Latest Contributions by LisaBerry

Map the health of your community. Check out the 7 new ready-to-use Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) PLACES health indicator maps within ArcGIS Living Atlas. These new maps cover topics like food insecurity and mental health, and are available for Tracts, Places (aka cities), Counties, and ZCTAs (ZIP Code tabulation areas). These are part of a wider collection of over 40 CDC PLACES maps that can be added directly into your GIS workflows and apps. Check out the blog by @DianaLavery1 + CDC: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-living-atlas/health/cdc-places-2024/ ... View more

A popular use-case of GIS is defining boundaries. These boundaries go by many names: service areas, sales territories, attendance areas, caseloads, wards, legislative districts. This blog post will walk through a simple workflow designing areas in the state of Virginia to serve the veteran population. To follow along with the blog tutorial, start with a new project and a blank map in ArcGIS Pro. This short tutorial will guide you through a quick workflow for designing your own custom service areas using ready-to-use content from ArcGIS Living Atlas.  To access the blog tutorial by Esri's @DianaLavery1, visit this link.  To learn more about ArcGIS Living Atlas or ask common questions, visit this resource. ... View more

A great map starts with great data. But finding the data you need for your specific project isn’t always an easy accomplishment. The traditional workflow has always been to go find a data source, download the raw data, process it into the format you need, fumble through the nuances of metadata, and then you’d finally start your real GIS work. Luckily, ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World is a resource included within ArcGIS to help address this need for easily accessible, quality spatial content. But Living Atlas is far more than just data. It spans the possibilities of web GIS by offering spatial content in useful ways across ArcGIS. Since its debut in 2014, the ArcGIS Living Atlas team has received some common questions about how to access and understand Living Atlas. What is Living Atlas? How can I use it? Can I nominate my own data and maps?  This article and the associated ArcGIS Blog item aims to help address these core questions (and more!) so that you can get started with Living Atlas immediately. The questions are broken into three groupings: General Questions, Using Living Atlas, and Nominating Your Spatial Content to Living Atlas. Use the list of links below to navigate to the question you need. General Living Atlas Questions What is ArcGIS Living Atlas? Why use Living Atlas? Are there any resources to help me get started with Living Atlas? How is Living Atlas different from the items in ArcGIS Online? Can I trust the content I find in Living Atlas? Using Living Atlas Where can I access Living Atlas? How can I find what I need within Living Atlas? What can I do with Living Atlas content? What are the different badges I see on items? Can I access Living Atlas through my ArcGIS Enterprise Portal? Why do I see different content within the various Regions? Nominating Your Spatial Content to Living Atlas Why nominate to Living Atlas? What can be nominated to Living Atlas? What is needed to nominate content to Living Atlas? How do I nominate my content? When nominating, what does the scoring mean? How does my item get curated once it is nominated? Will Esri edit my items in any way? How can I mark my items as authorititative? What happens after my item is accepted? How do I maintain my Living Atlas items? I have more questions, or I want to learn more. Where should I go? ... View more

Air quality impacts us all.  The air we breathe is full of particles that come from factories, cars, construction sites, and many other sources. These particles can get into our lungs and even our bloodstream to cause serious health issues. Organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and NASA provide information about the air we breathe in order to provide a data-driven approach for regulations and guidelines. ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World contains a wide range of layers, maps, and stories that help communicate what air quality in the US was like in the past, and how it is currently.  There are many different ways to explore air quality with content from ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World. A few of those ways are: Current Air Quality Air Quality Index (AQI) by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and AirNow "The AQI is divided into six categories. Each category corresponds to a different level of health concern. Each category also has a specific color. The color makes it easy for people to quickly determine whether air quality is reaching unhealthy levels in their communities." - AirNow Find all EPA layers, maps, and applications in Living Atlas by clicking here. Current PM 2.5 concentrations The OpenAQ Community reports recent PM 2.5 concentrations  Every day activities such as driving, burning coal for electricity, wildfires, running factories, even cooking and cleaning, release particles into the air. Besides being an irritant, small particles of 2.5 micrometers or less (PM2.5) are a health hazard since they can get deep into the respiratory system and damage the delicate tissues. Smoke Forecasts National Weather Service 48 hour forecast Forecasts of smoke can help us protect vulnerable populations from potential health risks. Historical PM 2.5 concentrations NASA's Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) 1998-2016 PM 2.5 values were analyzed over space and time at the state, county, congressional district, and 50 km hex bin levels in order to investigate trends and statistical hot spots. To see the full collection of maps and see how air quality is changing in your area, visit this gallery or all historical air quality content in Living Atlas. To learn more about the methodology behind the analysis, view the blog post about these layers. To learn more about air quality in the United States and the content listed above, check out this story map. ... View more