Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

As I frequently teach hands-on workshops so that people can see for themselves the power and data that is at their fingertips using modern GIS technologies, I wanted to share the workshops and short courses below.  These are chock-full of activities and I invite you to use these activities in your own courses.  For activities inside a Architecture Engineering and Construction program, let us focus on the following: 1.  See attached presentation on the intersections and forward movement of GIS, CAD, BIM, and AEC.  2.  Tools:  ArcGIS Urban, City Engine, ArcGIS Pro. For activities inside a Computer Science program, let us focus on the following: 1.  Tools:   ArcGIS Pro, the ArcGIS API, Javascript, ArcPy, and Python.  Jupyter notebooks. 2.  Resources:  The Labs on https://developer.arcgis.com, the Arcade scripting language in ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online.  3.  What are the chief programming topics (knowledge, skills, practices) and software that are necessary in the geospatial industry?   · Using Jupyter Notebooks within ArcGIS Pro, scripting (Python with ArcPy, ArcGIS), GIS database programming, GIS algorithm implementation & optimization, desktop application development (C#, Java, ArcGIS Runtime SDKs, GDAL), mobile app development (ArcGIS Runtime SDKs and ArcGIS API for JavaScript, web application development (JavaScript with APIs from ArcGIS, Leaflet, Mapbox, OpenLayers), statistics (R, Matlab, the ArcGIS - R bridge), big data analytics (Tensorflow, Hadoop, Spark).   4.  How many GIS programming courses of different levels should be provided, and which levels should be required for the completion of the degree?   Some of the differences might include broad troubleshooting skills for a variety of systems. The ability to adapt and change based on requirements from management or budgetary-related is critical. The ability to inherit, improve or maintain systems that you didn’t necessarily create and which may be outdated and potentially involve unsupported implementations or implementations that don’t use best practices.  5.  When creating courses, consider the following important topics and course listing:  Intro to programming concepts, segments that focus on debugging skills, Intro and Intermediate courses on JavaScript, Intro and Intermediate courses on Python; other computer science courses as electives (e.g. algorithms).  Again, use ArcGIS Pro with the new Jupyter notebooks embedded capability! 6.  How to convince others that GIS Programming courses are important?  GIS is simply map-enabled computer science, however, there is some overlap between GIS and CS for certain job requirements. Some skills are critical for all GIS students such as Python, for example. Understanding basic programming concepts and modern web GIS architecture only helps to ensure student success when they graduate.  Every student needs to be proficient in building websites or native applications, but if they have the basics then they will be more adaptable.  There is a spectrum of needs in GIS that ranges from little-to-no-programming-skills-needed to fully custom application building. The fundamentals of “how” programming languages work may not have changed much (e.g. variables, data structures, control structures, etc), and these fundamentals can be applied across a variety of languages.  What is changing very rapidly are the programming languages themselves. Web browsers and JavaScript are examples of unbelievable rapid change.  One challenge is to keep curriculum current with the latest that languages have to offer. One goal is to teach students flexibility in how to learn programming languages and to learn how to adapt. Also, with programming languages, you really only learn by doing it, in hands-on mode. It’s not something most people can read in a book and then successfully apply it.   For activities inside a business course, let us focus on the following: 1.   My presentation - Spatial and Critical Thinking in Research and Instruction: Why and How   Spatial and critical thinking in business research and instruction - why and how.  Includes links to interactive web maps and tools. 2.  See attached regional convenience store activity. 3.  Exploring the demographics of 50 states using infographics:  https://esribizteam.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=bdfc563d4eac45b8a0e2aa350b95df9b   4.  Top 10 features about Infographics:  Top 10 Business Analyst Infographic Features. 5.  Tools:  Business Analyst Web, ArcGIS Online, Survey123, ArcGIS Pro. 6.  See attached slides on why the WHERE matters in business.  For activities in a remote sensing course, let us focus on the following: 1.  Change Matters viewer:  ChangeMatters :: Using Landsat Imagery to Map Change   to analyze change over space and time:  Aral Sea, Mt St Helens, Dallas-Fort Worth TX, and elsewhere.  2.  Wayback high resolution historical imagery:  https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2018/10/18/analyzing-change-over-space-and-time-with-the-wayback-image-service   Examine how these places have changed:  Lake Mead, Plano Texas, Beachy Head England, the Three Gorges Dam in China, and your own community.   3.  Landsat 8 app:  Landsat Explorer    Analyze different spectral bands, create a swipe comparison map, filter data, and more.  4.  Sentinel-2 imagery to analyze the eruptions in Kilauea:  https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2018/06/29/using-two-new-tools-to-analyze-the-eruptions-in-kilauea   Add data from the Living Atlas:   Sentinel-2 views, bands 12, 11, 2, Filter on Acquisition Date of 23 May 2018, Image display as Geology with DRA, stretch, analyze.  5.  Tools:   ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online.  Data:  Imagery and other content in Living Atlas of the World. For the environmental science course, let's focus on the following activities that I created: A new Higher Education GIS Immersive Hands-On Workshop - Joseph Kerski, Ph.D. - GeographerJoseph Kerski, Ph.D. – Geograp…    These include examining the global water balance, stormwater, ecoregions, population change, migration, field surveys, and much more.  For a crime analysis course, let's focus on analyzing crime in Lincoln Nebraska, as follows:  Search ArcGIS Online for crime Lincoln Nebraska and open the following web map: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=d0506cc0f18e4e19a771f84319e24773.   You will see crime point locations, city limits, police stations, and police districts.  Change style for police stations to Safety-Health - Badge.  Change style for districts to unique symbol - color.  Label the districts by number.  Use Proximity to create 5 minute drive time around stations with dissolve option.  Next, calculate the percentage of crime within 5 minute drive times using the Aggregate Points tool.  For Choose layer containing points to aggregate into areas, choose Crime. For Choose layer containing aggregation areas, confirm that Five-Minute Drive-Time from Stations is chosen.  Change style on crime to map specific crimes, such as theft.  Change style on crime to see crime as heat map.  Examine imagery with labels to determine areas where more crime seems to be occurring.  Create hot spot map of areas of significant clustering of crime. For a GIS in the Humanities course, let's focus on the following: 1.  Explore the Digital Humanities map collection:  Story Maps and the Digital Humanities    2.  Build your own story map:  https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2017/07/26/10-things-you-can-do-with-arcgis-online-story-maps-apps-and-spatial-analysis-workshops   > Scroll down to #2:  Story Maps.  Build a map tour, then, time permitting, a map journal. 3.  5 Forces acting in society to bring us to this pivotal moment in geospatial technology and spatial and critical thinking:  https://denverro.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=fb060544d4bc4d15a1b8bed38048859b  4.  Data quality and societal issues:  https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com  My co-authored data book and blog.  5.  Collect, map, and analyze field data with Survey123:  Use this form to collect tree height, tree species, and tree condition:  https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/933b03f8109e411cab344453dbd7a865   Examine the resulting map on:  http://arcg.is/1COi0z .  If you need the long URL, it is: http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=434cbc3ca6a342eca3122f08414e2be4&extent=9.9432,53.5424,10.0273,53.5…  After uploading a test point to this Survey and seeing your results on the map, create your OWN survey on this or another topic (historical sites, homes, something else in your community) using the web form method via http://survey123.arcgis.com/When your survey is finished, create a map from your survey and examine the pattern of your results. Save and share as appropriate. For activities in a Digital Earth, Geography, or Smart Planet course, let's focus on the following: 1.  10 things you can do with ArcGIS Online:  10 Things You Can Do with ArcGIS Online in Education   2.   Teaching with web apps:  apps_teaching_with_activity.pdf - Box   These include examining Pacific typhoons in 3D, demographics of Zip Codes, creating viewsheds and buffers, and much more.  These apps are easy to use and yet very powerful. 3.  Introduction and Advanced Work with Story Maps:  Slides with core content with short activities and longer hands-on exercises.   These activities and exercises include how to build a story map from a web map, and how to build map tours, map journals, swipe, series, and other types of story maps. 4.  6 methods to map your own data:  https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2019/02/18/4-methods-to-map-your-own-data-a-workshop  For examining the topic of Data Quality, Data Sources, and Spatial Analysis in ArcGIS Online, let us focus on: 1.  Why data quality matters, now more than ever:  Why Data Quality Matters More Now Than Ever  2.  Data sources, data quality, and societal issues:  https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com   3.   Trace downstream.  First add World Hydro by Esri, data to ArcGIS Online map.  4.  Examine county health rankings, practice Arcade scripting:  https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?useExisting=1&layers=c2d611adace94b488bfbf280dd591a7c   5.  Analyze zebra mussels from 1986-2011:  https://denverro.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=a5cc4d8c8e9547ccaa76d70018f30fa2    Summarize center and dispersion. 6.  Boulder County Hazards starting point:  https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=d19b5a39eb3446a299e1e2f5dd25a44d    Determine which areas are in floodplains AND in major geologic hazards, enrich final results with group quarters.  7.  Cholera 1854 study starting point:  http://esrit3g.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=87c0f79108e246d49f97a6cfe4fce157  Determine which water pump had the most cholera cases within 500 feet, determine optimal walking route for Dr Snow to visit each well.  8.  Real time weather analysis:  https://denverro.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=8fbd18ed975f49c8a59b9f25f2b9f7a6   Symbolize data, create interpolated surface of temperature.  The full lesson I authored is here:  Predict weather—Predict Weather with Real-Time Data | ArcGIS   9.  Join data to the Living Atlas of the World.   Start with this world earthquakes map:  http://denverro.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=63a6261d7afa48878a52a4c7127f624e   and join contents to the Living Atlas of the world to understand the number of earthquakes by country.  The full lesson I authored is here:  https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2018/09/17/spatial-joins-with-arcgis-online-and-the-living-atlas-of-the-world   10.   The world of 3D analysis and visualization is also at your fingertips with cloud-based tools, as I show here of earthquakes:  Scene Viewer   ... 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Today, there is no shortage of data available on open data portals, including those on ArcGIS Online (such as the Living Atlas of the World, and via ArcGIS Hub, and in many cities such as Cambridge Massachusetts and many countries such as Germany) and those we test and describe on our data blog http://spatialreserves.wordpress.com.  But there will always be a need for people to map their own data.  Great instructional value is inherent in doing so, including connectedness to the community, examining real world issues, field planning and methods, the use of data collection tools, outdoor education, and much more.  If you are new to GIS, especially to web GIS, I encourage you to start with this HDI map of world countries, and this world plate tectonics map. Thus, there is no shortage of methods in which to collect your own data.  In recent GIS workshops for faculty, I focus on the following 6 methods: Add data via a GPX file.  GPX files can come from a variety of sources, including GPS receivers and smartphone fitness apps.  Attached to this essay is a GPX file I collected in and around the University of Hamburg, Germany, using the RunKeeper app.  Save this file to your device, and add this to ArcGIS Online or Pro using the Add data tool. Symbolize the points and line as you see fit, and select your basemap of choice.  Note the "zinger" that appears in the GPX file.  I on purpose did not remove this, because these occasional spikes in the field path provide useful teachable moments.  This particular one occurred while I was inside St Michaels Church, gazing around at all the beauty, with the track "collecting" the whole time but losing some Wi-Fi hotspots, cell phone towers, and/or GPS satellites; hence guessing at my true position and, for a time, being a few hundred meters off. Add data via a simple table in Comma Separated Value (CSV) or text file (separated by commas).  Attached to this essay is a text file "fieldwork_hamburg_ped_counts.txt" in text format that I collected at 5 locations.  The data I collected was the number of pedestrians in one minute at each location, on a Sunday afternoon in winter. Symbolize the points as graduated symbol on pedestrian count.  Select a basemap of your choice.   Save and share as you see fit. Pedestrian counts is one useful set of data that you can collect with students, comparing different times of day, days of the week, and seasons of the year.  Note the high number of pedestrians at point #3 enjoying ice skating! Add data via an expanded table in text format for the same locations, but with a URL of a picture I took at each location.  FYI, my Flickr photos for this activity are from this set here.  After adding the data, click on each point, noting the "more info" for each popup that points to the photo.  Symbolize as you see fit, and practice customizing the popup.   Select a basemap of your choice.  Save and share as you see fit.  Use Survey123 to collect data in the area.  Use this form to collect tree height, tree species, and tree condition:  https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/933b03f8109e411cab344453dbd7a865   Examine the resulting map on:  http://arcg.is/1COi0z .  If you need the long URL, it is:  http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=434cbc3ca6a342eca3122f08414e2be4&extent=9.9432,53.5424,10.0273,53.5… .  After uploading a test point to this Survey and seeing your results on the map, create your OWN survey on this or another topic using the web form method via http://survey123.arcgis.com/.  When your survey is finished, create a map from your survey and examine the pattern of your results. Save and share as appropriate.   See attached slides for more information on this powerful field data collection tool.   Create a story map of the data collected.  Several ways exist to do this, but start with the simplest one:   Go to https://storymaps.arcgis.com > Apps > Create Map Tour > Sign in to your ArcGIS Online account > add images from Flickr > access my images of the University of Hamburg and waterfront in the folder  joseph_kerski (note underscore) > Done.  In the story map, note the photo captions are read from the Flickr header information.  Add the number of pedestrians at each point as follows, from points 1 through 5 (with 1 being the northernmost point, 2 to its southwest, and then 3, 4, and 5 progressively closer to the harbor front).  Then, customize the color, basemap, logo, and extent.  Save and share as you see fit.  Under My Stories, edit the map for this story map and add the GPX file that you used earlier.  Change one of the photo to an embedded Hamburg video from among the Hamburg choices on my channel:  Our Earth - YouTube   Re-save.  Once you understand this method, use the map tour template as a guide to creating a tour table, for an even faster way of creating a story map. Use Mapillary to collect your own street view scenes and map them.  Download the app and begin collecting on a path on your campus or in your community.   Mapillary is an Esri business partner and I love using their tools for professional results without a great deal of work.  See my essay here for more information:  https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2017/03/24/examining-mapillary-views-in-arcgis-online.      The capabilities of these tools continue to become more powerful and easier to use with each update.  Get out there into the field! --Joseph Kerski ... View more

Greetings Everyone: Perhaps this article I wrote about the status and perspectives surrounding GIS in higher education will be helpful in your own efforts as you continue to champion the cause of why teaching, learning, research, and administrative use of GIS makes a positive contribution to academia and society: https://www.xyht.com/spatial-itgis/gis-in-higher-education/ --Joseph Kerski GIS workshop at a university, attended by those from the library, IT, engineering, data science, geography, humanities, biology, and other disciplines. ... View more

Perhaps this experiment that I conducted 4 years apart will be useful for all those teaching GIS and teaching with GIS, on the topics of GIS, GPS, and spatial resolution: Track on Track, Revisited: Spatial Accuracy of Field Data | Spatial Reserves  Track from 2014 (left) and 2018 (right) gathered from a smartphone and a fitness app. Back in 2014, I tested the accuracy of smartphone positional accuracy in a small tight area by walking around a track.  During a recent visit to teach GIS workshops at Carnegie Mellon University, I decided to re-test, again on a running track.  My hypothesis was that triangulation off of wi-fi hotspots, cell phone towers, and the improved GPS constellation would have improved the spatial accuracy of my resulting track over those intervening years. After an hour of walking, and collecting the track on my smartphone with a fitness app (Runkeeper), I uploaded my track as a GPX file and created a web map showing it in ArcGIS Online.  Open this map > use bookmarks > navigate to the Atlanta and Pittsburgh (Carnegie Mellon University) locations (also shown on the graphic below on the left and right, respectively).   Once I mapped my data, my hypothesis was confirmed:  I kept to the same lane on the running track, and the width of the resulting lines averaged about 5 meters, as opposed to 15 meters on the track from four years ago.  True, the 2014 track variability was no doubt in part because I was surrounded by tall buildings on three sides (as you can see in my video that I recorded at the same time) , while the building heights on the Carnegie Mellon campus were much lower.  However, you can measure for yourself on the ArcGIS Online map linked above and see the improvement over those two tracks taken just 4 years apart. I did another test while at Carnegie Mellon University–during my last lap on the track, I moved to the inside lane.   This was 5 meters inside the next-to-outer lane where I completed my other laps.  I wanted to see whether this shift would be visible on the resulting map.  It is!  The lane is clearly visible on the map and on the right side of the graphic below, marked as “inside lane.” To explore further, on the map above, go to > Contents, to the left of the map, and turn on the World Imagery Clarity layer.   Then use the Measure tool to determine how close the track is to the satellite imagery (which isn’t perfect either, but see teachable moments link below).  You will find that at times the track was 0.5 meters from the image underneath Lane 1, and at other times 3.5 meters away. Both tracks featured “zingers” – lines stretching away from the actual walking tracks, resulting from points dropped as I exited the nearby buildings and walked outside, as my location based service first got its bearing.  But again, an improvement was seen:  The initial point was 114 meters off in 2014, but in 2018, only 21.5 meters.  In both cases, as I remained outside, the points became more accurate.  When you collect data, the more time you spend on the point you are collecting, typically the more spatially accurate that point is. To dig deeper into issues of GPS track accuracy and precision, see my related essay on errors and teachable moments in collecting data, and on comparing the accuracy of GPS receivers and smartphones and mapping field collected data in ArcGIS Online here and here. Location based services on the smartphone still do not yet deliver the spatial accuracy for laying fiber optic cable or determining differences in closely-spaced headstones in cemeteries (unless a device such as Bad Elf or a survey-grade GPS is used).  Article are appearing that predict spatial accuracy improvements in smartphones.  Even today, though, I was quite pleased with my track’s spatial accuracy, particularly in 2018.  I was even more pleased considering that I had the phone in my pocket most of the time I was walking.  I did this in part because it was cold, and cold temperatures tend to rapidly deplete my cell phone’s battery (which is unfortunate, and the subject of other posts, many of which sport numerous adds, so they are not listed here).   Happy field data collection and mapping! --Joseph Kerski ... View more

Greetings everyone: I would like to announce an online course that I am teaching:    **Telling Your Story using Esri Story Maps** - This course led by Joseph Kerski will enable you to understand and incorporate interactive web-based story maps to include sound, video, photographs and other multi-media in your teaching about ecoregions, natural hazards, river systems, urban change, demographics, and much more.  This course is aimed at:  The educator who is just starting out with web mapping and story maps.  So, if you know an educator that fits this description, this course would be particularly relevant to them. This course is 5 weeks in length and includes hands-on activities, discussion, assessments, and readings.  You will learn through hand-on activities using the ArcGIS maps to enhance your curriculum for your students.  To register, click here.  Here is the link: https://www.enetlearning.org/register-for-courses/telling-your-story-with-esri-story-maps-2/ Here is the link to all of eNet’s February courses: http://www.enetlearning.org/course-catalog-and-descriptions/ There is a small fee for the course to support the good folks at eNet Learning and the work they do to offer courses for educators.  There is an option for university credit as well.   --Joseph Kerski ... View more

We on the Esri education outreach team receive regular inquiries from instructors who want to see examples of the use web maps and applications as instruments for students to communicate the results of their learning and their research.  They also want to see maps that at the same time serve as assessment instruments for the instructor to gauge student learning.  One of the best examples I have seen lately is the work that Dr Karen R. Lips at the University of Maryland's Department of Biology has been doing.  I was even more impressed because this was her first use of story maps, and yet the resulting maps and her approach were extremely innovative!  I also liked the fact that in her assessment rubric, she placed weight on the content, but also in the students' effective means of communication.  And in her story map instructions, she provided what I thought was just the right amount of information--she didn't bury the students with too much, but gave them enough to get started and become confident, with links for them to keep learning and growing.  I asked Dr Lips to share her work so that the entire GIS education community could benefit, and she has graciously done so, including the attached instructions and rubrics, selected examples that follow, and her instructional reflections below.  Selected examples from the students include the life and death of coral reefs, Biodiversity:  A Cure for Going Bananas, the Unsung Utility of Oysters, the Path from Monoculture to Sustainability, Of Mice and Men:  How Habitat Fragmentation Facilitates the Spread of Lyme Disease, Haiti's environmental chaos, biodiversity and poverty in the nation's capital, Biodiversity Hotspots:  Nigeria, and Getting Ticked off by Deforestation.    Dr Lips said, "At the University of Maryland College Park, I teach a non-majors Honors course called Biodiversity Matters, in which we do a variety of readings and activities to show how dependent humans are on biodiversity in every aspect of their lives, from food, to medicine and bioengineering, to clothing and housing, to large scale coastal protection, national security, and international relations. Essentially the course demonstrates the many kinds of goods and services provide by nature (“Natural Capital”) and how those goods and services contribute to human health and well-being. My goal was to show that biodiversity is not a special interest dependent on philanthropy, but should be viewed as the foundation of life on earth that provides sustaining resources to human society. I directly link course topics to the majors of the students to show them how biodiversity intersects their lives and how they have a role in conserving biodiversity.  The secondary theme of the course is communication. We learn about using the Compass MessageBox to articulate our message and describe the “So What”, and we compare writing styles of scientific papers to the media coverage of the same studies. We met with a science writer from a major publication to understand the publishing process and how to write for science news, and we compared the differences in the approaches and techniques to science communication in scientific articles, popular articles, and in videos. I designed three major assignments to assess students’ abilities to communicate the importance of biodiversity: (a) in writing through an initial Op-Ed piece, (b) in using visuals and audio by producing an end-of-semester video, and (c) at the midway point, through a combination of writing and visuals with an Esri Story Map. My goals were to demonstrate a continuum of communication styles, show how images can often make a point better than words, and encourage students to think about data visualization. Developing a Story Map Assignment: This summer I learned that the UMD library has a GIS lab, with full time staff that are available to offer training to faculty and students in the use of ArcGIS. Before the semester began, I met with Dr. Kelly O’Neal and together we identified Story Maps as an easy-to-use platform for students without any GIS experience. This would allow them to make maps, import them into a Story Map, and add images and text to produce an attractive project. I searched the web for examples of how other faculty had used Story Maps in classes, but found few examples (but see https://oceansolutions.stanford.edu/education-and-teaching-resources), and even fewer teaching resources for faculty (i.e., syllabi, lesson plans, project descriptions, grading rubrics). I wrote to Dr. Dawn Wright to see if Esri might have teaching materials that I had missed. She introduced me to Dr. Joseph Kerski who suggested sharing my resources in a blog post. Once the semester began I met with students individually to identify topics of interest to them that related to the course theme and which were likely to have available data layers, and introduced them to the Story Map platform. The UMD GIS lab taught ArcGIS basics to my class during a one hour workshop. This was followed by a final one-on-one meeting between each student and the GIS lab staff to identify data that would illustrate their report. I met with students on an as-needed basis while they completed their Story Map.  Assessment: Students really enjoyed this assignment. Students were very creative in their choice of topics and in how they presented data visually. They thought it was a very useful way of producing an illustrated report, and could see how to apply it in some of their other courses. None of them had ever used GIS before, and only a few had ever heard of GIS before they did this assignment. They thought that it was relatively easy to use and most had no major problems with the system. As the instructor, I thought that this format was much more interesting than the traditional format of a written report, and thought it allowed a much greater immersion into the topic. I encouraged several students to submit their Story Map to the annual student competition. I think that with additional time working with ArcGIS, and learning how to import and manipulate data students of any background or in any major could produce high quality Story Map projects. Resources: I include the Lesson Plan with Instructions for the assignment. I incorporated some of the introductory material from information found on the Stanford website (see above), but the majority of instructions are adapted from previous assignments in my earlier Honors Courses. My grading rubric is based on the text of the instructions, and language adopted from various online grading rubrics. A huge thanks to Dr. Kelly O’Neal and her staff at UMD Libraries for their assistance and guidance – I definitely plan to do this again in my other classes. ... View more

The USGS poster "Geographic Information Systems" has been scanned and is now available online in the following location:  https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/70201216 Though dated, it still provides some of the fundamentals of what GIS is and why it matters (Disclaimer:  I am also proud to say that I was the major author of this poster during my tenure at the USGS).  --Joseph Kerski  ... View more

Last week I shared 15 inspiring stories from GIS Day 2018.  These were a joy to write and I hope, for you to read.  Here are 15 more inspiring GIS Day stories from all around the world.  Even with that set and this week's new set of 15, I am just touching the tip of the iceberg, so I invite you to examine the events listed on the GIS Day map as well as this story map.    María Sofía Arboleda, Marketing And Alliance Manager at Esri Chile, shared their GIS Week celebration. Esri Chile was only one of the sponsors of the First GIS Olympics organized by the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the Universidad de Chile (one of the top ranked universities in Latin America). The prize for the first place in the advance and intermediate categories was ArcGIS For Personal Use Licenses and for the second and third place we gave away Esri books and other items.  María also shared that Esri Chile's staff was encouraged to serve as GeoMentors to local schools. One activity was to invite children to paint a map saying "How do they would like to see the Planet?", "Cómo Quieres ver tu Planeta"  demonstrated in this video.  Selected scenes from the First GIS Olympics organized by the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the Universidad de Chile, and sponsored in part by Esri Chile.    Dr. Ayad Ayid Wali at the University of Al-Qadisiyah, in Diwaniyah, Iraq, shared that his university's GIS Day event was a great success, with over 40 presentations and 100 participants from different parts of Iraq and from the University of Szczecin in Poland.   GIS Day event held at the University of Al-Qadisiyah, in Diwaniyah, Iraq.   Thomas Ebert from the state of Oberösterreich, Austria, shared that "For over 10 years, the Landesdienstleistungszentrum has been offering the largest GIS event in Austria.  This year, at more than 30 workshops, the geo-experts provided 400 young people with the dynamic processes and their complex interaction in the fantastic realm of geoinformation.  Of particular interest this year was Terrestrial Laser Scanning, or TLS.  TLS is a ground-based surveying technique with a variety of applications in the field of 3D capture. With its fast and accurate scan rate, the TLS can detect its surroundings without contact and display them highly detailed. The special thing about it is that the system, regardless of the light source, can capture even the darkest environments with precision thanks to laser scanning."  The event was also featured on the news.    The GIS Day event in Oberösterreich, Austria, from the Landesdienstleistungszentrum, attracted 30 presentations and 400 students.   Professor Adam Mathews from Western Michigan University reported that his  department co-hosted a GIS Day event with their student group (Geography Club, which is a YouthMappers Chapter). Their event featured 60 students mapping data to aid in humanitarian efforts to recent disaster-stricken areas.   Mapping Event at Western Michigan University, led by Professor Adam Mathews.   Karen Nickel, Senior Information Manager, shared that "At the Wigan Council in the UK they celebrated this year’s GIS Day with a varied program of themed training demonstrations and fun presentations (including solving the mystery of a long lost pub using digitised old maps and newspaper archives to discover its location and fate, along with an infamous forger's den) for both staff and Elected Members. They also hosted a GIS Gallery exhibition, tested the Symphony AR app thanks to Aligned Assets, and enjoyed some mind rest by colouring in maps of our town centres and eating cupcakes and chocolates (thanks to sponsors Esri, GeoPlace, and Ordnance Survey), and prizes to be won in there “Where is Uncle Joe?” (the Council’s mascot) competition."   Wigan Council's GIS Day event in the UK.   Ahmed Haseeb reported about an event held by his GIS Centre, University of the Punjab, which was attended by the principal and experts from academia and industry. The main objective of their program was to motivate students by sharing GIS applications in industry. GIS experts from irrigation, surveying, and the health industry demonstrated GIS developments in their respective organizations. Students took initiative for their future research ideas regarding new techniques and technologies practiced in GIS industry. Two mapping competitions were held among students and positions were evaluated by the faculty. It was followed by traditional cake cutting and prize distribution ceremony.     Event held at the GIS Centre, University of the Punjab, Pakistan.    Тетяна Іванівна Дець reported that the Department of Geodesy and Cartography of the National University of Water and Environmental Engineering in Rivne, Ukraine, held their celebration of GIS Day on 23 November 2018.  Students and professors participated with presentations and lectures, and, "all participants were satisfied!"   GIS Day at the National University of Water and Environmental Engineering in Rivne, Ukraine.   Abdulhadi Ali Alzawi shared their celebration at the Tripoli Municipality in Libya:  The program included a presentation of the work done by the Geographic Information Systems Unit in the municipality as well as a gallery of maps.  Their  celebration was attended by many senior officials in Tripoli.   Highlights of the GIS Day celebration in Tripoli, Libya.   Paul Barson, GIS Analyst in the Planning & Development Department in the County of Wellington in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, shared the following geo-cake and an extensive story map featuring some of the many ways in which they are using GIS.   In Malawi, Debora Mtambalika shared that,"On 17th November, I and my four colleagues organized an event for GIS day. We called the people in our neighborhood at area 22B Lilongwe Malawi to fully participate in this event. The people assembled were a few but most importantly they were interested to understand the main aim of the event, what is GIS and its purpose?  We split into three groups, each group having a phone gadget with GPS Essential tool installed. Before collecting a point feature we oriented the each group how to collect a point and afterwards they practiced on the phone themselves. The features collected were Mini-shops, Maize mills, Towers, Churches, Mosques, Water sources and dumping sites. The points were exported to ArcMap and were therefore visualized on a map. The community members were able to appreciate GIS and saw that it is very important to be used for resource allocation in Area 22B.  I really enjoyed to see members of my community asking questions and getting interested to know more about GIS."   GIS Day event in Malawi, which including mapping of the local physical environment by the participants.   In the Philippines, Laura Tate, Media Manager for Nobel Systems, shared the following:  Nobel Water Systems Inc, of San Bernardino, California in partnership with Bayawan Water District hosted a GIS Day celebration at Negros Oriental State University (NORSU) and Bayawan National High School in Bayawan City, in the Philippines. Nobel also sponsored a similar event at the New Ormoc National High School in the City of Ormoc, the Philippines on Nov 14. Officials from both cities appeared at the events.  Alma Abrasaldo, General Manager of Bayawan Water District, spoke to Bayawan students about how using Nobel’s GIS applications helps the district manage its assets.  Gella Romero, Nobel Systems Senior Business Development Executive, and June R. Reyes, Nobel GIS Project Manager, gave presentations at New Ormoc City National High School in Ormoc City.   The students played a game mapping city and country landmarks using paper maps. They later learned how to capture data using Nobel’s GeoViewer application on an iPad.  The students especially enjoyed practicing data capturing using GeoViewer out in the field.   Bayawan Water District hosted a GIS Day celebration at Negros Oriental State University (NORSU) and Bayawan National High School in Bayawan City in the Philippines.   The University of Idaho's GIS Day, as reported by Bruce Godfrey, GIS Librarian and Assistant Professor, was held on 15 November and drew 95 attendees.  It began with a GIS education presentation by Dr. Michael DeMers, Professor of Geography at New Mexico State University, followed by 9 short talks covering topics ranging from GIS web tools, identifying ‘hotspots’ that may limit forest management, using captured yields to optimize harvests, wildlife conservation, Palouse-Clearwater food systems, climate change impacts on Idaho’s dairy industry, and more.  Professor Godfrey said, "Everyone was able to learn about underwater research with a tethered drone, unmanned aerial systems, the Idaho aerial imagery explorer and rangeland atlas web applications, the story of the Syringa Mobile Home Park closure, defining isolated communities in Idaho, land use and climate change predictions, and more.    Rounding out the afternoon were presentations from Wilma Robertson (Chair, Idaho Geospatial Council - Executive Committee) about GIS consolidation and the role of the Geographic Information Officer (GIO) and from Heather Glock and Shane Clarke (of Esri) about Web GIS.  Concluding the day with this particular presentation seemed appropriate especially since Web GIS is a paradigm shift.  Participants left the event considering the many places that Web GIS might take us."  In addition to sponsorship by the University of Idaho Library, sponsors included the university's Department of Geography, Northwest Knowledge Network, the Northern Rockies Chapter of URISA, Rim Rock Consulting, Inc., Alta Science & Engineering, Inc., Ascent GIS, Sentry Dynamics, and GravisTech.  Professor Godfrey mentioned each of the GIS Day committee by name and said, "GIS Day is truly a team effort and this group worked hard to achieve another successful event!" A portion of the University of Idaho's GIS Day event.    Gideon James Diwa in Gombe, Nigeria, shared that their GIS Day event featured a workshop on crime mapping.   GIS Day event in Gombe state, Nigeria.   The Arizona GIS Council compiled the many events happening around the state into a fascinating story map.  The participants in the Oak Hill, West Virginia, event placed their entire set of GIS Day presentations on YouTube.   Like many of you, I was very busy during GIS Day week and loved every minute of it.  I visited four universities in five days, including the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Grand Valley State University, and Central Michigan University, as part of my team's effort to support and foster deep and wide adoption and rigorous use of GIS throughout academia. It was inspiring to see first-hand how these campuses are using GIS in planning, geography, facilities management, health, Judaic Studies, environmental science, engineering, earth science, economics, language arts, and in many other disciplines.   I was very happy and honored to teach numerous hands-on workshops and give  presentations, including several with my education Esri colleague Geri Miller.  The people we met with are truly broadening the horizons for how GIS is being used to make a positive impact on the planet and its people!   Selected GIS Day events I was involved in, at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Grand Valley State University, and Central Michigan University, supporting wonderful faculty, students, IT staff, deans, facilities managers, and others on these campuses.  ... View more

I recently wrote about 15 inspiring GIS Day stories from the events held in 2018.  Many of the GIS Day events were held in schools, libraries, museums, universities, and other educational settings:  https://community.esri.com/groups/gis-day/blog/2018/11/26/10-gis-day-2018-success-stories   It is my hope that these stories inspire you to continue to make a difference with GIS in education not only on GIS Day, but throughout the year.  --Joseph Kerski ... View more

Thank you to everyone who celebrated GIS Day in 2018.  I invite you to share your experiences and continue the celebration by sending in your GIS Day memories to [email protected], share your event on this story map, or share in the GIS Day group on GeoNet.  A total of 1,201 events were held globally.  Here are just a few of the many stories coming in from government agencies, universities, schools, nonprofit organizations, and private companies that clearly demonstrate how GIS is making a positive difference all around the world.   In Argentina, at The National Technological University (UTN), in Tucumán, Alejandro Bascolo shared this story of their event.  One video in the article features Engineer Alejandro Báscolo, Professor of Geographic Information Systems and Chair, who said: "This is the eleventh edition of this open house in which is exposed how geographic information systems can help in the resolution of different problems that are presented to us daily".  GIS Day celebration at UTN - the National Technological University in Tucumán, Argentina.   Professor Stacey Stark shared the event held at the University of Minnesota Duluth:  They held a GIS Fest on campus, attended by 150 people, that included presentations, exhibits, and demonstrations covering a wide range of fields in topics such as GIS in elementary education, fighting the opioid epidemic, learning about mercury distribution in the St Louis River Estuary, solving problems at Minnesota Housing, spatial web services and applications, the future of the geospatial industry, drones, and more.  Participants learned from university GIS student alumni, community partners and faculty as they share their work.  One of the exhibits at GIS Fest at University of Minnesota Duluth.   Pakrad Balabanian shared an event in Armenia organized by his non-profit organization KARDÉS (which means maps in Armenian) in partnership with AGBU AVC (Armenian Virtual College) and in coordination with the Ministry of Education and Science of Republic of Armenia.  It took place in the AGBU headquarters in Yerevan, Armenia. AGBU (Armenian General Benevolent Union) is the largest non-profit Armenian organization, established in 1906.  The purposes of the event were to introduce the importance of GIS and maps to teachers of all levels, the importance of GIS in education and its link with STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics), present a pilot project of introducing GIS in 25 public schools, to get feedback from teachers about the subjects and topics to be used in the pilot, and to celebrate the GIS Day for the first time officially in Armenia. First ever GIS Day event in Armenia, focused on education.   Professor David Padgett shared the Tennessee State University and Morgan State University collaborative GIS Day events and forum. The collaborative GIS Day event included the following presentations, all live streamed: Maps of Black Folk: Geospatial Technologies in Professional Practice and Student Career Mapping, Mapping Southwest Asia and South Asia Climate Data using the ESRI Story Maps Platform", GIS Scoping Methods for Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) for Four Gulf Coast Environmental Justice Communities, student GIS project presentations, Geospatial Technologies in Professional Practice, Student Career Mapping in Geospatial Technologies, and using GLOBE Urban Heat Islands - Surface Temperature Field Campaign Data to develop a Research Question.   One of the activities (pictured below) was a GLOBE Atmosphere Protocol outdoor exercise at Stratford STEM Magnet High School. Pre-service teachers enrolled Dr Padgett's World Regional Geography course led Mr. Rodney Donaldson's 9th grade class in completing the data collection. Dr Padgett's students then did a data visualization converting the GLOBE data into map format using ArcGIS online. On GIS Day, Dr Padgett's students engaged in a live interactive discussion on the atmosphere data they collected and how it is symbolized on the map. At a later date we plan to give the 9th graders the opportunity to work with ArcGIS Online hands-on. This is a great example of university students and faculty working with K-12 students! Dr David Padgett explains field data collection procedures to students in Tennessee.   Samuel Macedo shared their 2nd annual event at the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, in Ilhéus, Brazil. The entire event can be seen on YouTube, including five presentations given during the day.   GIS Day events in Brazil.    Janaki Gattu, Manager at GeoSys Enterprise Solutions in India, shared this story:   They held an event for employees who work on smart city projects, focusing on the role of GIS in the digital transformation of society focusing on the web GIS platform, on 17 November in Hyderabad.   A video of the event touches on the highlights.  GIS Day event at GeoSys Enterprise Solutions in Hyderabad, India.   Hayleigh Conway, Geomatics Technician, Western Arctic Field Unit for Parks Canada, shared their story from way up in Inuvik Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada, where she, Celtie Ferguson from the Aurora Research Institute, William Woodley and Nanar Hakobyan from the NWT Centre for Geomatics, Alice Wilson from Environment and Natural Resources, and Annika Trimble, Garfield Giff, and Amir Zeb from the Aurora Research Institute organized a whole "Geo-Week". This included a 3-hour public event at Aurora College where members of the community visited tables highlighting research performed using GIS in the Mackenzie Delta region, including a scavenger hunt around town!   The next day, the organizers spent the day at East Three High School presenting to grades 7, 8, 9 and one grade 11 science class. This included topographic map work, a remote sensing activity, wildlife collars and telemetry to track caribou movements, and a demonstration of different GIS apps (including the Gwich’in Place Name and Story Atlas. Then over the following two days, they presented to all the grade 4, 5 and 6 classes (9 classes total) at the East Three Elementary School. Said Hayleigh, "It was bananas but a lot of fun." It included activities on a huge Canadian Geographic floor map of the Boreal Forest, learning about scale and legends and had some fun scavenger hunts looking for different cities and towns. Students also traced sections of a map of the Mackenzie Delta and put them all together to make a complete map.   Team organizing the GIS Day event in Inuvik, Canada.   In Côte d'Ivoire, the Youth Mappers of the Centre Universitaire de Recherche et d'Application en Télédétection (Research Centre for Applied Remote Sensing) (CURAT) participated in GIS Day on 17 November 2018. It brought together students and professionals.  This included a Mapathon on Abobo project task 4921, initiated by three main organizations: AidData, Development Gateway, the Ministry’s Direction de l'Informatique et de l'Information Sanitaire (DIIS), and USAID/CIV.    Presentations included those from Gerard Allali, GIS Engineer and working for a commercial company on various geospatial projects in Ivory Coast and Mali, and Nesit Abedje, GIS Consultant for an International Foundation. His main tasks are implementing the project OpenDCH is Ivory Coast and training Ivorian staff in the health area.  Traoré Salim, GIS Analyst, Marius Guede, Geographer, and Chérif Aïdara, Data Analyst, also shared their experiences. Another professional (Kouakou Ulrich Franck) who is working for a telecommunication company shared his work with using big data and machine learning in spatial analysis.    GIS Day activities from the Youth Mappers of CURAT - Centre Universitaire de Recherche et d'Application en Télédétection (Research Centre for Applied Remote Sensing) in the Côte d'Ivoire.   I participated in a GIS Day Live Chat on Friday 9 November.  It was great fun, with more than 5,000 views and 95 comments between the GIS Day Live Chat guests and GeoNet members posting their questions.  I salute my colleagues Nicole Minni from the University of Delaware, Luis Olivieri from Hopeworks, the GeoNet team, and all who participated, for making it a great success.   Plus, the poster that my GeoNet colleagues put together made us look like we had recorded our own multi-platinum album! Live Chat GIS Day flyer.    Dr Patricia Carbajales-Dale from Clemson University shared their event, which included drones, Lidar, a mapathon, pizza, and cupcakes (pictured below).    Clemson University GIS Day event flyer.   I also found it fascinating to read about the major event hosted by Esri France (with photos and videos included), incredible speakers that Stacy Curry-Johnson and her colleagues lined up for GIS Day at Vanderbilt University, what geography instructor Bob Lang at the King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls did to celebrate GIS Day, as seen in his story map, and the innovative quiz that the Port of Tacoma put together in their story map of ports around the world.    Last but not least for this GeoNet post, Janet Reyes, Geospatial Information Librarian at the University of California Riverside, shared their GIS Day event, which included a poster contest, presentations on Mapping Wildfires in Mediterranean Ecosystems in California (quite appropriate given recent events), the use of GIS in the “Along the Chaparral: Memorializing the Enshrined” project, a Web-based GIS Application for Longitudinal Neighborhood Analysis, Modeling Neighborhoods Through Time and Space with the Open Source Neighborhood Analysis Package, and on GIS in Local Government.  Janet also reported that her GIS Day table received a visit from Scotty the Bear, the UCR mascot!    GIS Day table at the University of California Riverside receives a visit from the university mascot, Scotty the Bear! ... 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Greetings all and, if you are in the USA, Happy Thanksgiving. This “where does Thanksgiving dinner come from” story map: https://storymaps.esri.com/stories/2017/thanksgiving-dinner/ could be useful for many reasons:   1)   Like many good maps, it is great for examining spatial patterns, and also for challenging some preconceived notions (did you know that Wisconsin was so prominent in growing green beans, for example?).  2)  The excellent use of symbols and other cartographic techniques might be useful discussion points in geography, GIS, and cartography courses. 3)  Examine the metadata--this map was created from data from the USDA Census of Agriculture.  How did the data get compiled?   4)  How can you create a series type of story map like this one, on your own topic of interest? 5)  Use this map to spark some “spatial” discussions with your friends and family.   Enjoy.  And thank a farmer! --Joseph Kerski  ... View more

The crowdsource story map recently was moved to mature status and is no longer supported.  I have been receiving inquiries from educators who still want to use it and because of its ease of set up and simple interface, ask me if it is possible.  Yes, at the present time, it is possible.  However, it is not advised for high profile or large projects; for these projects, it is better to gather the data with Survey123 and make a map of the results or to use another crowdsource option listed here.  I typically use this as an introductory activity in a face to face or online course or workshop, to have people share the landscape where they work, so we can discuss spatial patterns or landforms and vegetation type, to help them to start thinking spatially, and to get them immersed right away in web GIS technology.   If you still want to make a crowdsource story map, go to this location--the metadata page for the app: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=e4c4b8e26a7e440684d2dd232c8d0731    Technical note:  When I sign in to ArcGIS Online and I go to the above location, I typically do not see the "Create a Web App" choice.  I know right away that I am in a loop where I cannot be signed in to ArcGIS Online and viewing the above page at the same time.  What I have to do to get around this issue is to sign in to ArcGIS Online, and then search for “crowdsource story map app mature".  Then, I go to the resulting page, and am now signed in, and ready to create my map, using "Create a Web App" as shown below.   ... View more

Welcome to this series of GIS Workshops!  These are designed to help you become excited about and enabled to use web GIS tools to solve problems and analyze spatial patterns, relationships, and trends. (1)  Telling your story with Esri Story Maps - concepts and hands-on activities: telling_your_story_with_esri_story_maps_final.pdf - Box  Digital Humanities Collection:  Story Maps and the Digital Humanities   (2) 5 Converging forces catapulting spatial thinking to the world stage, 5 trends in geospatial technology, and 5 skills important in your data science career. https://denverro.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=fb060544d4bc4d15a1b8bed38048859b  (3) The Power of ArcGIS Online (3a)  Spatial Joins to the ArcGIS Online Living Atlas of the World A spatial join is a GIS operation that affixes data from one feature layer's attribute table to another according to its location. Spatial joins begin by selecting a target feature and comparing it spatially to other feature layers.  Spatial joins have been used for years, for example, to determine how many water wells are in a drainage basin, or businesses in a census tract, or the number of earthquakes that fall within specific countries over specific time periods.  Let's take this last example and apply it to the changing paradigm that Web GIS represents.  You can now join data to the cloud!   Let us say that I want to determine how many earthquakes occurred in the past 30 days according to the USGS National Earthquake Information Center.  The way I have done this for years in ArcGIS Desktop was to gather two data layers - a point layer for earthquakes, and a polygon layer for world countries, and perform a spatial join.  Nothing is wrong with that method, and it continues to work well in ArcGIS Pro, for example.  But let's say I want to do that in ArcGIS , and I don't want to download anything.  This is accomplished with an analysis tool in ArcGIS --Join Features.  To use the analysis tools, you have to be signed in to ArcGIS  and have a publisher role.     To begin, start with my web map:   http://denverro.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=63a6261d7afa48878a52a4c7127f624e - the  Earthquakes starting point map.  It contains data layers that are streaming from the USGS earthquake center, in this  case, the last 30 days of earthquakes.    Sign in to ArcGIS Online > Analysis > Summarize Data > Join Features.  Once the Join Features analysis tool is engaged, I find World Countries (generalized) in the Living Atlas of the World.  This is your target layer, so named because my goal or "target" is to create a choropleth map by country polygons.  The layer to join to these polygons is my earthquakes layer that is streaming from USGS.  The type of join is "intersect"--if an earthquake is inside or "intersects" the country polygon, you want it to be considered.     Here is how I found the Living Atlas content, after searching on World Countries, I selected the generalized data set:   I filled in the remainder of the Join Features dialog box as follows:  I chose the one to one operation; I added statistics so I could determine average magnitude and depth by country, which I thought would be interesting (as I explain in this video, always be curious!) my resulting layer and I unchecked "use current map extent" just in case my current extent happened to be cutting off any outlying islands in the South Pacific, for example, and then > Run Analysis:     The results are below, with all countries defaulting as single symbol.  You will change the style shortly, but before you do, let's examine the new table of data.  The "join count" field contains the number of earthquakes by country:   The average magnitude and average depth have been saved as fields in the new layer:     Next, use Change Style to symbolize the countries on Join_Count, as follows:     Because the USA contains so many earthquakes, the default Counts and Amounts symbology lumps most countries into one category.  The reason why is in part because the USGS earthquake center is in the USA.  It is in Golden Colorado; I used to give tours there as a USGS employee; a fascinating place that I recommend highly for you to take a tour in next time you're in Colorado.  The earthquake center receives transmitted signals of information from the global seismic network, but it also senses ground motion from nearby earthquakes in the western USA.  So, it senses more small earthquakes in the USA than it does for other countries, resulting in a higher number for the USA.  This is all a critical part of knowing your data, as I write about weekly on the Spatial Reserves data blog.  So, under Options, I changed the classification to Quantile with 5 classes, as follows:     The result is below.  Now I have a better sense, with a choropleth map, of the frequency of earthquake by country.  Given a ocean polygon layer, I could even map oceans by earthquake frequency.   I would like to make just a few adjustments.  Because over the last 30 days, according to the USGS, earthquakes had occurred in only 42 countries, and 254 polygons exist in the generalized world countries data set, countries with no earthquakes have no symbol or color:         This looks a bit odd.  My goal is to show countries with no earthquakes over the past 30 days with a pale yellow color.  This is easily remedied with a few keystrokes.  The easiest way to do this is to use the Add Data button, add the generalized world countries from the Living Atlas of the World, and change its style to pale yellow with a yellow outline.  Once done, I moved its position to be located underneath my joined earthquakes layer.  I also moved the earthquakes to the top of the contents so that my map users could more clearly see them.  I also labeled the countries with the number of earthquakes that occurred within each one.   The resulting map is here.    Try the Join Tables to ArcGIS  on other data sets.  It can be accomplished in just a few steps but the results are powerful.  Think of ArcGIS  and the Living Atlas as a vast storehouse of data that you can join your own data to for rich analysis. (3b)  Cholera investigation:   http://esrit3g.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=87c0f79108e246d49f97a6cfe4fce157   Steps: 1--Style data on number of cases. 2--Create heat map. 3--Buffer wells by 500 ft. 4--Summarize within - cholera cases within buffer. 5--Calculate route to each water pump. (3c)  Use Arcade expressions on the following data set to enhance your capabilities in ArcGIS Online:  https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?useExisting=1&layers=c2d611adace94b488bfbf280dd591a7c  (4)  Survey123 Workshop: Survey123_university_of_michigan.pdf - Box  (5)  Careers in GIS career_advice_joseph_kerski_short.pdf - Box  ... View more