What's New in Learn ArcGIS December 2021

[AdenaSchutzberg1]

New Learn Lessons

A Learn Lesson is a step-by-step tutorial that uses a real-world scenario to introduce key ArcGIS tools and workflows. Here's a roundup of new lessons in the Learn ArcGIS Gallery that have appeared in the last month.

 

Assess hail damage in cornfields with satellite imagery (ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Image for ArcGIS Online)

The region of Taber and Barnwell, in Alberta, Canada, has a large production of corn and other crops. In early August 2019, the upcoming harvest was severely impacted when a major hailstorm ripped through the region. Hailstones driven by winds that reached more than 140 kilometers per hour (or 87 miles per hour) tore through the area. In this lesson, as an imagery analyst for a local farmer organization, you will perform a first damage assessment based on satellite multispectral imagery captured before and after the hailstorm. Using ArcGIS Image for ArcGIS Online, you will create online tiled imagery layers, add them to a web map, and explore them visually. Then, you'll perform change analysis, applying a vegetation index to both images, computing the difference between the two, and extracting the average loss of healthy vegetation per field. Finally, you'll learn how to build a raster function template to automate this analysis.

 

Automate fire damage assessment with deep learning (ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Image Analyst)

The Woolsey Fire of 2018 was a wildfire that burned nearly 97,000 acres of land in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties in Southern California. Surveying the scale of damage was essential to helping those impacted by the disaster recover. In the past, this process required hours of analysts poring over aerial images to manually classify each building as damaged or undamaged. With the introduction of deep learning, this process can be automated, and you'll learn how to train a model that can detect whether buildings were impacted by wildfires or not.

First, you'll work with aerial imagery and a training dataset of buildings to classify structures as damaged or undamaged. This data will train a deep learning model. Then, you'll apply your model to buildings that have not been classified to rapidly mark them as damaged or undamaged and observe your model's accuracy.

 

 

Classify mangroves using deep learning (ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Image Analyst, Deep Learning Libraries for ArcGIS Pro)

Mangroves are critical to the maintenance and conservation of healthy coastal ecosystems. They're extremely rich in biodiversity, are home to a diverse range of plant and animal species, and protect inland coastal areas from erosion and storm surge impacts. Due to various climatic phenomena and human development, mangrove forests are rapidly shrinking. This warrants active monitoring and conservation efforts for existing mangroves.

In this lesson, you'll prepare and train a deep learning model to identify these forests using Landsat 8 imagery from 2016. Then, you'll deploy the model on imagery from 2021 for the same study area to see how the extent of mangrove forest has changed over time. These results help conservation mangers to better understand how forests are impacted by natural and built environments.

Survey customers to gain marketing insight (ArcGIS Survey123/Web designer)

Businesses use customer surveys to assess policies, develop marketing strategies, and better understand their audience. Traditionally, surveys were done on paper or over the phone; compiling results could be difficult and time-consuming. Businesses are now turning to digital surveys, which are hosted online, accessible via mobile device, and more efficiently shared and analyzed.

In this lesson, Super Tech Now, a technology store franchise, has hired you to develop a customer sentiment survey using ArcGIS Survey123. With Survey123, you can create digital surveys that collect data in real time across an organization. You'll create a survey, test it, and assess the results online.

Design a map with ArcGIS Pro and Adobe Illustrator (ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud, ArcGIS Online, Adobe Illustrator CC)

In this lesson, you're the GIS technician at a multinational real estate company, and you've been asked to help the graphic design team by creating a map showing the locations of all of your company's offices. The map will be featured as a prominent graphic on your website. The colors and fonts need to match your company's branding.

You'll begin the map in ArcGIS Pro, where you have access to data management and analysis tools. But you'll finish the map in Adobe Illustrator, where you can access some graphic design tools, as well as convert the map into a format that your design team is familiar with.

Expand a small business (ArcGIS Pro/Business Analyst Web App)

As a small business owner of laundry and dry-cleaning facilities, you are interested in expanding into new markets. Expansion can be risky, so you'll first analyze your most successful stores to establish what factors contribute to a successful laundry and dry-cleaning store. Then, you'll use those factors in a suitability analysis to determine a new market area for expansion.

 

 

Model coastal inundation impact (ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Spatial Analyst extension)

A storm can generate a rise of sea levels called storm surge. In this lesson, as a climate resilience analyst in Denmark, you want to assess the vulnerability of Hvidovre, a coastal municipality close to Copenhagen, to inundations caused by storm surges. You will perform this analysis in ArcGIS Pro, using models developed in ModelBuilder. First, you will determine the potential impact of storm surges of 16 different sea levels varying between 1 and 4 meters. Next, you will identify weak points that might allow the water to flow through, and might benefit from the construction of one or more new protective dikes. Finally, you will verify that the addition of such new dikes would avoid potential catastrophic inundations in the future.

This type of analysis, called inundation screening, is all the more crucial in the context of climate change, sea-level rise, and increased frequency of storm surge occurrences. In the last part of this lesson, you will learn how to replicate this analysis in your own area of interest.

New Learn Paths

A Learn Path is sequenced set of resources for learning about a particular topic. Here's a roundup of some new paths in the Learn ArcGIS Gallery that have appeared in the last month. 

 

Getting started with 3D Basemaps (3D Basemap solution)

Learn how governments, utilities, and other organizations can use the 3D Basemaps solution and their lidar, building footprint, and utility data to create and maintain a 3D basemap.