Latest Contributions by BrianBaldwin

In early 2021, we held a webinar that discussed how Esri is working to support Geodesign, as well as Urban & Regional Planning programs, students, and faculty. There was a lot of great discussion and a ton of questions that we weren't able to get to in the webinar. As part of our follow-up, we wanted to ensure that we pushed out answers to these great questions. If you would like to see the original webinar, please visit the landing page here: GIS in Urban Planning - Higher Education webinar. Answers provided by: Brian Baldwin, Professor Ryu, and James Sipes It would be helpful to have a 'shared area' with numerous town & city examples from cities and also from students. Please visit this site, which will be constantly updated with links to examples, case studies, resources, etc.: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/569269c624f348d6a1f42c141629dbb2/ Is there a way for educators, cities, and neighborhoods to collaborate across the country? There are certainly no technological roadblocks preventing various parties from working together. ArcGIS Urban as well as ArcGIS Hub provide frameworks for engaging stakeholders and allow for 2-way communication. There are a few examples of schools working jointly on studios and if anyone has interest in building out a joint project, please reach out and we can help connect/facilitate discussions. What is the interface for building specific urban parameters in ArcGIS Urban? Is it more friendly than CityEngine? ArcGIS Urban is fully web-based and the configuration of parameters can occur in an easy to use UI. The basic inputs that are required for ArcGIS Urban is a defined zoning code. Esri provides a pre-configured sample that users can use out of the box, or they can configure their own. Can ArcGIS Urban measure wind and shadow patterns? ArcGIS Urban can model shadow patterns, but there is no functionality for wind modelling in Urban. Users have the ability to run richer analysis in ArcGIS Pro (traffic studies, wind, solar radiation) and then include these layers in ArcGIS Urban. Do students need to already be familiar with ArcGIS prior to using tools like ArcGIS Urban and GeoPlanner? If students will be required to do data preparation, then some prior ArcGIS experience would be helpful. For students that will be exploring scenarios, running simple analysis, or modifying parameters, no prior GIS experience is necessary. I find that students do not "need" to be familiar with ArcGIS Pro to use ArcGIS Urban. Actually, I find ArcGIS Urban a good gateway to introduce them to the more powerful ArcGIS Pro program since knowing the latter does help in maximizing their utility of ArcGIS Urban with its ability to create layers. However, for my particular class, ArcGIS Urban was more approachable and less intimidating for students. This is what I noticed since we did ArcGIS Pro assignments the previous time I taught the course and most noted that ArcGIS Pro was not necessarily intuitive for them to navigate. Now having said this, I want to disclose that my students are MPA students with little or no exposure to GIS before my class. Also, the course is primarily a planning course focused on introducing various planning frameworks and producing decision-aiding reports. Thus, ArcGIS Urban was introduced as a medium for the learning objective and not its primary objective. That is, making good plans was the priority where ArcGIS Urban was introduced as a modern tool that better enables us to do so. Students did later take subsequent Geosciences courses to acquire in-depth instruction on ArcGIS Pro. Yes, they should have at least familiarity with ArcGIS. Is help for faculty limited to the United States? Is there assistance for faculty/programs internationally? Please just reach out directly to Brian (direct message through the Esri Community) and he can get you in touch with your local Esri office for support. We would love to see success at programs across the world, not just in the US. Does ArcGIS Urban simulate impacts of different scenarios? Yes.  The hypothetical changes in sustainability indicators and infrastructure requirements for different scenarios were helpful in illustrating the impacts to the city.  This was relevant for my course in illustrating how different scenarios impact capital investment plans of the local government.  Encouraging certain structures with atypical infrastructure requirements will put strain on the city's infrastructure capacity.  Thus, corresponding adjustments must be made on the capital budget request side.  For our class, the ArcGIS Urban feature helped illustrate this point. Urban provides measurable outputs, making it easy to compare one scenario to another. Dashboards are very helpful for this. Is it difficult to get the required data for potential project sites? Yes, this was the biggest challenge for us.  Our city did not have a consolidated project site dataset for us to import into ArcGIS Urban.  Thus, for us, the project site data was compiled by our university with the GIS Center doing most of the heavy lifting. How can planning programs improve upon student understanding of infrastructure planning and prepare them to be better collaborators with public works? For our locality, infrastructure capacity was more of the focus rather than infrastructure vulnerability.  ArcGIS Urban is good for the former since the program is forward looking.  As for infrastructure vulnerability, I am thinking ArcGIS Pro would be better suited for such analysis since they would be stress tests on existing infrastructure. How can online tools like ArcGIS Urban help translate to working more closely with citizens? Opening up scenarios for citizen input would be a way.  However, this would require better coordination with the city's Planning and Zoning Commission since not all city development applications are open for public hearings.  Local ordinances will dictate which applications are subject to public hearing and which are not (although all application decisions are open for public observation).   The one they they really help with is allowing citizens to see information in 3D rather than just maps, and Dashboards help communicate results. I still question whether Urban is a good tool to allow citizens to touch at this point ... better to have a seasoned planner using the tool interactively at a work sessions. Can this modeling be used to determine how a project interacts on both a municipal and regional scale? Sure, just a question of collecting appropriate data. We used the Utica city limits because that was our focus, and much of the data was already clipped to the city limit, but we could have done the same thing for the county. It is more of the time needed to collect data, whether the data is available (for example, I am guessing that parcel data was not available for the entire county), and the time it takes to set things up. What do you think about putting these tools into the hands of community constituents, for exploring and designing themselves? (Would this be possible with pre-baked scenarios or with GeoPlanner?) This is a possibility.  However, I would push back on this approach.  This is because the scenarios are less effective as undisciplined sketches.  They are best introduced as investment aid tools that embodies best practices.  The program themselves would require training and a program license to the public. My institution has used ArcGIS Desktop for GIS teaching and have been making shifts to ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro recently. What is your experience in teaching regarding this shift? We have found the basics are the same, but there is a pretty significant change in menu structure, terminology, commands, available tools, useability, etc. We would suggest make the shift, not going back and forth between the two, because the lack of knowledge about menu structure (i.e. where to find a command, and how it is different than Desktop) is a limitation and we went them to learn to do this in Pro. ... View more

UPDATE: 8/16/2021 Parallels Desktop 17 was just recently released, which has been "rebuilt and optimized to natively run on Apple M1 and Intel based Mac devices" ORIGINAL POST In November of 2020, Apple released a new processor for their computers called the M1. If you want to dive into it, you can read about the details here (https://www.apple.com/mac/m1/).  The impact for users of ArcGIS Pro, is that there are currently no Windows virtual machine (VM) platforms that support this new processor (this is not the case for virtual desktop infrastructure or VDI platforms, which have been released and support M1).  Below is a list of the current recommendations and options that are available to users that need to run ArcGIS Pro on a Mac.     Intel MacBooks  Users can still purchase MacBooks that contain the latest Intel processors. Virtual machines are supported on the majority of MacBooks that contain an Intel chip. When purchasing a laptop, just make sure that you are purchasing the Intel chip option if running Windows in a VM is critical for your work.    Wait for VM Support  There is currently no VM client that can be installed locally to support a Windows VM (as of this writing 3/3/2021). The 2 major vendor details for support are currently as follows:  VMWare  There is currently no roadmap or technical preview of a VMWare product that will support M1 (as of this writing 3/3/2021).   Please refer to the VMWare website for the latest news/updates  Parallels  There is currently a ‘technical preview’ that has been released to support Windows 10 ARM. The caveat here is that users would be relying on a VM ‘technical preview’, to load an OS ‘insider preview’ (Windows 10 ARM), to install ArcGIS Pro (not yet supported on Windows 10 ARM), so this isn’t an option yet.  For updates related to x86 Windows support on a M1 VM, or Windows ARM, please refer to the Parallels website for news/updates    Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)  Virtual desktop infrastructure, or VDI for short, provides the ability to run applications like ArcGIS Pro over the internet and serve them through a browser. For schools or institutions that currently support VDI infrastructure (Citrix, VMWare Horizon, Parallels RAS, Amazon Workspaces, etc.), ArcGIS Pro is supported. Refer to your VDI vendor’s documentation to see what versions are current for installing on M1 MacBooks. For those that currently own an M1 MacBook and need to run ArcGIS Pro locally, this is currently the only option available.    Summary  The M1 processor is still relatively new (released November 2020) and VM platforms are certainly aware of the need to support Windows VM environments. For users that have already purchased an M1 MacBook, a VDI is currently the only option for running ArcGIS Pro. As vendors update their platforms to support VMs on the M1, we will work to keep you informed.    While ArcGIS Pro is the workhorse for data management, map production, and analysis, there is also an ever-expanding list of functions that can be accomplished in ArcGIS Online (spatial analysis, joins, visualization, map production, etc.). For power users as well, the ability to run ArcGIS Notebooks with the ArcPy library inside of ArcGIS Online provides a wealth of advanced GIS functionality that could be run from any machine (or phone).  ... View more

Can you imagine if a university limited the use of MS Excel to business majors? What if licenses of SPSS were only provided to statistics majors? While GIS software has its roots in geography, its wide-ranging application demonstrates clearly how students and faculty across institutions should have access.   While the concepts of GIS have always been useful for a vast array of disciplines to employ… let’s be honest, the learning curve of desktop GIS made wider adoption and use of the technology prohibitive. Yet, in the past few years, the ease of using web-based GIS tools has removed this barrier. GIS is now easier to use and students in any field can take the skills and tools available and apply them to their discipline. History, public health, business, anthropology – all these fields require the ability to visualize, analyze, and present information in a spatial context. We have seen countless examples of students building StoryMaps for archaeology, deploying mobile data collection applications in biology, or creating maps in urban planning.  To ensure that students, faculty, and programs can begin to use GIS more broadly, one of the most successful strategies that we have seen deployed is centralized funding for GIS. Without the hurtles in place that limit access, faculty and students are free to innovate. The change in funding also has much broader implications for educational institutions.  Some of the top benefits of this change have been:  Increased return on investment (more users = more value = increased ROI)  Eliminating labyrinthian ‘charge back’ procedures  Fostering innovation  Quick & easy access  Increased value  With budget cuts and an increased awareness of costs of all kinds, increasing the return-on-investment (in the eyes of administrators) and the value (more faculty and students) for software purchases is a win-win. The wider access to the technology quickly dilutes the ‘cost’ to the university, while also increasing the value to staff, students, programs, and the university.    Fostering innovation  Students, faculty, and programs (as well as employers) are constantly looking for innovative uses of technology and software. The geospatial market is set to triple to a $25b industry over the next 10 years and employers in every field will be seeking out professionals with these skills (PS Market Research, 2020). The big takeaway is that GIS is not just for geographers. Innovative uses of geospatial technology and skills are happening in virtually every discipline. To ensure that innovation thrives at your institution, the culture and experience must encourage an ability to try the latest technology.  Removal of ‘charge backs’ We have yet to meet a faculty or department staff member that has created a fluid ‘charge-back’ process to other departments or programs. Many stories that we hear are filled with the administrative headaches and pains that accompany software access and requests. By acknowledging the broader application of GIS to more fields and in turn, moving the funding of GIS to a centralized funding model the software can be more efficiently managed. Your university already has staff specialized in the licensing of software that is used across campus, utilizing these resources lets staff focus on their primary roles.   Quick & easy access  If students or faculty need to visualize or analyze spatial data… they can! Rather than spending time trying to figure out ‘how’ and ‘what’ to get access to, they can start using the tools and technology. If combined with an enterprise ‘single sign-on’ SSO policy, users simply log in, and get started. An enterprise SSO policy also removes administrative work when it comes to generating usernames or granting access.  Close  Over the past 10 years, GIS has evolved. While the software has been widely used in the discipline of geography, the skills and tools are applicable to all fields. Just as MS Excel outgrew its roots in business, ArcGIS is no longer tied solely to geography departments. Moving GIS to a centralized funding model provides a wide array of benefits and helps to build more innovative departments, students, and faculty. ... View more

With the vast array of products and updates, it’s even hard for Esri staff to stay on top of the latest enhancements! Here is a quick recap and a list of references to get you to some of the latest enhancements/updates that are key for educators. ArcGIS Dashboards – Beta 2 Dashboards are probably the first application that I ask: Are you using Dashboards yet?. From my perspective, this is one of the most valuable tools for both students and operations staff at universities and campuses to be familiar with. There is no better way to get GIS in front of someone that can’t spell ‘coordinate system’ and immediately convince them of it’s value. From my standpoint, the reason to invest some time in learning this new release is: Arcade support You can now teach basic ‘programming’ using the Arcade expression language. This gives you the ability to highly configure the look and feel of both symbology, pop-ups, and widgets. One simple example of this could have symbols ‘grow’ or change color based on their date or a severity field. Stand-alone tables Use non-spatial data as a source and create ‘joins’ inside of Dashboard to map and visualize that data with a key field…I love this. For example, you could have a feature class of counties and a table of accidents. Based on a common field (ex. name of county in each dataset), you could then symbolize the counties based on the total # of accidents. Just a few weeks ago, there was an update to ArcGIS Dashboards the full details of which can be found here: ArcGIS Dashboards Beta 1 Update (March 2020): https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-dashboards-beta-documents/what-s-new-in-the-arcgis-dashboards-beta/ta-p/921137 ArcGIS Dashboards Beta 2 Update (January 2021): https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/ops-dashboard/announcements/arcgis-dashboards-beta-2-now-available/ ArcGIS Online While there has been a wide array of updates to ArcGIS Online, a few of the most critical ones from my standpoint relate to the administrative functionality. Block Access to Applications While all users in Education are licensed for every product… it doesn’t mean that they need to see and use every product. If a teacher or administrator wants to control the applications all of the GIS Professional user types have access to, you can now ‘block’ those apps from your users. ArcGIS Security Advisor With the November 2020 update – HTTPS is now being enforced across ArcGIS Online. Yet, there are probably still images, StoryMaps, apps, links, or other content that are causing errors or issues in your organization that you might not be aware of. An easy way to check for these issues/errors is by using the ArcGIS Security Advisor application. It conducts a scan of all of your ArcGIS Online (or Enterprise) items and helps to address those concerns. Get to the application from here: https://trust.arcgis.com/en/ For a detailed look at the ‘What’s New’ – there is no better source of information then the ArcGIS Online update blogs from Bern Szukalski: 2020 Year in Review: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-online/announcements/2020-arcgis-online-year-in-review/ What’s New in ArcGIS Online (December 2020 Update): https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-online/announcements/2020-arcgis-online-year-in-review/ Hope this helped to guide a few folks to some of the key enhancements/updates that have been pushed out recently! If you have any questions, or if there were any key enhancements that I missed, please let me know in the comments.   ... View more

Late last year Esri released ArcGIS Field Maps, the next generation application for viewing AND editing data on a mobile device. There are already several blogs, articles, lessons, etc. to understand what ArcGIS Field Maps is, so the goal of this blog, is to let educators and students understand why it’s a big deal for them. In an educational context, this is a big development for a couple of reasons: You are licensed to use it! Provides the ability to introduce students to only 1 mobile application Supports more in-depth database and survey design Start introducing the basics of coding/programming (Arcade expression language) You Have a License! My reason for listing this first was to make it clear that no barriers or roadblocks are in place for users. Any GIS Professional user types can download the ArcGIS Field Maps application, log in, and start using it. Similar to the other mobile applications (Collector & Explorer), if a user has maps that they have created or that have been shared with them, they can access them, for either viewing or editing. With no licensing or access hurdles in place, you and your students can download Field Maps today and try it out. One App to Rule Them All The elephant(s) in the room that many people are probably thinking about are: Survey123, QuickCapture, AppStudio, etc. There are other mobile applications in the Esri ecosystem and many of them are fantastic (I have a great deal of love for Survey123). Yet, when students just need to start understanding the concepts and fundamentals of mobile GIS, it’s a painful process to have them download Explorer, Collector, Survey123, etc. The merging of viewing and editing functionality that takes place in ArcGIS Field Maps helps to remove some of those hurdles. It certainly makes me breathe a sigh of relief to think that students only need to download and log into 1 application to start covering mobile & field GIS lessons. Database & Survey Design It may not be the ‘sexiest’ of lessons or labs, but there is no better way to drive home the concepts of database or survey design, then by getting students out into the field and experiencing the ramifications of good, or bad design, first-hand. To help with this, ArcGIS Field Maps has a companion web application that provides a configuration approach for designing the data collection experience in the Field Maps mobile application. Should this field be required? What fields should be read only? Should the user be presented with a pick-list (domains) for this question? If a user selects ‘Yes’, should I present (or hide) this next set of questions? These questions and many others have significant ramifications for data quality, as well as the ease of data collection. With the ability to have conditional logic, grouped questions, read-only, required, and more options, students can build in-depth mobile GIS workflows, and quickly see the good/bad ramifications of those choices. Just a couple examples of the different configuration questions a user needs to ponder. "Should this field be required?, Should it have a domain? What length should we allow?" Introducing Coding & Programming Even in an introductory GIS class, students can begin to understand the value and need for basic programming skills (as well as starting to apply them). The Arcade expression language has been a part of the Esri ecosystem for a few years now, and it provides a good entry point for building that skill set. Students can start with some very basic fundamental skills like calculations and logical statements, or even jump to declaring variables and building complex scripts. If students want to change the symbology based on time or other attributes, or if they want to build highly customized pop-ups, all of these configurations will display in the Field Maps application. Lastly, the ability to create conditional questions in the Field Apps application requires the use of Arcade. For both the viewing and data collection aspects of a mobile GIS workflow, time spent learning Arcade is certainly not wasted. If the 'name' feature is blank... then this question/field won't show up! It's a really simple expression, but it let's students start exploring the possibilities of coding/expressions (what if we remove the '!'?). In Closing While certainly not an exhaustive list, I hope you are excited to go and download the ArcGIS Field Apps application and see how it could fit into your section or class. As GIS continues to expand to a wider pool of users, many of those users will only think of GIS as a mobile experience. With this latest release, ArcGIS Field Maps is now THE application that the majority of mobile inspections, map viewing, and mobile GIS work will take place on. Ensuring that students are familiar with it and understand how it works, will only help make then more successful in the long run. ... View more