Latest Contributions by DrewStephens

You've heard about the the Esri Ocean and Atmospheric GIS Forum taking place in Redlands, CA November 5-7, 2019... with a potent array of workshops, speakers, sponsors, and new insights for this growing community. As we expand our focus to include Atmospheric and MetOcean content, I'd like to share a few details of the Forum. What to Expect: Three Powerful Days of Networking, Learning, and Collaborating.   On Tuesday, November 5th we will kick-off with warm welcome and overview of Esri's new scientific program support by Esri Chief Scientist Dawn Wright, followed directly by a Keynote Presentation from NOAA's Deputy Director of the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), Joseph Pica. Pica supports access to one of the most significant archives on earth, with comprehensive oceanic, atmospheric, and geophysical data from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and from million-year-old ice core records to near-real-time satellite images.   The morning will continue with a more technical presentation from Dr Sandy MacDonald, Director of Spire Weather, who will share how his organization identifies, tracks and predicts weather systems, and delivers these models and data via the ArcGIS platform.  We will cap the morning off with an inspiring and informative presentation from Dr. Sylvia Earle, whose Mission Blue is recognizing, empowering and supporting individuals and communities around the world in their efforts to protect the ocean by documenting and mapping Hope Spots.                                                                                                                The afternoon will be continue with a series of concurrent presentation sessions from you and your peers! Topics will include weather and atmospheric modeling, fisheries, marine debris, seafloor mapping workflows and more. The day closes with a Social with drinks and munchies for all. On Wednesday, November 6th we feature the Technical Plenary, where feature a unique set of Ocean and Atmospheric analysis demonstrations, with out-of-the-box functionality that will inspire your work across several application areas. The Tech Plenary is always a favorite of The Forum, and includes these topics this year: Machine Learning for Ocean Plastics Space Time Cubes Multidimensional analytical tools Map comparison workflows Applied Big Data analysis Data Automation                                       The day will continue with Lightning Talks, and more concurrent sessions of Ocean and Atmospheric from you. On the last day, Thursday Nov 7, we are offering several post-conference Workshops to choose from: Insights for ArcGIS with Ocean Data Field Operations and Story Maps Web AppBuilder and Configurable Apps Using Drone2Map ArcGIS Pro Basics for Science Advanced Analytical Workflows for Ocean and Atmospheric Scienc                    Also attending are Business Partners, Distributors, and Esri staff, who will be presenting an amazing array of new applications and techniques that will define the state of Ocean and MetOcean GIS and forge your creativity in your work.   Looking forward to having you here at Esri headquarters and get involved by submitting a map, app, or paper—to inspire your peers from this thriving community of mutli-D GIS practitioners! ... View more

So you’ve been seeing the ads and the emails for the 2018 Esri Ocean GIS Forum, and you’re wondering just what you will gain and experience in coming? The brief answer has several key components; the Tuesday Workshops, the Wednesday Plenary and Keynote Presentation, the Thursday Technical Plenary, the User Presentations and Lightning Talks throughout Wednesday and Thursday, and a few additional special presentations. Most important however, are the people that glue all of these components together; the conversations, networking and reuniting of this small and intimate gathering is what makes it so valuable. You will experience days at Esri Headquarters, with access to your marine and oceanographic peers, as well as to the Esri staff that create, use, and support the scientific tools and processes presented at the Ocean Forum.   The Workshops. Valuable new knowledge will be gained by attending the Workshops on Tuesday, November 6, presented directly from the product managers and developers who create ArcGIS and the related apps we are featuring. With six workshops to choose from, you will surely find a topic of interest, and they are all included with the price of registration.   The Plenary. On Wednesday after the traditional Hawaiian Protocol Opening, Esri Founder and President Jack Dangermond will provide a welcome and overview of what Esri has been creating for ocean and atmospheric ocean science, and you will be the first to peak at advances and future capabilities. Following that, Dr. Timothy Hawthorne will share his experiences and observations from his extensive field research with new components of the ArcGIS platform, and he will reflect on the influences of government science, commercial operators, and start up companies on where the technology is headed. Esri Chief Scientist Dawn Wright and Dr Roger Sayre of the USGS will also present an update on the new Ecological Coastal Units Project.   User Presentations. Wednesday and Thursday afternoons we have approximately 40 scientific papers from our user community who will be presenting a mix of 15 minute papers, and 10 minute Lightning Talks. The diverse mix of topics in these presentations, from an equally diverse group of agencies, institutions and organizations, represent the state of best practices of Ocean Science and Ocean GIS. The sharing and discussion that occurs in this context lifts the community and speeds our forward progress together.   The Technical Plenary. On Thursday November 8 th , we will start the day with the Technical plenary, a 90-minute venue for Esri scientific and development staff to share the brand-new tools and techniques that have been created over the last year to support multidimensional analysis, 3-D interpolation, seafloor contouring, and more. We proudly demonstrate creative new methods and tools for research and analytics using publicly available content from the Living Atlas, and off the shelf, current software. The Tech Plenary is always the inspiring technical highlight of the Ocean Forum. Following the Tech Plenary this year, we will have a session of user experiences and other new information. These presentations will include Marine Protected Area work from NOAA and their partners, it will include work from our sponsors on semi real-time bathymetry collection and processing directly into ArcGIS information products, as well as other announcements of soon to be released functionality.   Our theme this year is Why (and How) We Map the Ocean. We will close The Forum with a community that is connected and informed, as well as individuals who will return home with new ideas and new inspiration. We at Esri get to hear from you what you’re working on and what you need from us. The Ocean Forum has always been primarily about building a community for sharing GIS tools and techniques in these exciting and challenging times. With a rapidly expanding  array of data collection hardware, it is critical to share with one another Why and How We Map the Ocean. Looking forward to seeing you there! Join the GeoNet Community and Follow the Ocean Sciences GIS group Before, during and after the conference we'll be connecting, collaborating and sharing updates in the Ocean Sciences  group on the GeoNet, Community. We invite you to join and contribute to the conversations.  If you're not already a member of the GeoNet Community, follow these instructions: If you don't already have an existing Esri account, click here to create your GeoNet and Esri account.  If you already have an existing Esri account, go to the Esri.com drop down (see image below), sign in and click on "Community & Forums" to activate your GeoNet account.  ... View more

By Guy Noll and Drew Stephens It once was, that the shipper signed a contract with the skipper, and a ship set to sea. In normal outcomes, she came to port with intact cargo and new information about the route, the weather, and improvements in other ports. Cargo was off-loaded, the ship was paid, and in the case of exploration voyages, this cargo included samples and notes from the voyage that would require months or years of compilation for final release. The current paradigm for science and commercial maritime operations is that bandwidth is the bottleneck governing the movement of large, unprocessed, or real-time data to shore. Once ashore, the science content is picked-up by various ubiquitous terrestrial systems for further processing and management, and prepared for release via delivery of multiple information products, such as research papers, environmental assessments, and further grant proposals. In a sense, any type of mission; science, defense, survey, or cargo could be fit to this old paradigm of ship-to-shore modality.   The new paradigm focuses on our ability to efficiently conduct ocean science, monitor vessel safety, and ensure the timely delivery of cargo through telepresence and IoT enabled infrastructure. Modalities are being connected to decrease transfer and processing time of cargo and data. To be clear, IoT and other connectivity technologies are only part of the new paradigm, as data enablement and information integration for oceanographic content has also become a significant focus. We now regularly see data collection and enablement examples set by NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer, Schmidt Ocean’s R/V Falkor, and Ocean Exploration Trust’s R/V Nautilus, all brilliantly allowing us to explore the oceans with them in real-time HD video online, if we know where to look. How we efficiently store, extract, analyze and deliver these data collections as useful Information Products for a variety of stakeholders is the real challenge. The commercial marketplace is beginning to experience this positive disruption.   As new sensors and more efficient transmission systems are installed at sea, new vessels are streaming data in near real-time to scientists and practitioners anywhere. Demian Bailey, Project Manager for the National Science Foundation-funded Regional Class Research Vessel initiative at Oregon State University, speaks of this concept in terms of “Ships as satellites… a new form of connectivity to shore”, calling it “data presence.”   Accepting that satellites and certain radio frequencies can carry the data transmission load, soon to be followed by less-expensive fixed and drone-based relays, we at Esri are focused on the two following areas; Marine Data Cyber Infrastructure (Big Data) requirements, and building-out the Web GIS applications to deliver rapidly-configured and real-time Information Products. These Information Products include everything from instant ENC Chart updates, to real-time sea-state and weather modeling, as well as ship instrumentation and systems monitoring for the coming reality of pilotless shipping. The modalities are linked well before the ship arrives; fueling and waste requirements are known, as well as container, trucking, and other information. The foundation of our technological approach starts with open standards and web-enablement for systems integration, and we foresee the workflow leading to automated navigation, real-time water column visualization, condition-based maintenance of equipment, more efficient shipping risk pricing, and more.   Three key forces are driving these fundamental changes. First, new marine hardware, robotics and sensor technology abound, with a range of vehicle and deployment options, assuring anything that can be measured, will be measured. Secondly, from the human dimension, we are experiencing new awareness of the Blue Economy, fostering strong collaboration across commercial, academic, and government ocean and maritime sectors. Lastly, we are now in an era of Web GIS, where these data can be sourced real-time, and integrated with other open cloud data in ways that allow us to automatically configure visualization into apps that leverage artificial intelligence to sort through Big Data. We continue to build an application and partner framework to discover and use spatial and temporal patterns that human eyes and thinking may not detect. The combination of these forces is positively affecting innovation in data collection, analysis, availability, and usability.   Powerful monitoring and modeling across 3D and multi-dimensional space creates opportunities for insight and collaboration to solve problems using transdisciplinary teams. Examples of how this may manifest in the near future include; Port Authority harbormasters and reinsurers, making navigation decisions less risky, seafood suppliers and shippers, ensuring safety of the food supply, environmental domain monitors and developers, building better coastal installations with shorter permit times, and hydrologic forecast offices and scientific research institutions performing insightful science in the complex estuaries of the world.   Our partner Earth Analytic is successfully deploying working examples of these technologies in the mapping and surveying practices along with Kongsberg Maritime. We hope you come visit us in the Ocean ICT section at Oceanology International to find out more about how your work can be enabled through ArcGIS. Thanks to our partner CPC for the opportunity to photograph R/V Baseline Explorer! ... View more

Please be aware of the upcoming Esri Ocean GIS Forum, November 4-6 at the Esri conference center in Redlands. We are planning a fantastic three days focused on new Esri Scientific offerings and workflows, as well as continued collaboration among scientists and planners from government, academia, and industry. Four workshops will be held on Nov 4th, targeted for all levels of GIS experience and duty, see registration for details... Registration and paper/map/app calls are now open Earlybird rate is $200 until September 7! Just before the Oceans Forum, the Marine Conservation Institute will host a Global Marine Protected Areas Summit, co- hosted by the Marine Conservation Institute and the Sylvia Earle Mission Blue Alliance. This MPA summit will occur Nov 2-3 in Redlands. Registration info to follow. The following week, on Nov 9- 10, The Maritime Alliance – 7th Annual Blue Tech & Blue Economy Summit is on in San Diego, promising two informative and inspiring weeks for Ocean technology! Dawn Wright​Caitlyn Raines​Steve Snow​ Kathryn Decker​Kurt Daradics​ ... View more

It's in Alaska Polar Sterographic projection, and ready to support Energy, Fisheries, Shipping, Tourism, Ocean Science, Sea-level Rise, Ports, and any other high- latitude projects... A New Level of Cool: The Arctic Ocean Basemap | ArcGIS Blog‌ ... View more