Right Place, Right Time

Electrical Inspectors in Washington State Use Navigator for ArcGIS to Get to Inspection Sites

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The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries’ mobile inspection app displays downloaded or searched inspection locations (green), as well as the inspector's starting point (purple).

Electrical inspectors from the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) use the Navigator for ArcGIS mobile app from Esri to get audible, turn by turn directions to the sites they need to inspect. The agency also uses a custom app built using the ArcGIS platform to plan those routes.

L&I is responsible for ensuring and maintaining the safety, health, and security of workers all over Washington. The department assists employers in meeting health and safety standards and inspects workplaces when notified of hazards or potential dangers. With 19 offices throughout the state, the department employs approximately 2,800 people—including safety inspectors, claims specialists, nurses, researchers, accountants, labor experts, and support staff.

Anytime a resident or business in Washington installs electrical equipment or makes an upgrade to an electrical system, the local municipality or L&I must inspect it. The department’s 200 inspectors perform nearly 200,000 electrical inspections each year.

To develop more efficient inspection workflows, L&I decided to have its electrical inspectors create their own customized travel routes. Navigator for ArcGIS became the centerpiece of this project because of its ability to route multiple stops and recalculate a route if something changes.

“By making it easier and faster for our inspectors to drive from site to site, they will be able to more easily complete their daily inspections,” said Winston McKenna, a GIS product administrator for L&I. “We wanted to have a workflow and applications we could consistently count on being up-to-date and using the latest information for routing and geocoding.”

Creating Customized Routes

Navigator for ArcGIS provides turn-by-turn directions for the inspectors.

McKenna and his team developed an ArcGIS platform-based solution that incorporates geocoding, routing, and custom basemaps. Now, when someone submits an application for an inspection through the department’s website, the application is added to a SQL database and the address is geocoded. Electrical supervisors can then see the geocoded addresses displayed on their workstations, which they use to assign inspection locations to each inspector.

When the inspectors see their assignments pop up on their laptops, they can create an optimized route for their workday using a custom app that employs the ArcGIS Network Analyst extension and StreetMap Premium for ArcGIS, both in ArcGIS Enterprise. When their routes are planned, the inspectors save them as web links and then connect their department-issued iPhones to the planned route using Navigator for ArcGIS.

“Information in StreetMap Premium is well-organized, well-maintained, and consistent from release to release,” McKenna said. “Updating the geocoding and routing service is a breeze, and there is minimal interruption.”

Inspectors use Navigator for ArcGIS on their iPhones to receive audible, turn-by-turn directions as they drive to each inspection stop. A custom L&I basemap enables managers and inspectors to add, maintain, and update any information along inspectors’ routes—such as rural or forest roads, fuel stations, department offices, and regional boundaries. The team also created a map package that allows inspectors to use Navigator for ArcGIS while offline in places with limited or no connectivity.

“It’s the easiest, most time-efficient, and most process-efficient way to create customized routes,” said McKenna. “We can adjust the settings to reflect the environment across the state—for example, routes that involve taking a ferry or areas that are closed for parts of the year due to weather.”

With Navigator for ArcGIS now part of its daily operations, the department has a consistent view of its authoritative data on a navigation map that its users can customize and configure. It is easy to create and share efficient route plans, and L&I has facilitated clearer communication between managers in the office and inspectors in the field.

The department also saves time and money because inspectors now drive fewer miles by sequencing stops in the most logical order and taking the surest route to their inspections.

“Navigator reduces unnecessary stops and will readjust the order to minimize the time and distance from location to location,” said McKenna, who indicated that inspectors are showing a 1 to 3 percent increase in the number of inspections they complete. “Our inspectors now have a dynamic navigation and visualization tool [that] allows them to adjust to changes in their workday responsibilities. If someone needs to cancel or delay their inspection, the inspector can make the change in Navigator for ArcGIS, and the app will account for that.”

To learn more about L&I implemented Navigator for ArcGIS into its daily workflows, email McKenna at winston.mckenna@lni.wa.gov.

Back to Basics

Scott Morehouse, a Driving Force in GIS Software Development at Esri for Many Years, Is Designing New Systems. But the Ideas behind Them Have Roots in the Past.

By Carla Wheeler
ArcWatch Editor

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Scott Morehouse joined Esri in 1981. In 1982, ARC/INFO software for mini-computers was released.

Scott Morehouse has spent more than three decades steering the software development ship at Esri. If you use ArcGIS in any way, shape, or form, Morehouse had a big hand in bringing your software to life.

The geographer and computer scientist cut his teeth on computer mapping at the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis at Harvard University in the late 1970s. That's the same lab where Esri president Jack Dangermond worked years earlier, though the two men never crossed paths there.

With its Tektronix terminals and whiteboards to work on, the lab at Gund Hall was an incubator for the ideas on how to design and build computer mapping software. Morehouse was part of the team that developed ODYSSEY, a vector GIS and a forebear of Esri's first commercial GIS software, ARC/INFO. After meeting Morehouse at a conference in Maine, Dangermond hired the smart, young software developer in 1981 to design and launch ARC/INFO and, later, the ArcGIS product line.

Five years ago, Morehouse decided to change course professionally. He left his longtime role as Esri’s director of software development to work with small research and development teams at Esri on civic engagement and urban systems that use GIS technology.

While the projects are new, the ideas on which they are based are rooted in the original mission of Esri, when it started as a land-use consulting company in 1969: fostering well-informed urban design.

Work on the frameworks for the Urban and Hub systems is well under way. Esri recently launched the ArcGIS Hub product to support participatory government and has moved into the 3D GIS sphere in urban landscape modeling.

Morehouse and Dangermond both started their careers with a strong interest in data-driven land-use planning coupled with the idea of civic engagement. "You're rethinking the whole game?" Dangermond asked Morehouse during a brief conversation onstage at the 2018 Geodesign Summit, held earlier this year at Esri headquarters in Redlands, California.

"I've gone back to basics," said Morehouse. "I want to build systems that serve people—systems to guide, direct, or organize the civic process."

Morehouse recently took time to talk more extensively about these projects. His comments have been edited for conciseness.

What's your role today at Esri?

Morehouse: I direct the Esri research and development [R&D] centers in Washington, DC; Zurich, Switzerland; and Beijing, China. I have two initiatives I am working primarily on now. One is the Hub system framework, which is the environment for citizen engagement and collaboration. The other is this Urban system framework, which is about envisioning and supporting the development/redevelopment/planning process.

What does "going back to basics" mean to you?

Esri president Jack Dangermond (left) chats with Morehouse about community engagement and urban planning during the 2018 Geodesign Summit.

Morehouse: We invent systems to solve problems and serve a community of people. That's fundamentally where the GIS idea comes from, which is creating a system that can work with maps and geographic information and helps people do their work. It's a cool set of concepts that have been used across different domains—cartography, forestry, military planning, city operations, and many others.

With our new work in the research and development of the Urban system and the Hub system, I've taken the same principles into account. If we want to create a system that helps a community of people work with their elected officials and their city government to more effectively manage their built environment and accomplish other civic goals, what would that system look like?

Many people are applying a more generic GIS concept in urban governance and urban planning and local government use cases. As things have become more sophisticated from a technology standpoint, we realized that creating a system that focuses on the user's needs, concepts, and workflows—and takes advantage of everything that we've done with the GIS platform—would be really useful and valuable.

The Vacant Lots Opportunities ArcGIS Hub site was created by the City of South Bend, Indiana. It offers a digital space for city government and residents to explore vacant lots and collaborate on finding uses for the lots in the city’s Southeast Neighborhood.

South Bend residents can visualize proposals by viewing charts, reports, dashboards, and apps and then provide feedback by taking surveys on the city’s ArcGIS Hub site.

So rather than each customer assembling its own civic engagement system from scratch using various ArcGIS software products, Esri could deliver it basically ready-made?

Apps like the Positive Reuse Options for Vacant Lots story map, dashboards, and charts can all be included on a city’s ArcGIS Hub site, providing residents with information about initiatives.

Morehouse: There's an opportunity for Esri to deliver this as a well-designed system with a commitment to sustain it with initiatives and user experiences.

The cities of Los Angeles and South Bend, Indiana, have begun to implement this Hub idea. Hub is like GIS. It's an idea for a process, and it is also technology that Esri is developing as a commercial off-the-shelf [COTS] framework or a product. And it's also an implementation that individual cities can do.

[Visit Los Angeles GeoHub to see an example of a Hub initiative, Vision Zero, which aims to reduce deaths from traffic collisions and improve pedestrian and bicyclist safety. In South Bend, the city used ArcGIS Hub to create the Vacant Lots Opportunities initiative web page. The public and community organizations can use the site to explore ways to positively reuse vacant lots, such as by creating pocket parks or rain gardens. It's a digital space where government and community members can share information, provide feedback, and collaborate to decide what should be done with these vacant spaces.]

How do open data capabilities—which governments can use to share open data for use by everyone from app developers to entrepreneurs to residents—fit into the Hub idea?

Morehouse: The addition of open data capabilities to the ArcGIS platform was the germ of getting people together around the table, the idea being that if we just put some data in the middle of the table, then everybody could gather around that data. The activists and the startup companies and the different [governmental] departments could at least have a more intelligent conversation because it was data driven.

Everyone said, "This is great." We thought that if we put the data there, wonderful things would just happen.

And if you were [savvy] enough to know how to turn a spreadsheet into something interesting, you could do something there. How many people can take a spreadsheet of trash collection data and turn it into understanding? [The question is], How can we create a sustainable system framework for such applications?

So something needed to be done beyond creating open data sites to spur more collaborative civic engagement?

Cities can make information about zoning, infrastructure, transportation, underutilized business zones, incentivized areas, and demographics, easily explorable using ArcGIS Hub economic development apps. Business owners, developers, and other entrepreneurs can find the information they seek to make data-driven decisions.

Morehouse: Open data is an incredibly important part of the idea. However, Esri believes that intentional design of good systems is a hard job. It doesn't just emerge magically from making data available. Design and a sustained implementation are essential parts of the process. So we said, okay, if having the information accessible and available in thiscollaborative way is a great idea, what is it that people really want to do? And how do we just not make these things be giant data dumps of semiobsolete information? That's what led us from open data sites to the Hub. With the Hub, the notion is that you basically have a purpose for making information available and for collaborating. And the purpose is what we call an initiative. Initiatives could be centered around affordable housing, homelessness, or whether building a new basketball stadium is a good idea.

If a city or utility wants to involve a community of collaborators from outside its organization—such as startups and citizens—what are the initiatives they want to tackle?

An example people often use is Vision Zero for pedestrian safety. The vision is reducing pedestrian deaths. We can organize a lot of information and activities around that: identifying and fixing dangerous intersections, learning where and why pedestrian accidents are happening, and finding ways to get bicyclists and drivers to safely share the road.

Are there currently tools in ArcGIS Hub to collaborate interactively on initiatives?

Morehouse: Yes, there are collaborative tools within ArcGIS Hub, and more will be added. For a traffic safety initiative, you will be able to see, for example, a dashboard with traffic accident statistics, a map produced from an analysis that shows the safe streets and less safe streets, and an analysis of what have been identified as dangerous intersections. And then, here is a question to answer: Are there any dangerous intersections near you? If so, you can report them through this survey form. And here's a series of meetings that will be taking place, where you can meet the people who are drawing the stripes on your road that separate the bicycles from the cars. You can talk to them about what they are doing in your neighborhood.

Will Hub systems be designed to get people more deeply involved in the planning process?

Morehouse: People who are interested in participating and contributing can do so at a deeper level. Say you are in a bicycle club and you have a passion as an activist to help [planners] get the design right—you can join the group that's associated with this initiative and do more: get access to data, make your own maps, and contribute those to the initiative page. That's already starting to happen.

What's coming next?

Morehouse: We've created this contextual Hub framework. We've made the data available. But it's still difficult for people to build apps for the initiatives and figure out how to do this well. So we are building more functionality into ArcGIS Hub. Many organizations want to do surveys for their initiatives, where people can report things like dangerous intersections or report street trees that are damaged and need their cages fixed.

So we are going to build on it—not just build more initiatives but build user experiences that allow people that use the system to configure and manage their own initiatives.

What types of configurable user experiences will Esri provide?

ArcGIS Hub sites can help residents learn more about the unique characteristics of their cities and neighborhoods.

Morehouse: We will provide opioid, homelessness, and Vision Zero initiative templates. There are also two economic development initiatives. One will help governments attract businesses to their communities. This is a template or framework that a city could use to feature or highlight its vacant office space or industrial or commercial land and attract investment. Every community has prime real estate it wants developed, and [officials] want to help people choose sites wisely. This initiative—with an accompanying configurable app—gives city governments the ability to show businesses that might want to locate in their community what the city can offer. For example, the businesses will be able to use the app to explore the city's infrastructure and demographics.

The second economic development initiative and app are designed to help cities showcase amenities and neighborhoods to help people who are considering a move to a community make informed choices as to where they want to live. People will be able to explore information about various neighborhoods, such as school and transit options.

The recent ArcGIS Hub release includes the two economic development initiatives, along with the tools to support them.

But we are in the early days with this Hub system. Over time, we will be doing more and more.

Please provide an overview of a 3D urban system powered with real-time information.

Demand is growing for seeing cities in 3D.

Morehouse: The Urban system framework is different from the Hub, but related. People are very interested in and need to understand the life of their city or town—what's happening now—and want to use that real-world information to plan and manage the development of the city as a good place for people to live and work. This starts with understanding in context. Where is the economic activity taking place? Where are the people who are at risk—the elderly, the sick, the homeless? Where is the infrastructure breaking down? Where are the roads in need of repair?

A lot of things can be considered as—if you will—instrumentation that you can place in the context of a model of your city. So you can say, "Here's my city and I can see where the at-risk people are and the elderly. I can see that information now in relation to our services in a 3D environment—just how you communicate what's going on.

You have this picture of your city that you can visualize with what we are calling indicators. There are indicators that relate to the population. There are indicators that relate to the way the city is operating. Where is the trash collection happening? Where are we resurfacing roads? There are indicators that relate to the physical infrastructure of the city, to economic investment and revenue, and so on.

You want to be able to understand and visualize not only the state of this urban landscape but also the actions that we [as residents] are paying for or that we [as city officials] are managing or that we [as planners or architects] are supposed to design well.

All the people around the table are interested in the health and life of the city, as well as where the projects are and what the zoning is. That is another aspect of this Urban system we are looking at—it puts it in the context of making maps that communicate meaningful information.

Why is it important to consider city operations in 3D?

Cities can use ArcGIS Hub economic development initiative templates to create web pages and apps that highlight attractions such as hiking trails, farmers markets, and parks.

Morehouse: Because 3D just is what it is. Why is it important to know that the emergency medical services team goes to the eighth floor instead of the door of a building? If I am a real estate person, why is it important to know the price per square foot on the first floor versus the price per square foot on the fiftieth floor?

Fundamentally, it's clear that these things about how a city works start being three-dimensional. The Urban system framework starts with the principle that cities are three-dimensional. The only reason they were ever shown on 2D maps is because they did not have three-dimensional vellum when they started making [planning] maps in 1880. If the designers and planners of 100 years ago had what we have now, they would have done things differently.

Cities are three-dimensional first. What does that mean? The value of apartments in a building aren't the same. The higher floors that overlook the park, for example, are more valuable than the lower floors. And more and more, mixed residential/commercial projects need to be fundamentally in a three-dimensional view.

The units being rented, having values assigned, going through permit approvals, or generating 911 calls—are spaces in buildings. They are not polygons on a map.

Are there other reasons that 3D models are important?

Analyses can be done to compare the space available for residential, office, and retail use in two different 3D building models.

Morehouse: A 3D model of an urban landscape is also useful from a communication point of view.

How many times have you seen the choropleth maps of census tracts—you know, those colored polygons that show income, poverty, population density, and so on? And you are never quite sure where your house is, because it is census geography. It doesn't grab you.

But imagine if you saw a three-dimensional model of your city where each set of buildings was colored by how many 911 calls were responded to or by how many permits were issued for kitchen remodels in this condo complex versus in that condo complex.

Have you seen the walkability maps that people make for their city that show green areas where you can walk? Imagine if the buildings were colored by walkability rather than just the polygon colored by walkability—that would actually grab you—that building would be good to live in because it's green.

Watch a video of Morehouse speaking about how he got his start in computer mapping and how he came to work at Esri.

Make an Earthquake Map in a Minute

By Bern Szukalski
Esri Technology Evangelist

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The jolt came while I was sitting at the kitchen counter with my laptop open, catching up on a few loose threads left over from a busy day. Suddenly, I felt a bam. That was followed by another BAM—this one more forceful—as if a large hand had slapped the side of the house. I knew immediately what it was, a sensation familiar to those of us who live in Southern California. It was an earthquake. I knew it was close to my house in Redlands, but where?

I signed in to my ArcGIS Online account, opened Map Viewer, and browsed ArcGIS Living Atlas of the Worldto search for earthquake feeds and layers to make a map to learn where the quake occurred.

By typing earthquake in the search box, I quickly found the Living Atlas layers I wanted—Recent Earthquakes, Earthquake Faults, and Linear Earthquake Faults.

By clicking Recent Earthquakes, I quickly discovered that the quake, which struck on February 14, 2018, was centered in Mentone, a community just northeast of Redlands. The colored area is the PAGER alert polygon, automatically generated when significant seismic events occur.

PAGER (stands for Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response) is the United States Geological Survey's (USGS) earthquake site. It is an automated system that takes in seismic data from remote sensors and rapidly estimates earthquake shaking and the scope and impact of earthquakes around the world.

Learn more about PAGER.

Next, I opened the Recent Earthquakes layer and turned on the Events by Magnitude sublayer.

My map now showed a cluster of earthquakes in Mentone, the two largest of which I felt. The largest one was a magnitude 3.34—just a little nudge but close enough to be felt. (Note: You will be unable to recreate this exact scenario using the Mentone quake that occurred on February 14. Data about small earthquakes is frequently culled from the Recent Earthquakes layer. For example, earthquake events with a magnitude of less than 4.5 are only available in the Recent Quakes layer for seven days.)

I added other layers from Living Atlas to get some additional context about the nearby faults.

I discovered that this little cluster of temblors occurred along the Redlands fault, in the Crafton Hills fault zone.

In just about a minute, I had completed my map of the earthquake. I knew a lot more about the situation than I did when I felt that first jolt, thanks to ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World.

To learn more, visit ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World.

What’s New in ArcGIS Online (December 2017)

by Bern Szukalski on December 6, 2017

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ArcGIS Online has just been updated with the following new features and enhancements. This release includes a more flexible user experience for managing and discovering content, Insights for ArcGIS, administrative enhancements, and other improvements throughout the site.

For additional information see the What’s new help topic or ArcGIS blog posts specific to this release.

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User experience

Start Page

You can specify the start page that you first see when you sign in to your account. The setting is managed in your Profile.

The specified page appears each time you sign in to your site. For example, set your start page to Gallery to go directly to your organization’s gallery page, or set your start page to Map to open the Map Viewer automatically after signing in. See Start page for details.

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App Launcher

Administrators can now make web apps available to organization members by adding apps to the app launcher. The app launcher appears in the upper right next to Search after signing in.

Members can personalize their view of the app launcher by dragging and dropping apps to change the order in which they are displayed.

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Item Status

Items can now be marked as authoritative or deprecated in the item settings. Administrators and content curators in your organization—those with privileges to update organization content—can now designate items as Authoritative. Users can deprecate items they own. Setting the status makes it easier for members of your organization to find reliable, authoritative items while discouraging the use of items that are not as reliable or becoming out-of-date. Items with these status indicators are identified by a corresponding badge on the item page.

The Status filter can be used when members search or browse for content. Organization members can also restrict layer searches to authoritative layers when authoring maps using the Map Viewer. The Authoritative status is currently only visible within your organization, Deprecated status is also visible outside your organization.

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Item information

A new status bar and interactive checklist on item pages help item owners and administrators improve item information, making it easier for others to find, understand, and use their items.

As item details are completed, the status bar shows the current item information completion status, and offers suggestions for improvement. See Item information for more details.

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Mobile devices

ArcGIS Online has been enhanced to better support mobile devices. Open layers in Map Viewer using the new open link on the layer’s item page. Sign in with your enterprise or social network credentials and get help with your password and user name.

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Insights for ArcGIS

Insights for ArcGIS is a web-based, data analytics workbench that allows you to perform iterative and exploratory data analysis. A new version is now available for ArcGIS Online, previously Insights was only available with ArcGIS Enterprise.

Using interactive linked cards, you can gain new discoveries about your spatial and nonspatial data. Linked cards allow you to click on a map or chart and see related data light up on another card. In the example above, crimes are explored by type, volume, and density to see if patterns change over time.

For more information, see the Insights for ArcGIS website or Insights for ArcGIS help.

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Map Viewer

Map Viewer is a built-in app that enables you to view and author maps, navigate, see map details, edit, perform analysis, and more (depending on your privileges). New for this release:

Analysis tools include a new Find Centroids, allowing you to find the geometric center of multi-point, line, or area features.

Aggregate Points and Summarize Within have a new option to generate custom square or hexagon bins instead of summarizing your data within an input area layer.

Light up your map with a new Firefly symbol set. A firefly point symbol is a dot with a colorized glow effect, useful for creating dramatic thematic maps. These symbols are especially effective when used with the World Imagery (Firefly) basemap.

See more Firefly symbols and basemaps in the Living Atlas of the World.

You can now use geometric operations in Arcade expressions defined for smart mapping styles, labeling, and pop-ups. Use advanced functions to normalize by area, test spatial relationships, compute distances between defined areas, and more.

You can now update the URL of layers in your map from HTTP to HTTPS, or from staging versions of your ArcGIS service layers to production versions. This is available via the Settings tab for the map item. ArcGIS Online inspects each layer in the map. If any layers use HTTP, ArcGIS Online attempts to make a request to the same layer using HTTPS, and then updates the map and any associated layer items you own or administer. If a layer does not support HTTPS, you are notified and the layer URL is not updated. See Layer Settings for more details.

Arrows are now available to indicate direction when styling line features. See Change symbols for more information.

You can now add GeoJSON files to your map. GeoJSON is a widely used open standard format for encoding a variety of geographic data structures in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format. See Add layers from files.

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Scene Viewer

Scene Viewer is an app built into ArcGIS Online for creating and interacting with 3D scenes. New for this release:

You can now measure distances in 3D between two points in Scene Viewer. Choose different measuring units and leverage interactive laser lines to calculate the direct and vertical distances in your scenes. See Measure your scene.

Scene layer performance has significantly improved in this release. Buildings and integrated mesh scene layers now load faster using the correct priority order. Additionally, when zooming to scene layers, data is temporarily cached enabling the layers redraw much faster.

3D symbols from ArcGIS Pro can be used in your scene via style files published from Pro. In addition, organization Administrators can now configure custom web styles for Scene Viewer.

Other enhancements in Scene Viewer include the inclusion of 3D ArcGIS Marketplace subscription content, and 3D mobile support (still in experimental phase).

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Data collection & management

You can now use CSV and Microsoft Excel files stored in Microsoft One Drive and Dropbox to publish hosted feature layers. If you update the the data in the file on the cloud drive, you can overwrite the data in the hosted feature layer using the updated cloud data. Google Drive, including Google Sheets, will be supported soon after this initial release. For more information, see Add and publish files from a cloud drive.

Administrators and owners can now append data to layers in existing hosted feature layers without needing to overwrite the entire hosted feature layer.

You can now define an area of interest for hosted feature layer views to limit access to features within a particular area.

New editing options are available for hosted feature layers and hosted feature layer views, providing more fine-grained control over what operations editors can perform.

After enabling editing, choose the editing capability allowed on the feature layer. See Manage editor settings for details.

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Living Atlas

ArcGIS includes Living Atlas of the World, a global collection of authoritative, curated content from Esri and the GIS community. Living Atlas is an integrated part of the ArcGIS platform, providing an easy way to access basemaps, maps, layers, and more covering thousands of topics.

Esri vector basemaps have been updated to include additional Esri Community Maps content and style refinements. New vector basemaps are also available. Shown below is Nova – a recently introduced vector tile layer that provides a detailed basemap for the world featuring a dark background with glowing blue symbology.

See the Vector Basemaps blog posts for more information on how to take advantage of these new basemaps. For more information on Nova, view the item details.

A new version of the SSURGO Downloader has been released, providing quick access to ready-to-use map packages filled with useful soil data with over 150 attributes derived from the SSURGO dataset.

To use this application, navigate to your study area and click the map. A pop-up window will open. Click download, and the map package will be copied to your computer.

World Imagery basemap has been updated with additional sets of DigitalGlobe imagery for several countries, including sub-meter resolution Basemap +Vivid imagery for Australia and the United States. In addition, sub-meter resolution Basemap +Metro imagery has been published for a few hundred additional cities around the world.

Updates have been made to the demographic maps for Germany and several other countries. The demographic maps now feature the latest demographic data for Germany from Nexiga. In addition, updates have been released for several other countries using the latest Michael Bauer Research demographic data.

Detailed local boundaries, based on authoritative data from national government sources, have been published for a few countries. These boundary layers can be used for visualization and analysis in ArcGIS Online.

For the latest information, see the Living Atlas blog posts.

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ArcGIS Hub

ArcGIS Hub is a platform for public engagement and citizen collaboration. It makes a smart community even smarter, giving context and purpose to data and organizing people, processes, and technology to meet the needs of citizens and governments.

ArcGIS Hub has recently been updated with the following:

Site and Page improvements include new cards that enable you to quickly and easily configure and customize your sites. Site Themeshave an improved editor, and now include 7 configurable theme options. Initiatives include better tools for managing and monitoring team members, and improvements to the Community Dashboard. Citizen Perspectives enable community members to sign-in to your Hub to analyze data and contribute local perspectives. Finally, Hub now supports 31 languages, and includes accessibility and mobile device improvements.

For more information, see ArcGIS Hub updates for December 2017.

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Administration

Custom roles include the privilege to link to enterprise groups. To take advantage of the new privilege in existing custom roles, edit the role, add in the new privilege, and save the role.

Members with Level 1 accounts can now join external groups if assigned to a custom role granting this privilege.

Members who have the privilege to update member account information can now also reset passwords for other members. Resetting passwords is no longer a privilege reserved for default administrators.

A new setting allows administrators to prevent all ArcGIS Pro licenses in the organization from being taken offline.

The invitation process has been improved; you can now enable Esri access when inviting and adding members. A member whose account has Esri access enabled can use My Esri and GeoNet Community and Forums, access e-Learning on the Training website, and manage email communications from Esri.

Organizations can now create groups whose membership is controlled by SAML-based enterprise groups.

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App builders

App builders enable anyone to to build compelling applications, no coding required. App builders have been updated with the following enhancements:

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AppStudio for ArcGIS

AppStudio for ArcGIS lets you convert your maps into consumer-friendly mobile apps ready for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and publish them using your own brand to all popular app stores – no developer skills required. See Palm Springs Map Tour as an example.

AppStudio has released major enhancements across the board, including an improved user interface for desktop tools and additional features in templates. AppStudio now uses Qt 5.9.1 and supports ArcGIS Runtime 100.1. For more information, see What’s new in AppStudio for ArcGIS.

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Story Maps

Story Maps let you combine authoritative maps with narrative text, images, and multimedia content, making it easy to harness the power of maps and geography to tell your story. Continuing commitment to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, additional accessibility improvements have been made to Story Map Journal.

You can now specify alternative text for your story’s media, plus new heading tags and landmarks provide better semantic structure for assistive technologies. Further improvements have been made to the keyboard navigation controls added in the September 2017 update. For more information, see the Story Maps blog posts.

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Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS

Web AppBuilder offers a way for you to easily create HTML/JavaScript apps that run on any device, using a gallery of ready-to-use-widgets. You can customize the look of your apps with configurable themes, and can host your apps online or on your own server.

Web AppBuilder now adds two new widgets and several enhancements to existing widgets. The new Cost Analysis (beta) allows you to sketch a proposed design and get an estimated cost of the project. Use the new Public Notification to define a collection of properties and create mailing labels for the owners or occupants. End-users can now build their own filter expressions with Filter. Filter expressions now support relative dates such as today and last week. Infographic has eight new templates and now supports custom colors.

Other widget enhancements include support for local KML in Add Data, layer visibility in Bookmark, layer selection control in Select, layer selection and zoom to the swipe layer in Swipe, and saving all edits to attributes with one commit in Edit.

For more information, see What’s new in Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS.

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Configurable apps

Configurable apps allow you to choose from a comprehensive set of templates to quickly author an app. For this release, the configuration pane in configurable apps has improved validation. For more information, see the configurable apps blog posts.

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Apps for the field

ArcGIS field apps help you improve coordination and operational efficiencies in field workforce activities. Field app enhancements since the last ArcGIS Online update include the following:

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Collector for ArcGIS

Collector for ArcGIS enables your field workforce to use smartphones or tablets to collect and update information in the field, whether connected or disconnected. Collector has updated since the last ArcGIS Online release with the following:

• Trimble Catalyst is supported on Android, allowing you to use Trimble’s new subscription-based software GNSS receiver capable of collecting data at centimeter accuracy.
• For organizations that require their accuracy be calculated using a 95 percent confidence interval, you can require the same in Collector.
• Collector’s custom URL scheme lets you include information to start a collection when launching Collector.

For more information, see What’s new in Collector for ArcGIS

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Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS

Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS is an app that enables you to monitor, track, and assess your assets and daily operations.

Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS now supports authoring dashboards in the browser. Configure highly interactive dashboards composed of charts, gauges, maps, and other visual elements. Use better maps, with support for smart mapping, stream layers, and labels. Create powerful layouts with grouping and stacking. Get revamped data visualizations and improved date-based filtering. Manage your dashboards in the dashboard home page. For more information see Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS.

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Survey123 for ArcGIS

Survey123 for ArcGIS is a simple and intuitive form-centric data gathering solution that makes creating, sharing, and analyzing surveys possible in three easy steps.

Survey123 has had an incremental release since the last ArcGIS Online update. The release features the following:

Survey123 Connect now includes the ability to add fields to an existing feature service, disable the Sent box, and ensure fields are created in the feature service for note questions. Camera zoom has been added to image capture in the field app and barcode scanning defaults have been improved.

The Survey123 website has been partially redesigned to provide a more intuitive, user-friendly experience. The website now includes support for modifying field names, the ability to delete a survey without deleting the associated feature service, and support for nested repeats and groups, as well as having improved performance for custom reports.

For more information, see What’s new in Survey123 for ArcGIS.

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Workforce for ArcGIS

Workforce for ArcGIS is a mobile solution that uses location-based decision making for better field workforce coordination and teamwork. It is composed of a web app used by project administrators and dispatchers in the office, and a mobile app used by mobile workers on their devices.

Workforce released an update focused on enhancing communication between Workforce and other apps, and between dispatchers and mobile workers. You can configure your Workforce project so that information provided in the assignment can be passed to Collector for ArcGIS or Survey123 for ArcGIS when launching those apps through Workforce.

Mobile workers can add attachments while they are working in the field, and dispatchers can access those attachments through the website. Dispatchers now see the date an assignment last changed state, showing how recently assignments have progressed. Project owners now have better ways to identify project members who are no longer part of the organization.

For more information, see What’s new in Workforce for ArcGIS.

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Apps for the office

ArcGIS Apps for the Office enable you to put powerful, user-friendly tools and data into the hands of data analysts to gain location-based insights and make decisions that save money and time. Some apps for the office have been updated, highlights include the following:

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ArcGIS Business Analyst

ArcGIS Business Analyst helps you make smarter market planning, site selection, and customer segmentation decisions by combining demographic, lifestyle, behavioral, and spending data, maps, infographics and reports with analytics.

Business Analyst Web App now allows you to set validation on location attributes. Setting validation on location attributes helps you apply specific constraints on the site attribute values, and control what kind of data your field users capture. For example, prospective locations must have greater than 100 parking spaces or the building condition should be chosen from a drop down with options – good, average, poor.

This will be possible to set up while creating projects in the Business Analyst Web App. Both Business Analyst Web and Mobile apps will honor the validations defined and show informative messages when the entered numerical value is out of the defined range, or not in the dropdown options for text fields.

There’s also a new Executive Summary infographic template, and the ability to use maps in custom reports, plus enhancements throughout the user experience. For more information, see Business Analyst Web App What’s New.

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ArcGIS Maps for Power BI

ArcGIS Maps for Power BI geo-enables Microsoft Power BI with spatial analytics, and offers enhanced mapping capabilities, demographic data, and more visualizations. The latest update introduces the new Plus subscription feature. Upgrading to a paid monthly Plus subscription allows you to add enhanced content and capabilities, including higher geocoding limits, more basemaps, global demographics, and access to Esri Living Atlas maps and layers to use as reference layers. For more information, see ArcGIS Maps for Power BI.

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ArcGIS Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud

ArcGIS Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud is intended for design and communications professionals, delivering access to data-driven maps inside Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

You can now sign in to ArcGIS Online using your enterprise login or use your email address to access ArcGIS Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud as an anonymous user. Anonymous users have access to all public content hosted on ArcGIS Online. You now also have more control over the use of layers; you can manage labels to improve the overall appearance of your map and add or modify existing filters (definition queries) to refine what data is visible, based on attribute queries. New, large-scale vector content for the United States and the world is available, and you can now download CSV and TXT file data into the compilation window. For more information, see the ArcGIS Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud help.

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Drone2Map for ArcGIS

Drone2Map for ArcGIS turns your drone into an enterprise GIS productivity tool by enabling you to create orthomosaics, 3D meshes, and more from your drone-captured still imagery.

Drone2Map has been updated with new features and performance improvements. The latest release adds the ability to create compressed zLAS point clouds, rolling shutter correction, GCP photo support, Integrated Windows Authentication, and flight altitude adjustment tools. For more information, see the Drone2Map for ArcGIS help.

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Other enhancements

ArcGIS Runtime app developers can now prepare map areas ahead of time for offline use. This provides a faster and more streamlined offline experience.

Slovenian is now a supported language in the website.

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For more information about the December 2017 release

For more information see the What’s new help topic or ArcGIS blog posts specific to this release.

This entry was posted in ArcGIS Online, Living Atlas, Story Maps and tagged december 2017 release, whats new december 2017. Bookmark the permalink.

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