait to continue building with you.

Is there something you want to see us build next? Start a discussion on our GitHub repository!

See you at the next UC!