Survey123 Tricks of the Trade: Leveraging ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World
ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World is the foremost collection of geographic information from around the globe. Through the Living Atlas you can find ready-to-use content such as administrative boundaries, population, health, income, spending and education statistics as well as environmental and infrastructure layers.
Getting started
To browse ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World content go to livingatlas.arcgis.com You can start searching right away!
There are thousands of layers available, many of them from authoritative sources, others from users like you who contribute to the Living Atlas.
Explore the content available. You will find administrative boundaries, environmental, infrastructure and socio-economic data. There are layers with live content such as weather event, traffic and much more.
As a Survey123 author, you can use this content in various ways.
1) Make more compelling maps for your Survey123 forms
Content from the Living Atlas can be added to your own web maps and then, you can use these maps in your Survey123 forms. You can add content from the Living Atlas to your web map right within the Map Viewer, or as shown below, directly from the Living Atlas.
Once you are happy with your web map, you can configure your own Survey123 forms to use it. The animation below shows how you can configure a Survey123 map to show your own web maps.
Ah! By the way, did you know that the Living Atlas ALSO includes web maps? You can browse and use these ready-to-use web maps right away!
For more information about using custom web maps in Survey123, check this blog post.
2) Geoenrich your survey data with content from the Living Atlas
This is one of my favorites! Using a Survey123 calculation you can use content from the Living Atlas to automatically populate questions in your form. Any feature layer in the Living Atlas can be used for this purpose.
The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) is the most comprehensive global database on terrestrial and marine protected areas. In the example below, I take the location of a report and calculate the name of the WDPA Coastal Protected Area where if falls into.
The next example shows a similar technique, in a completely different scenario. The respondent types an address and that location is used to retrieve data from the American Community Survey (ACS) in the corresponding US Census tract. This data can be stored along with the survey response for further analysis, or simply be used for display purposes in the form.
From a practical perspective, I like to hide the calculated questions because often the respondent does not need to look at these values. Hiding calculated questions can help simplify your survey.
One more! Predictive weather data from the National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD) is used to associate the maximum temperature forecasted for the next 3 days with the algae bloom sighting reported by the user.
Configuring this type of geo-calculations is straight forward using the Survey123 web designer. Check the video tutorial posted in our October 2022 release announcement for details.
3) Dynamically populate a list using content from the Living Atlas
What if you could populate a list using content found in the Living Atlas? Possible!
Using data collected by the United States Forest Service through the National Invasive Plant Inventory Protocol, this survey automatically populates a list invasive plant species in the vicinity of the location provided. Note that the list presents over 50 choices when in Seven Oaks, and only 5 for Inyokern.
With thousands of invasive plant species, having the possibility of filtering choices in a list based on a geographic filter tremendously simplifies the user experience!
The animation below shows how to create a dynamic list in the web designer. In this particular case I am using the USA Current Wildfires layer, which shows active wildfires within the past 7 days in the United States from IRWIN and NIFC information.
Resources
If you need some help getting started with the techniques illustrated above, check the following:
- Calculations using ArcGIS layers in Survey123 Connect (XLSForm samples)
- Calculations using ArcGIS layers in Survey123 Connect (Video)
- Calculations using web designer
- Dynamic lists in Survey123 Connect
- Dynamic lists in Survey123 web designer
If you prefer to watch a video and ask questions, join this 60' webinar on September 12! This session is specifically targeting Survey123 web designer users. To register, click here or scan the barcode below.
