Adjust a radius to topography

[JocelynGajeway]

This is a complicated question for something that is likely fairly simple.

My organization had a map created that has a circle around a point that has been adjusted to take the topography into account. It was exported as Adobe Illustrator files. We do not have access to the original ArcGIS files.

We would like to either import that layer into an interactive online map that would allow users to search any given address, and see where it falls in the zone, or create an interactive map with the same thirty mile zone with the same adjustments marked on it.

Is this doable?

How?

[DanPatterson_Retired]

What is the major consideration for delineating the circle?  Is road travel important?  Is movement in any direction possible ? (ie walking).  If it is the former, then the Network Analyst would be the option to use to account for your concerns.  And if it is the latter, then it would be the Spatial Analyst (Path Distance etc).  Do you have either?  What is the elevation difference over 30 miles?  I would do the math first.  If the elevation difference is 1 mile within 30 miles, might be reasonable to account for overland differences in the shape of the 'circle'.  if the elevation difference is a few thousand feet, well, is it worth all the effort? especially given the previous concerns of doing this with road traversal constraints etc.

ADDENDUM

if you are planning to do this all on ArcGIS Online ... forget it

[JocelynGajeway]

They are just looking to enter an address, and see if that falls within the zone. Movement isn't important, at least not at this point. The shape of the zone was determined after long negotiations, and is fixed.

Alternately, is there a way to export the .AI layered file in a way that will allow it to have a JS api added to it - i.e. can we take our current data and link it to a site that will handle dropping a pin on the map?

At this point, my team is just looking for feasible options to present to our management, so that we can take the appropriate next steps

[SteveCole]

It's unclear if you have any other GIS resources (Arcmap) available to you or just solely AGOL. If you do have Arcmap, you could look into converting/exporting the Illustrator file to an image format, and then use the georeferencing tools to register that image. Once that's done, simply trace the boundary of the zone into a new shapefile and then post that up into AGOL.

You may have reasons that prevent this from being practical (boundary too complex, no other features in the Illustrator file to tie to for geographic location, etc) but it's a possibility. I've done this to digitize timber sale boundary locations from old documents from the 1990s. Not "super" accurate but close enough, and it beats the alternative.

Steve

[SteveCole]

FYI- Illustrator supports exporting to AutoCad format (DWG or DXF) so you can actually extract the boundary without having to digitize it. You'lll still need to georeference the information, though.

[DanPatterson_Retired]

Jocelyn... I see what you are doing, but I just don't see how elevation bubbled to the surface as a delimiting factor, a simple draping of a 2D buffer on a 3D surface would probably suffice visually (if this is going to be viewed in a 3D perspective).  When, or if, they return to addressing whether a location is within a travel distance the the concerns I mentioned will be pertinent.  Of course, not of these issues are important until you approache t 'edges'