Latest Contributions by DonBarker

The Esri Defense and Intell Showcase gave an outstanding demo of the Find Meeting Locations tool used with other Pattern of Life tools.  I'd like to understand the analytics and presentation.  Like, why does the meeting locations output polygon layer look like this? The Pro 2.7 tool reference  only says: The tool creates two output feature classes: an area feature class indicating the locations identified as potential meeting sites and a point dataset as the centroid of the unique meeting location. Not much to go on.  There is slightly more info in this clip which I extracted from the Showcase video and posted on YouTube.  At 2:57 in the video, the analyst says: "The blue polygon is going to be the median location, so this is going to be an inclusive area of where a lot of meetings are occurring as determined by the tool." What does this mean?  Why was this analytic chosen? I see almost no ArcGIS references median location . Would it make more visual and logical sense to use one of the density tools that produces a typical ellipse for analysis like this?  Otherwise, what is the meaning of pointy end shapes like this?  How are we supposed to make use of it? Thanks. ... View more

The Pattern of Life Link Chart is innovative, because it uses co-location as a "relationship" value: The problem with this tool -- if I understand it right -- is that the analyst must already have a polygon layer of  precisely-named locations to make this work.  The linkage relies on a simple table join, which requires "location name" values to match precisely.  I think this is what's demonstrated at the Esri Defense and Intell Showcase in this clip which I posted on YouTube.    At 7:55 in the video, the analyst specifies the names of the Key Fields for source and target layers.  These are required for a simple table join by attribute - matching values in each table: I discussed this with @JamesJones4 at Esri.  He indicated that analysts can "add notes" to a location layer (is there a tool for this?) to create that target entity key field for the table join.  This seems impossible for the analyst who has lots of data or who does not know in advance which places are important.  (This advance knowledge of barracks, guard shack, and mess hall in the Showcase demo seems to be an unlikely scenario for most analysts.) A better idea? The input data -- masses of it -- could be run through the Optimized Hot Spot tool to automatically generate the meeting places.  (Or use the Find Meeting Places tool?)  Use those uniquely identified polygons with a spatial join, not an attribute join as demonstrated, to enumerate all the players who are linked by location. Or, maybe I'm missing something.  I hope so.   ... View more

Because the Find Cotravelers tool shows lots of false hits of tracks that merely cross each other, we need more context to evaluate the results. Results look like this.  Just the "cotraveled events" are shown: We need to see the entire track for each of the candidate cotraveler, so we can evaluate them: With a massive data set (I'm testing with AIS maritime tracking data from MarineCadastre.gov - 500K events off the coast of Miami.), we can't simply check by laying the results over the input data layer: The time-consuming workaround is this: Open the results table and note all of the "cotraveler" unique IDs. Do and Attribute Query of the input data set for the unique IDs. Export the selection to a new layer. Turn off the input layer. Symbolize the new layer by unique ID (to differentiate the tracks). Examine the tracks for true co-travelers, not mere crossing tracks.  ... View more

I'm testing the Find Cotravelers tool with AIS maritime tracking data from MarineCadastre.gov - 500K events off the coast of Miami.  The tool lets us set a time window and distance/proximity parameters.  What's missing is a parameter for the minimum duration during which the distance/proximity conditions must be met.  For example, "They must be moving close together in time and space for a minimum 60 minutes." Without this duration parameter, the tool also shows vessels that merely crossed paths within 100 meters and 10 minutes of each other [the tool defaults].  This can generate hundreds of false hits. Here is the results layer - supposedly co-travelers:   This is the real picture: [I've discussed this with @JamesJones4 but wanted to document it here for others who run into this.] ... View more

I'm running the Find Cotravelers tool.  I got the error below.  Can't tell if the re was "empty output" because no events qualified, or because of the processing error.  There is no Esri documentation for the Python ValueError: not enough values to unpack.  And I don't have access to the .py file, of course. What should I do? Thanks.    Warning empty output generated. Traceback (most recent call last):  File "c:\program files\arcgis\pro\Resources\ArcToolbox\Scripts\intelMovementToolsClasses.py", line 183, in execute    features, style = cotravelers.find_cotravelers()ValueError: not enough values to unpack (expected 2, got 1)  Failed to execute (FindCotravelers). [I've discussed this with @JamesJones4 but wanted to document it here for others who run into this.] ... View more

What is the best way to identify and remove unused images from our ArcGIS Online account?  So we don't pay for unneeded storage. Thanks. ... View more