Esri Community Member Spotlight: Ken Buja
This series of member spotlights features you and your peers here in Esri Community—the people playing a role in finding solutions, sharing ideas, and collaborating to solve problems with GIS. We’re doing this to recognize amazing user contributions, to model how Esri Community’s purpose is being brought to life, and to bring depth to this group of incredible people who may never meet in person, but who benefit from each other’s generous expertise.
Watch Ken's interview video in Kaltura
Ocean Systems Under Pressure
In the story of humanity’s relationship to the natural world, few examples rival that of our bond with the ocean. These bodies of water are invaluable sources of food, medicine, minerals, and energy. Their currents moderate heat distribution around the globe and stabilize the climate. Their coasts offer homes and livelihoods. Most life forms on Earth are found beneath the waves.
The health and viability of our oceans are inseparable from our own health and viability.
Chemical contaminants, harmful algal blooms, pathogens, ocean acidification, and water depleted of oxygen are a few of the major hazards that threaten the vitality of oceanic ecosystems. These profound challenges jeopardize not just the ocean’s integrity, but also human health, safety, and economic stability. As a result, there’s a need for data that can inform community responses to these threats, revealing where and how to strike a balance between preserving systems we rely on (but that apply pressure to this deeply valuable resource) while simultaneously developing a network of approaches to mend, withstand, and recover from the adverse impacts of oceans under strain.
Turning Data into Marine Management Decisions
Ken Buja (@KenBuja) is an Esri Community MVP. He has been involved in Esri's online community platform since before the current Esri Community and even its predecessor, GeoNet. He’s also the Senior Application Developer at the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS). NCCOS is a focal point for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) coastal ocean science efforts. It helps NOAA meet its coastal stewardship and management responsibilities, and provides coastal managers with the scientific information necessary to decide how best to protect environmental resources and public health, preserve valued habitats, and improve the way communities interact with coastal ecosystems.
For Ken, analysis and development are the bread and butter of his role at NCCOS.
“We have scientists who are gathering terabytes of data,” Ken explains. “We have sensors that collect real-time and near real-time information on toxins in the water column. We have other toxin data coming in that we collect from onsite locations. We have autonomous underwater vehicles that collect information on mesophotic and deep benthic coral communities. We also have divers that go out into shallow water coral communities and their ecosystems to collect information about the health of the corals and the types of fish that populate those corals.”
Ken and the NCCOS team use those large data sets to make models that combine raw information into something scientists and coastal communities can understand and act on. These models include highly detailed 3D models of coral or forecasts of upcoming harmful algal blooms. The sphere of Ken’s impact extends wider to include supporting projects related to aquaculture and wind energy development, embracing the broad spectrum of coastal community needs that are tied to the ocean.
“My job,” Ken summarizes, “is to create different types of applications that our scientists can use to analyze the data and create models. I also create applications to serve our data out to the public because one of our key jobs for NCCOS is to provide all this information out to the coastal communities.”
Turning to Community for Widget Building Guidance
“What I use most often is ArcGIS Online. We have our own organizational version of ArcGIS Online called the NOAA Geoportal.” Ken says while explaining his work on developing applications that process large datasets. “I use ArcGIS Enterprise or Experience Builder to create web maps, create pop ups, and to design aspects of the tools that are used to send this information [NCCOS collects] out to the public.” He names ArcGIS Pro as another product he uses while mentally working through the list.
Ken counts another Esri offering among his frequently used resources: Esri Community.
“One of the really good illustrations of how I’ve utilized the Community, and I’ve really gotten a lot of advantages from that, is a tool I developed many years ago. It’s called the Spatial Prioritization Tool.”
“ The Community is really good for having other experts help me out, and
then in turn, I can help others with the information I gather. ”
Ken describes the Spatial Prioritization Tool as an online collaboration tool that collects details about the mapping needs of researchers to find areas of alignment. It’s used to allocate mapping resources and create partnerships between different groups running projects that seek overlapping information.
Ken emphasizes the virtue behind this approach, “It really feeds into NOAA’s mantra of ‘map once, use many times.’”
Having initially come to life as a one-off project running on JavaScript, Ken and the NCCOS team quickly recognized its broader usefulness. He decided to make the tool more customizable and give others the ability to use it at the same time. ArcGIS Web AppBuilder became the chosen product in which to recreate the tool as a widget. As he launched into the project, Ken discovered that the then-available product documentation didn’t contain all the information he needed to create his custom widget. It would somehow need to be supplemented.
“So that’s where I turned to the Community to get a lot of information.” Ken says. He credits his knowledgeable peers on the platform with being instrumental in providing the details he needed to produce the widget.
Now, years later and with the introduction of ArcGIS Experience Builder, he’s remaking the widget in Esri’s most up-to-date offering.
“Again, I’m turning to the Community and the up-and-coming experts, such as Jeffrey Thompson, who know about making custom widgets for ArcGIS Experience Builder.”
“The Community is really good for having other experts help me out, and then, in turn I can help others with the information I gather.”
Fun and Altruism Fuel Participation
Altruism is at the center of Ken’s reasons for taking on the role of an Esri Community MVP, where he actively contributes back to other members through knowledge sharing. He wants to help other people and knows that it’s not always easy to look to others for help.
“I've been through the same process myself where I don't know something, and I have to reach out and ask somebody else: ‘How do I do this?’ And that can be tough.”
“ … it’s really the idea that I’m helping somebody else is what drives me. ”
Ken finds a sprinkle of fun in the process as well.
“And obviously there’s also the gamification factor,” he admits with a grin. “Everybody wants to gain that nice little point or kudos for answering someone’s question. That's just sort of a little feel good extra. But it's really the idea that I'm helping somebody else is what drives me.”
Ken views Esri Community as providing a wealth of knowledge; sometimes offering information that can’t be found anywhere else. He has some advice for others getting started on the platform.
“… sort of just dip your toes in the water, you know, reading as much as you can and maybe you can participate in a conversation. As you get more confident in your knowledge of the different products, you can start providing your own answers and your own help to other people.” Ken concludes with his prediction of where that participation leads, “And you start becoming known as an expert in the field.”
