With the June 2023 update of ArcGIS Online, the Near Me widget is now available as beta in ArcGIS Experience Builder. This new widget provides similar functionalities as the Web AppBuilder Situation Awareness widget. As you migrate to Experience Builder, you can leverage this new widget for your Situation Awareness workflows in Experience Builder.
Let us assume you have a Web Appbuilder App that is used by emergency management personnel to understand the impact of an incident on public infrastructure and human populations and sharing that information with other users in the EOC. You want to migrate this app to Experience Builder. Here’s how to do it :
Create a new app
First, you’ll create an app in Experience Builder:
1. Sign into your ArcGIS account.
2. From the Content page, click Create app and click Experience Builder.
3. Click Create New.
4. Choose a mapcentric template and click Create.
See an example of an application using the Blank fullscreen template. Near Me is mapcentric widget, so you need to add at least one map with a feature layer.
5. In your application, add a Map widget.
For my application, I chose a map that has facilities, infrastructure and demographic data.
6. Add the Near Me (Beta) widget and connect it to the map.
Add and configure the Search widget
Next, you’ll add a way for users to search an address or an existing feature and use that as incident location.
1. Add the Search widget to the map.
2. In the Search panel, click New search source and choose Locator source.
3. Click Select utility and select a geocode locator.
In my application, I used ArcGIS World Geocoding Service.
4. Click New search source again and choose Layer source, and then configure the source.
I chose Hospitals layer.
5. If your layer source is a feature layer, make sure that you’ve turned off Enable filtering for layer search source.
6. Expand Search result.
7. Turn on Auto select the first result.
6. Click the Action tab and click Add a trigger.
7. Click Record selection changes.
8. For Select a target, click Near Me (Beta), and then click Set location as the action.
Configure the Near Me widget
Now that you’ve created your app, you’ll configure the Near Me widget by configuring the map, search, and analysis settings.
Configure map settings
1. Click on the Near Me (Beta).
2. In the Content panel, under Map Settings, select your map.
3. Click the map to configure its settings.
Configure search settings
1. Make sure the Search by Location is selected.
2. Set the Default distance and Unit.
I set my default distance to 2 miles.
3. Change the Heading label, default is Location.
I used Incident location
Configure analysis settings
Setting up analyses is the key step when configuring the Near Me widget; the widget will not work until at least one analysis is configured. To configure the analysis settings, follow these steps:
Configure Closest feature analysis
1. Click on Add Analysis button.
2. Select the Hospitals layer.
3. Set a Label for the analysis.
I used Closest Hospital.
4. From the Analysis Types dropdown, choose Closest Feature.
5. Set Default maximum distance and Unit.
I accepted the defaults in my application
6. Click the back button in Edit Analysis panel to go back to main Analysis panel
Configure Proximity Analysis
1. Click on Add Analysis button
2. Select the layer
I chose Shelters layer
3. Enter a Label for the analysis
I set Nearby shelters.
4. From the Analysis Types dropdown, choose Proximity.
5. From Display field dropdown, choose a field to be used as feature title
I chose Name.
6. Click to enable Group features and select a field
I chose Status to group features based on each shelter’s operational status.
7. Disable Highlight results on map.
8. Enable Expand on open.
Configure Summary Analysis
1. Click on Add Analysis button
2. Select the USA Block Groups layer
3. Enter a Label,
I set Vulnerable population
4. From the Analysis Types dropdown, choose Summary.
5. Click on Add Summary
6. From Statistics tab, choose an Operator and a Field, click Insert
I used Sum as operator and chose POP2020 as the field.
7. From the Edit Analysis panel, click the Pencil (Edit expression) icon on the Summary card just created to set custom label and format numbers.
8. In Edit Summary Field panel, click on Expression tab and in the first text box, set a Label and format numbers by clicking on the Gear icon from bottom left, click Insert.
I set the label to Total Population 2020 and set decimal places to 0. Same way, you can configure multiple summary fields by following the steps from 5 to 8. I created three additional summary fields to show Children under 5 years, Seniors over 85 years, Number of households.
9. Disable Highlight results on map.
10. Enable Expand on open and save the application.
Understand the impact of an incident
Finally, you’ll verify that the Near Me widget works as expected.
1. Launch the app.
2. In the Search widget, search an address or location.
3. Notice that the configured analysis results are presented on the widget panel. As an alternative, a user can drop a point for incident location.
In my application I entered Baltimore, MD in search widget. Click on the result and it is then used as an Incident location in the widget and following analysis results were presented.
• Closest hospital to the incident location
• Nearby shelters within 2 miles
• Vulnerable population
4. Click on the Export icon to download data in csv format.
Related resources
- Documentation: ArcGIS Experience Builder Help: Near Me (Beta)
- Documentation: ArcGIS Experience Builder Help: What’s new
- Blog article: What’s New in ArcGIS Experience Builder (June 2023)
- Blog article: Recreating Near Me workflows in Experience Builder
- Blog article: Recreating Info Summary workflows in Experience Builder
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