Jump-start your conference a day early by joining us for the 20^th annual pre-conference Water Resources Workshop on Sunday July 7^th. The Water Resources Workshop is a FREE, full day workshop focused on emerging trends in the integration of GIS and Water Resources and how you can use them in your work.

The web is now an everyday piece of GIS, and much of our focus in the workshop will be about the ongoing evolution of water resources and the web. The web is where you get your data, where you put your data, where you find and interact with tools and models, and where you publish results. We will have presentations from Esri staff, academia, industry partners, and ArcGIS users showcasing what resources are available, what new things are being worked on, how you can use them, and what you can do to contribute.

We realize the workshop falls on the weekend and we’re competing with the urge to be on the beach. So, we promise make the day fast and fun, with plenty of demonstrations and discussion, and by all means keep it relevant to helping you do your job better.

If you work in water resources and this is your first visit to the Esri Users Conference, we strongly encourage you to join us, learn what’s happening, ask questions, and use this as an opportunity to help plan your week. For all you regulars who we see every year, we look forward to seeing you again and sharing some fresh ideas and information.

Yes it’s true! A full day of cutting edge education on emerging trends in GIS and water resources. For many years this was a paid seminar and not only is it now free, but this year also includes a free breakfast provided courtesy of our partners at Kisters.

The meeting agenda and registration information will be available in the coming weeks, so check back to the Hydro Blog and stay tuned to our tweets (@HydroTeam) for these announcements. We look forward to seeing you soon!

http://maps.arcgis.com/apps/Solutions/s1.html?appid=11a7f83b09c74bec8f94a909d63e375f

If you want to try this out yourself, here is a blog from the Local Government team that walks you through setting up the app.

http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2013/03/19/configuring-the-arcgis-online-parcel-viewer-application/

Recently released on the Electric & Gas Resource Center is Data Reviewer for Electric for 10 and 10.1, which provide a number of quality control checks for validating electric utility data. The Getting Started document will guide you through:

• Performing automated data validation.
• Organizing, navigating, and working with results in the Reviewer table.
• Creating automated reports to summarize and share the results of a data review.

Highlighted below are a few of the key checks included in Data Reviewer for Electric.

• Check for duplicate, overlapping, and orphan devices, as well as those that do not split conductors.

Selected service point is an orphan feature

• Identify overlapping and orphan conductors.

Selected conductor lines have overlapping segments

• Search for invalid attributes.

Selected conductor line has a null Feeder ID

• Ensure attributes meet the domain constraints of coded value and range domains.

Phase designation of the selected conductor line is not a valid domain value

Data Reviewer for Electric provides just a sample of the important checks available to help you assess and ensure your electric data is of the highest quality. These checks can also be used as a starting point for developing a QC model that best fits your organization’s validation needs. Happy validating!

The modeling application was designed for a hydroelectric power production system in CA.  The system is located in the central Sierra Nevada Mountains, and is comprised of 6 major reservoirs, 27 dams, 9 powerhouses, and miles of interconnecting infrastructure. To better understand water volumes and flows on a real-time basis, the modeling application provides regular reports on the details of impending changes based upon current operation protocols, forecasts, and observed weather conditions. Operation managers use this information to adjust water volumes among the different reservoirs and control flows based on forecasted scenarios generated by the hydrologic and hydraulic (H&H) models.

The modeling application is a real-time, fully automated application that simulates the water cycle based on meteorological data and real-time field data.

The areas power company collaborated with ISSI to integrate these systems and data sources by implementing ArcHydro and combined the reservoirs, conduits, and streams to produce a spatial network of the area.  This network was then used to configure the underlying H&H models.  These H&H models integrate all software packages contributing data to the core modeling system, Real-Time System (RTS) program. RTS includes HEC-RAS, HEC-HMS, and HEC-ResSim H&H models to simulate the water cycle on live data feeds, including current and forecast gridded meteorological data, and real-time field data from reservoirs and conduits.

To make all of these systems and data sources come together we implemented Arc Hydro and combined the reservoirs, conduits, and streams to produce a spatial network of the area.  This network was then used to configure the underlying H&H models.  These H&H models integrate all software packages contributing data to the core modeling system, Real-Time System (RTS) program .

Figure 1: Screen shot of the HEC-RTS stream network and watershed.

To simulate the forecasted scenarios within the hydroelectric system, we needed a variety of different data sources to be continually connected to, and data extracted from these to be aggregated and processed.  This required the integration of several software packages.  To access the real-time field data (such as reservoir water levels or conduit flow speeds), we used beta middleware to connect ArcGIS to the power companies hydrologic time-series database. Perl and Shell scripts were developed to check for and retrieve meteorological data from third party suppliers.  Python and ArcPy were utilized to process this data into formats consumable by the Corps of Engineers RTS program suite.

Figure 2: Gridded temperature and precipitation data Metrologic input.

Currently, the modeling application runs every six hours and generates simulated results including reservoir levels, network flow volume, and river hydraulics.  These results are extracted and formatted into a PDF report for review by hydrologists.  For more additional information please see the modeling application technical paper or contact Integrated Spatial Solutions Inc.

Figure 3: Big Creek Elevation

Figure 4: Big Creek HMS Nodes

BCH2O Data Processing Workflow

Figure 5: BC H2O Arc Hydro Data Processing Workflow

Do you need to use soil data in your analysis? Simply open the SSURGO Downloader Application, navigate to your project area, click the map to open a pop-up and then click the download link to retrieve a ready to use pre-configured map package. It’s that easy!

Based on feedback we received at the 2012 Esri International User Conference, we have updated the map packages provided in our SSURGO Downloader Application. We added 14 new fields for a total of 140 attributes. In addition to attributes such as bedrock depth, steel corrosion hazard, hydric class, and range forage production, included now are 12 fields that detail a soil’s potential to produce various types of wildlife habitat, the version number of the SSURGO tables, and Corn Suitability Rating. The calculation for the weighted average fields from the component table has been improved and we added a date stamp to the Map Document Properties.

Figure 1: Navigate to your study area and click the pop-up to quickly download and begin using soil data in a pre-configured map document.

Figure 2: Twelve new wildlife habitat fields are included with the new map packages.

If you can’t find the soil attribute you are looking for, please leave a comment on the Downloader page. We would love to hear from people using the downloader and learn about your needs and how you are using the data.

If your organization is currently using the ArcGIS application on iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch devices we encourage you to wait until we update to the ArcGIS application before upgrading devices to iOS 6. We are finalizing our changes now and anticipate submitting to Apple’s App Store shortly. Once approved you will receive an update notification on your device and we will send out notification with another blog post.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Mobile Team

The 3.1 release builds upon the success of 3.0 with minor software enhancements and quality improvements. However, the exciting news with 3.1 is our joint release of ArcGIS for Windows Mobile and Trimble^® Positions^TM Software Suite by Trimble^®.

Trimble^® Positions^TM extends the ArcGIS for Windows Mobile 3.1 application and SDK with support for high accuracy GNSS mobile GIS data collection and is available for download today! Leveraging the simplicity of ArcGIS on the Windows Mobile platform you can now extend the reach of your collection needs to staff that require little to no training in GNSS or GIS data collection software.  Trimble^® Positions^TM adds support for both real-time and post-processing collection workflows made simple. You can download Trimble^® Positions^TM or read the documentation from the Technical Support tab.

The Trimble^® Positions^TM software suite requires ArcGIS for Windows Mobile 3.1 and ArcGIS for Desktop 10.1 so please ensure that you update to the latest released versions of Esri software.

The targeted software enhancements and stability/performance improvements within the 3.1 release are driven from customer issues and enhancement requests logged into our support system. Most notable is the addition of direct camera integration with the ArcGIS application on the Windows platform, support for acres as a unit of measure, improved memory management on Windows Mobile when using the camera, and About Project details now on both the Windows and Windows Mobile platforms.

Mobile Team