Add Linear Referencing Support to ArcGIS Online

7989
15
04-18-2016 05:02 PM
Status: Open
JamesMitchell6
New Contributor III

ArcGIS Online (AGO) does not support linear referencing/dynamic segmentation of events in tables.  Linear referencing is an essential workflow in transportation organizations which store much of their data in tables that require dynamic segmentation to visualize or spatially analyze.  The National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) also relies on liner referencing to place water supply and water quality features on the NHD network.
Without linear referencing support in AGO, web-based users have no access to use the power of GIS analysis on much of their enterprise tabular data.  Organizations have huge investments in legacy data and data collected and stored in event tables that are not available to AGO users, only Desktop users.
This could be implemented by allowing an organization to add a Roads and Highways LRS Service to their organization, like Address Locators are handled, now.  User could access the service by adding data in a spreadsheet or CSV format (like geocoding is done).

15 Comments
JamesMitchell6

There were no “hard” specifications, when we spoke early, this fall. I provided them with some of the requirements, as I saw it, from a stte DOT perspective. The foundation of this was providing a state DOT with the opportunity to expose their LRS for public use and allow “external” as well as “internal” users the ability to crept point and linear events that could be exported as feature classes. Getting feature classes out of AGO will become complicated.

HOWEVER…

“Simple” linear referencing is a thing of the past. Users will need to incorporate temporal concepts into their event tables and LRM results. Additionally, AGO/Portal will need to enforce this.

Temporal concepts for the LRS and the events will need to be understood by desktop and online users, alike. This is more complicated than locating tables of X,y values or geocoding addresses. The details that we commonly ignore with respect to these processes cannot be ignored when implementing an LRS solution. The results could be disastrous.

Users will need to be better trained and informed on the proper use of LRS data.

Jim

James E. Mitchell, Ph. D.

State of Louisiana

Office of Technology Services

Louisiana Dept. of Transportation & Development

Computer Center

1201 Capitol Access Rd

Baton Rouge, LA 70802-4438

Voice: 225/379-1881

FAX: 225/379-1850

Email: Jim.Mitchell@la.gov<mailto:Jim.Mitchell@la.gov>

WWW: http://www.dotd.la.gov<http://www.dotd.la.gov/>

http://gis.dotd.la.gov<http://gis.dotd.la.gov/>

http://LADOTD.maps.arcgis.com<http://ladotd.maps.arcgis.com/>

PeteJordan

Totally agree with this.  We have been using the LRS in ArcMap Basic for years and this is something we do rely on and need to have in ArcPro as a part of the base system...

GraemeBrowning_Aurizon

I have been using ArcGIS Pro 3.0, ArcGIS Enterprise 11.0 and ArcGIS Roads and Highways (that includes Location Referencing), and I have been looking for web maps to have much more OOTB support for linear/location referencing, routes and measures at:

PeterMacKenzie2

linear-referencing-comes-to-arcgis-field-maps 

how's this looking for people? is this a solution to some of the requests listed here, at least in Field Maps?

NickShannon2

@PeterMacKenzie2 

I had a brief play with this.  
It's good, but limited for the moment.  

How it works:  for a road network — you select you the road you want to search on — then you type in the linear reference you're after e.g., 5.6 — it zooms to the location & you can add a marker to the map. 

What it doesn't do:  You can't click the road network to find the linear reference at the point of click.  Search is limited i.e., no global search option.  You can't search for a road segment i.e., road between 5.6 and 7.9.  And of course, it doesn't work in ArcGIS Online Map Viewer.  

It's a step in the right direciton though.  

Note: The road network (or any network) needs to be m-aware i.e., uploaded to AGOL from an FGDB.