{"id":656752,"date":"2019-11-15T17:00:03","date_gmt":"2019-11-16T01:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/?post_type=blog&p=656752"},"modified":"2021-12-01T12:06:30","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T20:06:30","slug":"internship-with-the-spatial-analyst-team-at-esri","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/arcgis-pro\/analytics\/internship-with-the-spatial-analyst-team-at-esri","title":{"rendered":"Internship with the Spatial Analyst team at Esri"},"author":10142,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":""},"categories":[23341],"tags":[34121,28371,39421],"industry":[],"product":[36571,36561],"class_list":["post-656752","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analytics","tag-distance","tag-internship","tag-spatial-analyst","product-arcgis-enterprise","product-arcgis-pro"],"acf":{"short_description":"Wenli's internship experience with the Spatial Analyst team at Esri","flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

Last fall I came to know about the Esri Student Internship Program through my school career fair. Being a GIS student, it immediately intrigued me. I submitted the application in late November and heard back from the Spatial Analyst team for an interview a week later. I was both excited and nervous! In the interview call, we discussed about the courses I took, my programming experience and some of my projects in detail. The interview went well, and I landed the super-cool summer 2019 internship offer.<\/p>\n

It was August of 2019, when my flight landed on the SoCal \u2018red lands\u2019. Soon after I took a scenic tour around the green campus at Esri, I met my team. Due to my experience and knowledge of working with suitability analysis, I was offered to work on the suite of Distance tools that are in ArcGIS Pro Spatial Analyst extension as well as in Raster Analytics using ArcGIS Image Server.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":{"ID":656762,"id":656762,"title":"1","filename":"1.jpg","filesize":437229,"url":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2019\/11\/1.jpg","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/arcgis-pro\/analytics\/internship-with-the-spatial-analyst-team-at-esri\/1-20","alt":"Esri Redlands campus","author":"10142","description":"","caption":"Esri Redlands campus","name":"1-20","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":656752,"date":"2019-11-15 22:48:18","modified":"2019-11-15 22:48:36","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1600,"height":1200,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2019\/11\/1-213x200.jpg","thumbnail-width":213,"thumbnail-height":200,"medium":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2019\/11\/1.jpg","medium-width":348,"medium-height":261,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2019\/11\/1.jpg","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":576,"large":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2019\/11\/1.jpg","large-width":1440,"large-height":1080,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2019\/11\/1-1536x1152.jpg","1536x1536-width":1536,"1536x1536-height":1152,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2019\/11\/1.jpg","2048x2048-width":1600,"2048x2048-height":1200,"card_image":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2019\/11\/1-620x465.jpg","card_image-width":620,"card_image-height":465,"wide_image":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2019\/11\/1-1440x1080.jpg","wide_image-width":1440,"wide_image-height":1080}},"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

My internship goal was to help rebuild some of these tools for the Raster Analytics Enterprise framework. I dived into it! I learnt about the basic algorithms that worked behind these tools, binge watched all Distance tool videos from the Esri User Conference and Developer Summit; read books, online help documents, journal papers and got myself prepared.<\/p>\n

My projects<\/strong><\/p>\n

My first project was to design, develop and test two service script tools. These tools use the new spatial analyst distance tools<\/a>. The new tools use a new algorithm for cost-based distance analysis that provides more accurate and precise results as they can calculate cost surface and shortest path using a 360\u00b0angle instead of 8 directions. After finishing testing the service tools, I wrote the Raster Analysis Geoprocessing (GP) tools for ArcGIS Pro, they call the service tools that I wrote first. Through this process, I learned about ArcGIS Enterprise and how the different functionalities work between the Enterprise service tool and ArcGIS Pro GP tools. I also experienced testing software bug fixes and writing automated tests.<\/p>\n

My next project was to do an in-depth literature review to understand how the distance tools are currently used for analysis and how we can improve them in the future. I read several research papers on distance analysis and wrote summaries for them. I found that cost-distance tools are widely used by search and rescue, resource locating analysis and least-cost construction for gas lines, roads and so on. One such paper used Distance tools to do search and rescue in Yosemite park, I realized how big of a difference Esri can make to help the world by saving lives.<\/p>\n

The best part of my projects is that, with the ArcGIS Pro 2.6 release, I can take pride that I have helped build these tools, and I can use them to solve more suitability and distance problems.<\/p>\n

Fun at work<\/strong><\/p>\n

Due to some changes in my university course schedule, I could not join the internship in the summer. But, I spoke with the Esri administration and my project manager, and they were able to accommodate me during the fall. Unfortunately, I missed the Intern Hackathon, but I still got to participate in Spooktacular, the Halloween costume competition.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

Time flies! <\/strong><\/p>\n

Cut to the chase, today is the last day of my internship, and I can safely say that I have learnt a lot about GIS, spatial analysis, software development, testing, working in a professional environment and so much more! My team members were very approachable and were always available to help and discuss with me whenever I faced any challenges. I also learnt a lot from other interns, and co-workers outside my team. This internship program really helped me grow and learn about real life use cases in GIS.<\/p>\n"}],"authors":[{"ID":10142,"user_firstname":"Wenli","user_lastname":"Zou","nickname":"wzou","user_nicename":"wzou","display_name":"Wenli Zou","user_email":"wzou@esri.com","user_url":"","user_registered":"2019-11-14 23:23:17","user_description":"Wenli Zou graduated from Georgia Tech with major in GIS and she interned with the Spatial Analyst Team at Esri in 2019 .","user_avatar":""}],"related_articles":"","card_image":false,"wide_image":false},"yoast_head":"\nInternship with the Spatial Analyst team at Esri<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/arcgis-pro\/analytics\/internship-with-the-spatial-analyst-team-at-esri\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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