Latest Contributions by BernSzukalski

Announced first at the Esri 2014 User Conference a couple of weeks ago, and the topic of a recent Esri email campaign, it's worth getting the word out on. It's the Global Disaster Resilience App Challenge, a partnership of Esri and the United Nations, specifically the UNISDR - the part of the organization that focuses on disaster reduction. There's a $10,000 reward for the best professional/scientfic app, and also best consumer/public-facing app. And remember you don't need to be a programming ninja - there are lots of app templates that can lift your idea. For more details visit the Esri Global Disaster Resilience App Challenge website. The submission deadline is August 27, 5:00 p.m. (Pacific Daylight Time). Pass it on to your colleagues, your professional network, universities, etc. ... View more

At the recent 2014 Esri User Conference I showed on-demand satellite tasking from Airbus Defense & Space using a couple of examples with imagery obtained on-demand the week before the conference. Since then I've gotten several questions about the tasking, and the applications that were shown. Here's an outline of the presentation. The demonstration began by showing the Airbus Defense and Space - Satellite Tasking & Archive application. I had used a beta version of the application to obtain the imagery shown, and the application was released just prior to the User Conference and is now available via the ArcGIS Marketplace. The application enables you to search for a location (I used San Diego), then click to locate a 10 km x 10 km area of interest. Click Search to find imagery. The app returns a list of options to choose from, which include the following: Instant Tasking You can task to capture an image from the next available satellite pass of either Pleiades (50cm resolution) or SPOT (1.5m resolution) satellites, guaranteeing image capture on an exact date. This is best for when you absolutely must have the imagery as soon as possible. The image will be "as captured," so there are no guarantees to cloud cover percentage, so consider the weather and atmospheric conditions before using this option. These options are indicated by the red 1 Shot Tasking symbol. Click Info to get more details. Automatic Tasking Request imagery within the next 30 or 60 days. If you don't need the imagery as soon as possible, you benefit from getting a guarantee of the cloud cover. Search the archive Browse the archive of imagery that overlaps your area of interest. Hover over the selection to display the yellow shaded coverage of the image against your area of interest, or click Preview to see more details. Not shown or mentioned during the User Conference demonstration, the application also offers sorting and custom date range and percent cloud cover filters. Examples: A Partnership in Preservation: Coogan Farm in Connecticut, a project of The Trust for Public Land (TPL) is an example where the imagery could potentially be used for monitoring and stewardship. Internally Displaced Persons in Iraq: Imagery that shows camps that have sprung up as Iraqis have fled their homes for safer areas during recent turmoil. A Tornado's Swath of Destruction in Pilger, Nebraska: This third example was not shown during the Plenary, but is added here. It shows the devastating impact of an EF4 tornado on the town of Pilger, Nebraska. All of these examples were authored using the Story Map Swipe template. Note: The above is just a recap of what was demonstrated at the Esri UC. For more on this application, and other services offered by Airbus Defense & Space, search the ArcGIS Marketplace using the keyword Airbus. Note that this is a new Marketplace offering, and pricing and licensing is subject to change. ... View more

Unless you've been on vacation and off the grid the last few days, you've likely seen the coverage of the massive 30-inch water main break on Sunset Boulevard near the UCLA campus in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. The break has spewed over 20 million gallons of water, flooding UCLA buildings, creating a massive sinkhole in the street, and heightening awareness of the fact that California is suffering through a drought of epic proportions. As this map from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows, most of the state is currently under extreme or exceptional drought conditions. The Map of the Day today is not the Drought Monitor map above, but rather a Story Map Tour that for me, at least, really drives home in just a few clicks how low water levels really are - click once to advance the tour and see for yourself. You can view the entire Story Map Tour, authored by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), to learn and see more. This simple, yet effective story map makes this the Map of the Day today. Further info: Story Maps Story Map Tour How to open a Story Map Tour at a specific tour point ... View more

During the afternoon plenary session of the Esri 2014 User Conference an app built using the recently released Story Map Journal was shown. The journal was assembled by Story Map team members Jon Bowen and Melanie Rosenberg. Here's the link to the app Learn more about the Story Map Journal application template. ... View more

A recent post covered the steps to embed a map gallery in a web page. Someone today mentioned that the HTML generated doesn't center the gallery. That's true, but it's easy enough to center it - though what you need to do will depend on your web page style and structure. In the simplest case all you need to do is add the <p> tag align attribute or CSS to center the gallery. The best way is to use CSS since the align attribute is not supported in HTML 5. For example, this HTML (copied and pasted directly from Share > Embed in Gallery): <iframe scrolling="no" frameborder="0" src="http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/embedGallery.html? displayapps=true&displayinline=true&group=2394b887a80347fb8544610cfa30489c" style="width:720px; height:238px"> </iframe> Will result in a left justified gallery. Adding the text-align style and <p> tag as shown below will center the gallery ribbon: <p style="text-align:center"> <iframe scrolling="no" frameborder="0" src="http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/embedGallery.html? displayapps=true&displayinline=true&group=2394b887a80347fb8544610cfa30489c" style="width:720px; height:238px"> </iframe> </p> Here's a visual in a simple test page of the results in order (the box indicates the web page margins): Again, depending on your web page formatting, your mileage may vary... ... View more

With the July 2014 ArcGIS Online update the original Basic Viewer app template was renamed Classic Viewer, and a new Basic Viewer app template appeared. You'll currently find both on the first app template gallery page: If you are looking for an app template that offers many of the capabilities of the web map viewer without the authoring, the Basic Viewer was a good choice. The new template is much improved, and I recommend you check it out - it's a nice modernization of a good all-around "work horse" template, and can be custom-configured easily. ... View more

Today I downloaded the source data from the U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2008-1154  - Preliminary Map of Potentially Karstic Carbonate Rocks in the Central and Southern Appalachian States - and published it as tile and feature services, along with a few maps and apps. You'll find the layers via search, and you can also view the data in this app which uses the new Basic Viewer template. ... View more

Just in case you missed it in the blur of information surrounding the Esri User Conference, the Storytelling with Maps Contest winners were announced last week and posted on the Story Maps website. You'll get some great ideas and learn from these excellent examples that use a variety of different story map templates. ... View more

With the release of the new Analysis tools in the ArcGIS Online web map, you will need to create at least one feature service to enable the appearance of the Perform Analysis option when you want to perform analysis on any feature layer. Without a previously created feature service the Perform Analysis option will not appear. This is a glitch that will be resolved in a future release. An easy way to create a simple feature service to "seed" and enable the Perform Analysis choice is to add a spreadsheet with a single location to My Contents in your org subscription with Administrator or Publisher privileges. When you add the spreadsheet with these privileges you can select the option to spin it up as a feature service, thereby seeding the feature service capability needed to enable Perform Analysis as an option. If you've already created a hosted feature service in your organization, this is not necessary. ... View more