With the release of ArcGIS 10, Esri provides users with a Land Records solution as a core part of the ArcGIS platform. This solution helps you produce great web maps, implement efficient workflows, and incorporate best practices from the land records industry at large.
The parcel maintenance solution has three key parts. First is the Parcel Editor toolbar, which is included with ArcGIS Desktop at the ArcEditor and ArcInfo license levels. This toolbar contains the tools needed to access and work with parcel data. The second part of the solution is the parcel fabric. This dataset manages the spatial and topological relationships inherent in parcel point, line, and polygon data. The third and final part of the solution is the Tax Parcel Editing map. It supports local government workflows and is a multiscale editing map that organizes the survey framework (Public Land Survey System [PLSS] and control), subdivisions, lots, tax parcels, and encumbrances in a fabric data model that can be used with the Parcel Editor toolbar.
by Paul Robinson, Water Resources Team Leader
Imagine being able to have an idea of where flooding issues are at the outset of a project. What if we could squeeze government dollars a bit harder and quickly map flood risk for a whole nation?
Making good use of available GIS data and new tools in the armory of our profession are rapid flood inundation models like Halcrow’s ISIS-FAST. The tool provides a quick assessment of flooding using simplified hydraulic principles to provide results up to 1000 times quicker when compared to other tools and methods available for flood inundation simulations – i.e. providing results in minutes as opposed to hours or days.
ISIS-FAST works by first identifying depressions on the floodplain before routing water through these depressions. Water depths in the depressions are determined by: volume of water flowing into that depression; level at which water can spill into neighboring depressions; and water level in neighboring depressions. ISIS FAST represents connectivity and volume filling effects on the floodplain, without having to represent detailed hydraulics.
In the last couple of weeks, the Imagery Blog discussed combining all your imagery bands into one raster. As mentioned previously, when you receive most satellite or aerial scenes they tend to distributed to you in several files – where each band is a separate file.
This week’s blog will discuss how the mosaic dataset can help you put your bands together. A mosaic dataset can put these scenes together into one logical geodatabase entity. Furthermore, it can mosaic all the scenes together as well.
A mosaic dataset can composite bands and also mosaic scenes.
Virtual 3D cities and geodesign in 3D are hot topics these days, and at the recent Esri Partner Conference and Developer Summit lead product engineer Mark Bockenhauer demonstrated some interesting capabilities which can potentially make your entire virtual city, including the software used to view and analyze it, completely portable – even pocketable.
We recently had a couple of questions in our inbox concerning map tips – the text that is displayed when you hover with your mouse over a feature – and here’s a summary of how they work.
This month we caught up with Eric Spangenberg, GIS Coordinator for Lewis & Clark County and City of Helena, Montana. Eric also sits on the Board of Directors for The Montana Association of GIS Professionals.
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Business Analyst Desktop customers… keep an eye out… your data update is on its way…
This tiny little flash drive is packed with loads of new data (not just demographics… but business locations, shopping center locations, streets and geocoding data)… and it’s all in the newly released Census 2010 geography. Also in the update are…
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The Ocean Basemap, a bathymetric map service by Esri released on June 21st of 2011 (World Hydrography Day), is being used by many ocean GIS users around the world; initially, the Ocean Basemap was created with data from the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO), IHO-IOC GEBCO Gazetteer of Undersea Feature Names, NOAA, Seafloor Mapping Lab of the California State University Monterey Bay, National Geographic, DeLorme, and Esri.
Due to its great success and in an attempt to enrich and improve data resolution, the Ocean Basemap is now open to receive bathymetric data contributions from data providers such as Hydrographic Offices and academia, for bathymetry and named features. If you want to learn more details please contact oceanbasemapteam@esri.com .
By Kenneth Field, Esri Research Cartographer
Tourist trail maps engage people new to an area and guide them to sights of importance or interest, often using a particular theme. The Esri story maps team recently published a trail map of New York City’s High Line and also a short walking tour around Esri’s Redlands campus. Both examples illustrate the way in which web maps allow you to combine basemaps, route information, point of interest markers and multimedia (e.g. photographs) to tell a rich visual story. Web maps like these can be used either as a virtual tour to give a narrative without actually visiting the area, or as a navigation aid as users follow the trail in reality using a hand-held device. In this blog entry, we’ll look at how you can make a walking trail web map.
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Liying Wang (Florida State University, lwang3@fsu.edu)
Ming Ye (Florida State University, mye@fsu.edu)
Paul Z. Lee (Florida Department of Environmental Protection, paul.lee@dep.state.fl.us)
Richard W. Hicks (Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Richard.w.hicks@dep.state.fl.us)
What does it do?
Nitrate, as a commonly identified groundwater and surface-water pollutant, is associated with a number of adverse health and environmental impacts. One major source of nitrate in the environment is due to wastewater treatment using Onsite Sewage Treatment and Disposal Systems (OSTDS) (a.k.a., septic systems), whose effluent is directly discharged into soils and subsequently groundwater. Therefore, it is important to simulate nitrogen transformation and transport in the vadose zone and groundwater due to septic systems. We have developed an ArcGIS-based Nitrate Load Estimation Toolkit (ArcNLET) to simulate nitrate fate and transport in groundwater and to estimate nitrate load from septic systems to surface water bodies such as lakes and rivers (read the ArcNLET blog). In this blog, we introduce VZMOD, Vadose Zone MODel, a recently developed software for simulating nitrogen transformation and transport in the vadose zone. VZMOD can be used as a pre-processor of ArcNLET to provide source plane concentrations of individual septic systems from the vadose zone to groundwater.
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