Latest Contributions by BrianBaldwin

The ability to geo-locate or geo-reference historical maps has been a long-standing workflow in GIS. For those in history or planning programs, I love how this work can really make the past come to life. What buildings (or uses) existed in a location? How has an area changed? What physical landforms of the city have changed? Which landforms have persisted or shaped the current urban form? The best part, it doesn’t take 3 years of GIS to dive into. Sanborn map key.   A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting Boston University to give a workshop on georeferencing historical maps. As part of that workshop, I developed some basic StoryMaps, web maps, and materials to guide users through the process. The workshop used both ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro. Rather than letting that material gather dust – I wanted to share it out in the hopes that others could benefit. The main takeaways that I wanted the attendees to be aware of were: Basic georeferencing can now be accomplished in ArcGIS Online ArcGIS Pro is really easy to use for georeferencing if you need more precision and control Any of the maps or data that you georeference can be quickly and easily embedded into dozens of different applications There is a wealth of great primary source material available over the web (Library of Congress as just one example) In this material, I also provided a download for the few maps that I use in the workshop. To be honest… I spent far too much time cleaning up and ‘cutting’ the water out of the 1867 Colton Map of Boston, so I’d love others to use it as well (that download can be found in the 2nd StoryMap). These StoryMaps were both put together as part of the workshop, the first one provides some examples of what you can do with georeferenced maps. The other StoryMap provides a basic outline of the process and steps. Looking for Land: The growth of Boston: https://arcg.is/1miSP0 Georeferencing, Digitizing, & Working with Time Series Data: https://arcg.is/19yuaj0 I’d love to see what others pull together or if anyone has some great lessons on georeferencing historical maps. Have you had students digitize features? Build time-series maps? Use them for field excursions? Let me know in the comments below! ... View more

There are a lot of fantastic updates in the ArcGIS Online February update and many of these are very pertinent for the education community. You can read about all of the updates/full details in Bernie’s blog (https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-online/announcements/whats-new-arcgis-online-february-2023/) or in the ArcGIS Online documentation (https://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-online/reference/whats-new.htm), but I wanted to take a minute to call special attention to just 3 of these updates. Analysis Tools in Map Viewer! It was long awaited, but the analysis tools are now available in Map Viewer! This includes both vector and raster analysis tools. Every analysis tool (found in Map Viewer Classic) has yet to be ported over and there are some limitations on the types of layers that can be used for analysis, but there is a lot here.   One of the things that I was most excited about – is the fact that the web map will now contain all of the analysis history from the analysis tools you run. As an educator, a potential use case is the ability to share the map, along with the geoprocessing history. Learners could then review the analysis steps and parameters. They could even open the ‘historical tool run’ to change inputs, parameters, environment options, and then run the tool themselves. Some of the ‘advanced’ options are also a nice to have. With each analysis tool, there are also environment settings, similar to ArcGIS Pro, which allow users to manage the processing extent or even the output coordinate system. For more details from the product team: Introducing Analysis Media layers (images that can be referenced to a geographic location) The next big thing that I wanted to highlight was the ability to place media (images) in reference to a geographic location. To be clear, the capability at this release is fairly basic, but it still fills a big need. For users that need high-precision or the ability to edit individual control points, there is ArcGIS Pro for georeferencing. Yet, for users that are looking to place a historical map or reference document quickly, there is now a great option outside of the desktop environment.   Personally, I love how this opens up a wide range of workflows for the ‘non-GIS’ major. Learners can now georeference a historical map, create a feature class, edit data, build a web application, and share their work with StoryMaps… all without even touching desktop software. For more details from the product team on this capability: Announcing Media Layers Feature Display Order This might be a small change to the symbology settings, but it’s something that is really important for cartography. Prior to this release, there was no easy way to force a ‘drawing’ order within the same feature layer. If there were/are hundreds of overlapping symbols, they would be displayed in whatever order they were returned by the server… not the best approach when that order could affect the interpretation of the data!   This is a great feature from a teaching perspective, as well for production mapping. There are a wide range of examples that learners could explore to see the visual impact of modifications to the feature display order. For more details from the product team: Bringing Order to Complexity Close I know a lot of people are really excited for this update and I can't wait to see how these tools and updates get incorporated into teaching/curriculum in the months to come! If you have questions or need any resources, please reach out! ... View more