{"id":76941,"date":"2017-05-15T18:04:56","date_gmt":"2017-05-15T18:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/product\/uncategorized\/use-arcade-expressions-to-map-the-land-to-improvement-ratios-in-your-area\/"},"modified":"2024-11-11T12:40:14","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T20:40:14","slug":"use-arcade-expressions-to-map-the-land-to-improvement-ratios-in-your-area","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/arcgis-online\/arcade\/use-arcade-expressions-to-map-the-land-to-improvement-ratios-in-your-area","title":{"rendered":"Use Arcade Expressions to Map the Land to Improvement Ratios in Your Area"},"author":4161,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":""},"categories":[777102,22841,22941],"tags":[32551,33491,33501,24581,32661],"industry":[],"product":[36811,36551],"class_list":["post-76941","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arcade","category-local-government","category-mapping","tag-arcade","tag-parcels","tag-real-estate","tag-smart-mapping","tag-thematic-mapping","product-arcgis-hub","product-arcgis-online"],"acf":{"short_description":"An interesting way to look at a community is to map the value of its parcels, including a measure called the land to improvement ratio.","flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

An interesting way to look at a community is to map various measures of the value of its parcels, including a measure called the land to improvement ratio.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Many cities, but not all, tax their parcel owners based on the value of the land contained within the parcel boundaries, and the value of any improvements built upon that parcel. The ratio of the improvements\u2019 value to the land\u2019s value is referred to as the improvement ratio<\/a>. It’s inverse is the land to improvement ratio.<\/p>\n

Why do people map these things? One reason is that a thematic map of improvement ratios in your area immediately reveals which parcels are under-utilized, from a development perspective. Some use it as an indicator of properties that are likely to be redeveloped. As you look around town, patterns may emerge.<\/p>\n

How to Make A Map of Improvement Ratios<\/strong><\/p>\n

How can you make a thematic map of improvement ratios for your city, or a city you\u2019re interested in?<\/p>\n

In the U.S., many local governments publish parcel boundaries online, so data is often easily available. For example, in my area, San Bernardino County government publishes its parcel boundaries to open data here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But they don\u2019t publish anything called an improvement ratio map. In fact, looking over the attributes of their data, you won\u2019t find an attribute called \u201cimprovement ratio.\u201d How can we map something that doesn\u2019t exist explicitly in the data?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

An exciting new capability was released in ArcGIS Online in December 2016: Arcade expressions. As explained here<\/a>, Arcade is a scripting language. But it\u2019s much more\u2014Arcade transforms the world of open data so that you can map your ideas, not just the data<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been looking for a real-world test case to try Arcade out. At the Esri GeoDesign Summit<\/a> this year, speaker Candi Millar from Billings, Montana showed a map depicting her city from an interesting perspective. Her map was shaded based on the ratio of improvement value to land value in each parcel.\u00a0 Her team calculated that information and mapped it, allowing her to tell a story about what policy makers in Billings are doing about redevelopment there.<\/p>\n

I thought to myself \u201cthat would be an interesting map to try out with Arcade expressions and smart mapping<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

I might have chosen to follow a traditional GIS project workflow: go download<\/strong> some parcel boundaries, and hope<\/strong> that they had attribute data containing land values and improved values. If they did not, I\u2019d need to download<\/strong> some attribute data and join it myself, and hope<\/strong> that a significant portion of records joined successfully. I would then fix<\/strong> any issues with the data: many parcel data sets store interesting numeric data, like land value and improved value, as text strings.<\/p>\n

In ArcMap or ArcGIS Pro it\u2019s easy to add a field<\/strong>, and calculate<\/strong> that field by converting<\/strong> each text value to a number. It just takes time. Lastly, I would need to add a field<\/strong> called \u201cImprovement_to_Land_Ratio\u201d or similar (shorter) name and calculate that, and handle<\/strong> any divide-by-zero issues and null values.<\/p>\n

And then, I remembered it\u2019s 2017 and there\u2019s this thing called open data\u2026<\/p>\n

I searched the open data<\/a> site to look for parcels in Redlands. Good news! I found the parcel service hosted by San Bernardino County in open data. It took about 1 minute to find and examine.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But\u2026 like many parcel services I come across, this one stored all its numeric data as text fields<\/strong>. Normally, this would be a showstopper, since most GIS software are insistent that if you want to make a map from<\/em> numeric data, you need to provide<\/em> it with, ah, numeric data.<\/p>\n

ArcGIS is a little more forgiving <\/strong>than other GIS software in this regard, due to Arcade expressions<\/a> and smart mapping techniques. I thought to myself, \u201cI wonder if Arcade can convert text to numbers, just like Microsoft Excel \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

I dropped the parcels layer into my ArcGIS Online web map, and it drew the parcels. Performance was great for the scales I wanted to map the parcels. I don\u2019t need to see the entire county\u2019s 817,000+ detailed parcel boundaries. I need to look around at neighborhood scales.<\/p>\n

I chose the Change Style option, and scrolled past all the known attributes of this layer to see if Arcade expressions are available for an open data service. They are.<\/strong> This was starting to look very promising, that I could write an equation to convert the strings to numbers and do some math on those numbers\u2026 but being new to Arcade expressions, I kept my hopes in check.<\/p>\n

Didn\u2019t need to. I needed to convert the strings to numbers. I looked in the list of functions for something that converts text to numbers, and found it: NUMBER.\u00a0 So I tried out this expression:<\/p>\n

\n
var land = number($feature.LANDVALUE); \r\nreturn land;<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It failed when I hit \u201cTest,\u201d returning \u201cNaN\u201d which means \u201cnot a number.\u201d<\/p>\n
I clicked on the sample value (see arrow below)\u2026<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
\u2026and saw why: the LANDVALUE data had commas in the number string, so it was not able to convert those strings. Wait – could Arcade help me strip out the commas?<\/p>\n
Yes: the REPLACE function finds occurrences of a character or string and replaces it with another character, string, or nothing. So this worked:<\/p>\n
\n
var land = number(replace($feature.LANDVALUE,\",',\"\",true));\r\nreturn land;<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I hit Test again, and it returned a number this time. I hit OK and the map drew the parcels based on their land value, even though that data was stored as a string. Big data needs big functions. Arcade turns text into numbers on the fly and smart mapping shows the results.<\/strong><\/p>\n
Total time to this point: <10 minutes, including me descending the learning curve, poking around the list of functions to see what else Arcade can do.<\/p>\n
Map? What map?<\/strong><\/p>\n
Knowing that my web map had a pulse, I went back to my inspiration: the Billings, MT land to improvement ratio<\/strong> map. The point of that map was to show parcels where the land value was the majority<\/strong> of the parcel\u2019s overall value, as an indicator of where future development was likely.<\/p>\n
I was envisioning a simple version of this concept, expressed as a \u201cland value as % of total value\u201d map. While the schema was telling me \u201cno\u201d to that vision, Arcade was telling me to look more closely. We all need to look more closely at our data to find the maps that matter. So I wrote just these four lines of code:<\/p>\n
\n
\/\/ convert string to a number\r\nvar land = number(replace($feature.LANDVALUE,\",\",\"\",true));\r\nvar impr = number(replace($feature.IMPROVEMENTVALUE,\",\",\"\",true));\r\nvar answer = land \/ (land + impr) * 100\r\nreturn answer;<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It would be great if just this little bit of code were needed to make the exact map I envisioned for understanding land values and improvement values. I showed it to a stakeholder and he noticed that some parcels were not being drawn at all. How\u2019d I miss that?<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
This is where a good popup can really help. Upon inspecting some of the missing parcel (see above), I realized I needed a little more code to dictate what the map should show for divide-by-zero situations, null values and other situations. Or, I could call the county GIS department and ask them to change their schema, add this attribute, calculate the formula below, and handle all the null value and divide by zero cases.<\/p>\n
Instead, I decided to phone a friend. Literally.<\/p>\n
My colleague Kristian Ekenes<\/a> on the ArcGIS API for JavaScript<\/a> team introduced me to the WHEN statement in Arcade.\u00a0 WHEN is like a multiple IF statement\u2026 WHEN (this condition, do this), (that condition, do that), else just do the other. If only my kids could interpret my WHEN conditions so well. That led to this expression:<\/p>\n
\n
\/\/ convert string to a number\r\nvar land = number(replace($feature.LANDVALUE,\",\",\"\",true));\r\nvar impr = number(replace($feature.IMPROVEMENTVALUE,\",\",\"\",true));\r\nvar answer = When(\r\nland == 0 && impr == 0 , 50,\r\nland != 0 && impr == 0, 100,\r\nland \/ (land + impr) * 100\r\n);\r\nreturn answer;<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n
When land value as well as improvement value are zero, I have editorially<\/em> decided to assign the value of land to be 50%, since both are contributing half of nothing. \u00a0When land value is NOT zero, I have editorially<\/em> decided the land is 100% of the value if improvement value is 0. All other cases where land and improvements have value > 0 get the original equation.<\/p>\n
It worked. I guess if it hadn\u2019t, no map, and no blog about how to make this map.<\/p>\n
Finishing the map<\/strong><\/p>\n
Now all I had to do was make the map. I hit \u201cChange Style\u201d and chose to make the map using the \u201cCounts and Amounts (Color)\u201d option.<\/p>\n
I chose the theme called “Above and Below” because I wanted to use two colors on my map. The “Above and Below” theme always helps thematic maps become more clear, because you as the map’s author have to choose where to “anchor” the color ramp. In my case, I anchored my color ramp at the 50% value, meaning any values below 50% would be one color, and any values above 50% would be another color, increasing in intensity as they head toward 0% and 100% respectively.<\/p>\n
I figured my audience would appreciate a straightforward approach: shade the parcels whose land value exceeds improvement value in brown (like dirt), and shade the parcels whose improvement value exceeds the land value in green (like the color of US currency, historically). A continuous color ramp, applied between these colors, really adds some depth to the visual display, especially when you place 50% squarely in the center of that color ramp.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
The resulting web map is below and here<\/a>. I also dropped it into this story map<\/a> so that I could take people on a quick map tour of interesting areas.\u00a0 It has generated a lot of positive feedback from people who know the area, or know real estate, or know parcel data. Check out the Labels on the layer to see how I used an Arcade Expression in my map’s labels.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Thanks to the ArcGIS software, I was able to get this done in under an hour for the initial draft, and each additional hour was spent fine-tuning the Arcade expression, adding labels using the same expression as a starting point, and polishing the story map.\u00a0 I probably have, at most, 3 hours\u2019 total time invested in this.<\/p>\n
I particularly like the fact that this map leverages the county\u2019s GIS services effectively, without requiring them to change their service to accommodate my particular need. I save all those hours previously needed for web search time, FTP or data download time, data processing time, time spent re-hosting a copy <\/span><\/em>of the county\u2019s data on my server or cloud.<\/p>\n
As a result, my time was focused on the map, not the data. The secret sauce for this particular map is simply an Arcade expression, plus a call to the smart mapping capability to align the colors to the meaningful values in the data.<\/p>\n"}],"related_articles":[{"ID":74711,"post_author":"6981","post_date":"2016-12-19 04:35:28","post_date_gmt":"2016-12-19 04:35:28","post_content":"","post_title":"Introducing Arcade","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"introducing-arcade","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-11-11 12:40:39","post_modified_gmt":"2024-11-11 20:40:39","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/product\/uncategorized\/introducing-arcade\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"blog","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":74571,"post_author":"6461","post_date":"2016-12-15 21:49:44","post_date_gmt":"2016-12-15 21:49:44","post_content":"","post_title":"Use Arcade Expressions to Map Your Ideas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"use-arcade-expressions-to-map-your-ideas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-11-11 12:40:53","post_modified_gmt":"2024-11-11 20:40:53","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/product\/uncategorized\/use-arcade-expressions-to-map-your-ideas\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"blog","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":82321,"post_author":"7641","post_date":"2026-03-18 18:01:46","post_date_gmt":"2026-03-19 01:01:46","post_content":"","post_title":"Use Arcade to rotate symbols in web maps","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"arcade-rotate-symbols","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2026-04-13 23:18:30","post_modified_gmt":"2026-04-14 06:18:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/product\/uncategorized\/using-arcade-to-rotate-symbols-in-web-maps\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"blog","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"card_image":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Land-to-improvement-ratio-small.jpg","wide_image":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Land-to-Improvement-ratio.png","authors":[{"ID":4161,"user_firstname":"Jim","user_lastname":"Herries","nickname":"Jim Herries","user_nicename":"jimhe","display_name":"Jim Herries","user_email":"jherries@esri.com","user_url":"","user_registered":"2018-03-02 00:15:47","user_description":"Jim Herries is a geographer with Esri in Redlands, California. He serves as Senior Principal GIS Engineer, GIS Engineering Lead, Cartography on the team responsible for ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World.\r\n\r\nJim works with teams on thematic mapping and other types of maps that bring data to life, reflecting a drive to help GIS users find insights as they go along. He constantly looks for ways to create clear, focused map information products that incorporate meaningful spatial analysis and evocative visualizations. \r\n\r\nWhen he started in GIS at Ohio State, he walked over to the campus library to transcribe census data by hand to paper so that he could hand-enter it into spreadsheets for upload into Arc\/INFO for mapping and analysis. Today, he appreciates how web GIS brings everyone access to good data in useful layers and maps as a starting point for great work.","user_avatar":""}]},"yoast_head":"\nUse Arcade Expressions to Map the Land to Improvement Ratios in Your Area<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"An interesting way to look at a community is to map various measures of the value of its parcels, including a measure called the land to improvement ratio. % %\" \/>\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-online\/arcade\/use-arcade-expressions-to-map-the-land-to-improvement-ratios-in-your-area\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Use Arcade Expressions to Map the Land to Improvement Ratios in Your Area\" \/>\n<meta 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