How are Recent Earthquakes published in Living Atlas?

Question

Hi all,

I wanted to know how the Recent Earthquakes Living atlas layer has been published? Noting that the Recent Earthquakes has two sublayers, one polygon, one point. 
When i examine the Feature Service I see that there is a Source section pointing to a different feature server 'USGS Seismic Data B2' (see below)

Can someone confirm how Recent Earthquakes would be "built from" another feature server?

I'd like to be able to make a feature service of my own that is "built from" two existing published feature services, so that there is just one portal item, how would I achieve this?

Thanks,

Nina

BernSzukalski · Answer

Perhaps to simplify what Paul said. It is not possible in ArcGIS Online to combine multiple unique and heterogenous  services (point + poly, line + poly, etc) into a single service endpoint. Using analysis tools you can merge like features into a single service, but not different feature types.

Using ArcGIS Pro, you can publish a single service endpoint combining heterogenous feature types, like the point + polygon service you mention.

PDodd · Answer

Hey Nina,

The Recent Earthquakes service is a publicly shared View, created from a single Hosted Feature Service that contains multiple Feature Layers.

For maintenance, the View is supported by two identical Feature Services, one is active and the other is inactive. A View can only support Layers from a single service. During the update cycle, the inactive service is updated (overwritten) and then the View layers are swapped to point to the newly updated service using the Source Swap technique.

Our update scripts use the OverwriteFS tool that we maintain, allowing us to Overwrite services and Swap view layers without the use of a UI.

I hope this helps!