ArcWatch: GIS News, Views, and Insights

February 2018

Grounded in Reality

By Barbara Shields
Esri Writer

The flooding in their housing development was swift and furious, leaving hundreds of Hurricane Harvey evacuees from Katy, Texas, demanding information about the condition of their homes and property. That's when Esri emerging business partner GroundVu stepped in, collecting panoramic imagery of the flooded area and using GIS technology to create an application that gave people the ability to see the imagery of the flooding in their neighborhood online. Read the article.

Clicking a location on the map in the Panoramic Imagery Viewer brings up imagery of the flooding in that place.

The Tip

Learn to Add Favorites to Your ArcGIS Pro Projects
In ArcGIS Pro 2.0, you can save and reuse project connections. Gone are the days when you had to re-create folder, database, and server connections for a new ArcGIS Pro project. Now you can save your most-used connections on the new Favorites tab in the Catalog pane. Read the tip.

Join the Conversation

The Headlines

A Global GIS Day Celebration

GIS Day celebrates the people and projects that use GIS technology to make a positive difference all over the world. Five stories encapsulate the flavor of GIS Day 2017. Read the article.

Worthwhile Reads

These three books will give you the skills you need to work with imagery and the latest GIS technology plus find inspiration in projects undertaken by Native American tribes. Read the article.

A Perfect Combination: Maps and Stories

Allen Carroll, program manager for storytelling at Esri, explains the essence of story maps and offers examples of the types of stories you can tell using Esri Story Maps apps. Read the blog.

The Geospatial Report

Making Streets Safer for Pedestrians

Esri and Mobileye are collaborating to collect and analyze visual and telematics data from bus and vehicle sensors, producing information that will help cities heighten pedestrian safety.
View a story map about the project.
Watch the video demonstration.

Trends in Big Data

Mansour Raad, senior software architect and big data specialist at Esri, talks about the three Vs of big data—volume, velocity, and variety—and Esri's work in the big data sphere. Listen to the podcast.

Preventing Poaching Using GIS

African Parks predicts and monitors the movement of poachers in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, utilizing GIS technology such as Drone2Map for ArcGIS. Watch the video

The Two Koreas, Mapped

With the Winter Olympics under way in South Korea (with limited participation by North Korea), it's a perfect time to look at what led to the north-south split, the political and economic conditions in the two countries, and the potential threat of a military conflict. View the story map in English or Korean.

Tech Time

Does Your Story Map Rock?

The Story Maps Gallery features some of the best story maps created by Esri staff and ArcGIS users. If you want to submit your story map for consideration in the gallery, follow these simple steps detailed by Esri technology evangelist Bern Szukalski. Read the article.

What’s Handy to Know about ArcGIS Pro

Ty Fitzpatrick and J. D. Overton from Esri answer some commonly asked questions about ArcGIS Pro and share their tips and tricks on how to use the software application. Watch the tech session.

Scene Viewer Packs a Visual Punch

Recent improvements to Scene Viewer, including new point visualization capabilities and 3D symbols, will make your 3D scenes pop. Learn more.

Meet the New Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS

Esri's Jeff Shaner and Derek Law introduce the new web experience for authoring interactive dashboards with Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS. Listen to the seminar.

Maps & More

Monitor the Health of Your Enterprise GIS

Is your enterprise GIS running as smoothly as possible? Esri’s new ArcGIS Monitor will tell you. It collects data and information on the usage, status, availability, system performance, and resource utilization of your enterprise GIS. Read more.

Light Up Your Maps

Brighten the look of your maps when you use the new firefly symbols, available in ArcGIS Online. Cartographer John Nelson from Esri walks you through how to make your maps glow. Read the blog.

Hardware Offer

Esri offers Arxys servers preinstalled with ArcGIS Enterprise software. You can use a package solution like this to complement or upgrade your GIS infrastructure. Order today.

The Last Word

The Stories Maps Tell

In an Esri podcast, journalist and author James Fallows discusses how digital maps can be used to explore economic, transportation, climate, education, or political trends. Listen to the interview with Fallows.

Dangermond Speaks about The Science of Where