Fall NEARC 2018

AUTHORS: Daniel J. Myers, GIS Technician, Physical Plant Grounds and Facilities; Christopher A. Copeland, GIS Technician, Physical Plant Landscape Management – University of Massachusetts, Amherst

ABSTRACT: Urban landscapes are dynamic systems inundated by physical, chemical, and biological inputs. As UMass Amherst continues its campaign for campus development, there are inherent conflicts with its urban forest. Trees are assets to any community, each with varying degrees of worth and functionality. A tree inventory is a method to monitor changes to each individual tree and detect patterns to the collective tree population. It serves as a guide to prioritize tree maintenance, preserve valuable specimens, and communicate forest functions to stakeholders. Campus arborists currently update the tree inventory using tablets equipped with ArcPad 10.2 and TreeWorks 2015. With the implementation of UAS technology and ArcPro, campus arborists can more accurately and efficiently measure trees and observe their environment. One centimeter pixel resolution RGB imagery can aid campus arborists in efficiently calculating dendrometric variables and through time series analysis. In our presentation, we will explore the benefits of ESRI Drone2Map and ArcGIS Pro 2.1 Image Analyst extension. These applications are used to create an accurately georeferenced orthomosaic and to conduct an object-oriented classification to identify tree canopy coverage and tree genus at a forty acre study area. As GIS technology evolves, our comprehensive GIS databases functionality can increase as a tool for organizing, analysis, and reporting with ancillary data collected by UAS.

AUTHORS: John Diaz, Robert Nalewajk – Greenman-Pedersen, Inc.

ABSTRACT: GPI is actively utilizing in-house UAS services for a variety of project related tasks. These can vary from obtaining simple graphics for marketing/presentation purposes to complex, surveys and infrastructure assessments. Keeping track of the flights, in terms of planning, scheduling, assigning pilots and notifying Project Managers of the completion of the flight as well as data processing was becoming more difficult as more and more applications for UAS services grew. One of the biggest issues was communicating with the UAS pilots to assign projects and for them to notify staff of the status (planning, complete, etc.).

Utilizing a variety of ESRI GIS products; including Workforce, Collector, Web Apps, AGOL and Desktop, GPI was able to provide a more direct way for Project Managers to coordinate and schedule UAS flights. Through building a Web App, Managers could submit a flight request and check on the status of the flight. Through integrating the Flight Request with Workforce, the flight could be assigned to the UAS Pilot through the mobile application. Integrating the Collector application with Workforce allowed the UAV Pilot to view all details of the project as well as giving them the opportunity to edit relevant data from the field.

Once the flight was completed, a dashboard was developed to provide a quick update of the flight request status.

The discussion will also include GPI's use of Collector and Survey 123 as tools to more efficiently and effectively collect field data for a variety of applications.

AUTHORS: Michael Blair, Innovate! Inc.

ABSTRACT: Innovate developed a custom application, or Data Management Tool (DMT) to improve the quality, consistency, and transparency of US EPA Region 9 geospatial resources. As background, the US EPA Region 9 utilizes a wide range of Esri products in multiple internal, sensitive, and public environments. Maintaining an up to date and accurate inventory of data in enterprise geodatabases, ArcGIS Server services, and ArcGIS Online items is both arduous and complex. Further, a historical focus on project-centric operations tended to silo data by project area or support division, often resulting in data and metadata replication. While EPA Region 9 has deployed previous data management systems, their faults were often in the reliance of manual inventory updates and user input.

The DMT application provides a searchable, sortable, user-friendly interface that not only relates all of the content but checks for the existence of and completeness of related documentation, including hosting environment, metadata, unique identifiers, update cycles, and sharing settings. The application serves as a live, single point of entry for all analysts to find resources, and immediately identify their location, accuracy, and relevance.

The new DMT leverages the backends of enterprise geodatabases in Microsoft SQL Server, ArcGIS for Server, and the ArcGIS Online API to harvest and relate features in all three Esri products. The system is deployed in each environment and automatically harvests items in the enterprise geodatabases and those related to map service layers, including the metadata for all ArcGIS Online items to identify if any contain rest services.

AUTHORS: Katie Budreski*, Jonnie Dunne, Lauren Padilla – Stone Environmental

ABSTRACT: As GIS analysts and data scientists, we rely on the high quality datasets prepared by authoritative sources, such as the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) published by the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (MRLC) and the Cropland Data Layer (CDL) published by the National Agriculture Statistics Service (NASS). These datasets allow us to do powerful and meaningful nationwide analyses. But to fully trust the data for planning and decision making, we need to understand its limitations and incorporate known uncertainty into analyses. Additionally, ancillary data and machine learning can be used to improve locational and information confidence, such as high resolution imagery and image segmentation.

AUTHORS: Mark Zito, CDM Smith

ABSTRACT: Geospatial Analysis can be considered a subset of Data Science. To consider yourself a data scientist, you need to be skilled at programming, data visualization, statistics, machine learning, linear algebra and data wrangling. You also need to know the tools that make all this possible and Python and Jupyter notebooks are leading the pack. Through Esri’s ArcGIS API for Python, Jupyter notebooks are now baked into your desktop software package. In this talk, we will cover the basics of using the notebook with your organizations GIS data and even explore some machine learning models that push the boundaries of what you can do in GIS. You may be asking, why Jupyter notebooks? These notebooks allow you to create and share with live code, markdown text, visualizations including maps, statistical models and more. They are all the rage in the data science community and offer a simple way to share and document your code.

AUTHORS: Rylee Wrenner, Alexander Okscin – University of Massachusetts Amherst

ABSTRACT: Creating geodatabases and visually representing their attributes enables more effective management of campus furnishings and infrastructure. At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, we have used ArcCollector to inventory bike racks, benches, waste bins, and other outdoor assets over the past year. Our ultimate goal was to map all campus spaces. As we transitioned from outdoor to indoor mapping, we switched from ArcOnline to ArcPro, using georeferenced CAD floor plans and 360 photos rather than aerial imagery. Locating indoor assets is not a trivial undertaking, as it requires greater attention to measurement accuracy and and a higher level of security than outdoor assets. In our presentation, we will describe our experience using ArcPro and its AutoCAD integration to inventory indoor campus assets and create a Campus Network for pedestrian accessibility. We will discuss our successes and challenges in developing an efficient data collection methodology and assisting campus stakeholders with mapping indoor assets within 12.9 million gross square feet of building space on the flagship campus of Massachusetts.

AUTHORS: Ian Sleeper, Stephen Patterson – Terracon

ABSTRACT: Python 3 and ArcGIS Pro are here to stay, and with deprecation of ArcMap and Python 2 looming on the horizon, it’s time to make the move. Fear not! Despite the title of our talk, the differences are subtle and only enhance the thrills that Python can bring to your GIS at any level. This presentation will showcase uses of Python 3 with ArcGIS Pro and Portal/ArcGIS Online; starting with simple scripts run within ArcGIS Pro’s Python Window, then with custom geoprocessing tools in a Python toolbox, and culminating with web tools built for ArcGIS Online and Portal using the new ArcGIS API for Python. Presented from the perspectives of both a trained developer (Stephen) and a GIS Analyst (Ian), we will touch on many facets of the Python-GIS ecosystem, such as Conda, ArcPy, custom libraries, and hosted geoprocessing services.

AUTHORS: Jason Wise, Terracon

ABSTRACT: We needed to deploy geoprocessing tools to multiple offices and automate a workflow involving ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Collector, and multiple in-house applications. At the same time, we were weaning ourselves off ArcMap, starting to use ArcGIS Portal, and responding to changes in Pro's Python management functionality. Learn how we deployed our own conda packages, used the Python API to manage portals, used Python to wrangle challenging Excel files, and streamlined tool installation and configuration for users and developers.