Tag Archives: Community Basemap
New Community Maps Resource Center survey available
The Esri Community Maps team wants this Resource Center to deliver the help and information our users need most, and we want to hear from you on how we can best do that. So please take a few minutes and complete the Community Maps Resource Center Feedback Survey located on the Community Maps Program Resource Center home page. With this brief survey you will be able to give us your opinion on what works, what doesn’t and what you would like to see in our Resource Center in the future. Thanks for your help. We are looking forward to your feedback!
Esri Support – the newest member of the Community Maps team
When the Community Maps program began nearly two years ago, the user base was relatively small and the processes for contributing data were still being formulated. Participants with questions regarding the program, including issues with the data model, map template and special data migration tools, typically contacted members of the Community Maps team themselves, either directly or through the email alias. Team members did their best to address questions from participants and interested users while keeping up with their day to day tasks.
While this was adequate for a program in its early stages, today’s Community Maps requires a support solution that can keep pace with our growing user community and deliver the assistance they need. That solution is Esri Support.
While Esri international distributors continue to provide support to Community Maps program participants outside the United States, beginning September 1st Esri Support should be the first place Community Maps members in the U.S. go with questions or problems related to the technical aspects of the program. Users are able to contact Support by phone, email and even IM chat. Once Support is contacted, a qualified Analyst will log an incident into our support system and assist the user in troubleshooting the issue until it is resolved. Examples off possible support incidents range from problems with the Community Maps map document or data model to best practices for creating the map cache for publication.
By including Esri Support as the primary contact for program issues, we gain several benefits, including:
1. Greater accessibility – With Support Centers on both U.S. coasts and a variety of ways to contact them, Community Maps users can now get their questions answered sooner and in a way that is most convenient for them.
2. Better transparency – Any incidents logged through Support can be tracked through the My Support, as well as the Customer Care Portal, providing the user with the latest information on the progress being made to resolve the incident.
3. Bug tracking – If a user discovers a bug (such as an error in our documentation or problem with the map template) they can log it with Support and keep track of it as it is resolved.
4. Better self-help resources – With information on Community Maps incidents and bugs now being logged into our Support system, users can choose to search our Support resources themselves, often finding the answers they need without contacting a Support Analyst.
5. Consistency – Now, when Community Maps members have questions about technical aspects of the program, they can seek help from the same place they go for their other ArcGIS questions – Esri Support.
These advantages, as well as others, make Esri Support a valuable partner for the Community Maps team. Of course we hope that your experience in the program, with the tools and training we have designed, is smooth and problem free. But if trouble does occur, it’s nice to know that Esri Support will have your back.
Updates to the Community Maps Video Gallery
A new series of videos have been published to the Community Maps Resource Center to help contributors develop their basemap. These short 3-5 minute technical videos are a response from the amount of questions Esri has received over the past few months on specific topics in the map production experience and are intended to assist users during the process.
They can be viewed or downloaded at the Community Maps Videos web page within the ArcGIS Resource Center.
Three of the new videos are centered on the Community Maps template and the required and preferred data layers or ingredients of the map. These videos provide details and best practices to the geometry types and attributes used in the template as well as how these layers are organized in the map document (MXD).
Some additional videos were also produced for data migration techniques to the Community Maps Data Model. Many of our participants requested further demonstration on using the Data Interoperability Extension and the pre-configured ETL (Extract Transform and Load) tools that are also available for download in the gallery. The Data Migration videos demonstrate the configuration of Data Interoperability workflow for several popular data layers such as Parcels, Parks, and Road feature classes. These three feature layers were chosen for demonstration since they represent the easiest migration techniques (Parcels) to the more complex (Roads).
Please be sure to let the Community Maps team know of additional video topics that might be useful for future participants by e-mailing communitymaps@esri.com subject line “Community Maps Video Ideas”. Additional videos are currently in the works, so please be sure to check back in the near future!
Mosaic Datasets: A new way to help speed up Community Basemap production
This blog post is intended to show two process improvements developed to produce hillshade and the vegetation layer for the Community Basemap. Both use the new ArcGIS 10 mosaic datasets. Benefits of using mosaic datasets include no duplication that saves disk space, no modification of the source rasters and the ability to update the mosaic dataset as new data comes in. The mosaic dataset allows for on-the-fly processing of the whole mosaic dataset that allows you to apply NDVI function or Hillshade function for Community Basemap layers. Continue reading
March 2011 Community Map Contributors
We would like to welcome our newest contributors and thank them for sharing their caches with our community.
Amherst, Massachusetts
Brandon, Manitoba, Canada
Cass County, North Dakota
Duval County, Florida
Monmouth County, New Jersey
New Braunfels, Texas
Palm Springs, California
Spain (577K – 18K)
Tacoma, Washington
Vancouver-DNV, Canada
Their maps and many others can be viewed here. Don’t feel left out! Join our growing community by submitting your own cache. Fill out the participation form and get started today!
Momentum Patterns for Contributors
Community Maps Program Momentum
The expanding global community of content providers is fueling momentum in the Community Maps Program. With over 250 authoritative content providers joining the program over the past 12 months participants range from college campuses to municipalities to state/province and entire countries. In addition to the overall rate of growth in the program, we have identified some interesting participation patterns.
Total Participation Chart
Contributor momentum is occurring in both vertical and horizontal patterns. Vertical momentum is occurring when municipalities are joining with their respective counties or state governments. The vertical data integration pattern shows national and state organizations producing maps for the medium scales while contained within the larger boundary, counties/cities/universities are developing the large-scale map layers. City government organizations are working with their county to partner in the program and build up content for their areas. These nested organizations are recognizing the benefits of the organized consistency for maps at different scales for organizations which need basemaps which extend outside of their boundaries. For example the State of North Carolina content is being used for medium scales of the map and Mecklenburg County and the City of Charlotte fill in the large scales.
Vertical Data Integration
This vertical data integration is apparent for the international community as well. Nation-wide maps at small and medium scales are being developed with content from National Mapping Organizations while cities are supplying content for the larger scales. For example the Canadian medium scale basemap includes data provided by Natural Resources Canada while City of Toronto content makes up the larger scales in the World Topographic Map service.
Participation to the program is also growing in a horizontal pattern. Neighboring city and county government organizations are expanding the map coverage for their areas. City GIS departments are reaching out to their neighbors to join the program and build seamless large-scale basemaps. The City of Boston Massachusetts encouraged neighboring City of Cambridge, MA to join and create a smooth, consistent map across their boundary. This momentum was observed by the Waltham, MA GIS coordinator and was the trigger for his organization to join. Waltham, located in eastern Massachusetts, is a western suburb of Boston. Eric Rizzo, the Waltham GIS Coordinator saw this as a great opportunity to be a part of a bigger effort and showcase his city’s data along with the surrounding larger municipalities in the Boston metro area.
This participation has encouraged regional agencies to join up on the program. The Metro Area Planning Agency (MAPA) of eastern Nebraska and western Iowa see tremendous benefit to having a metro-wide basemap. MAPA is a five-county Council of Governments (COG) with two Iowa Counties (Pottawattamie and Mills) and three Nebraska Counties (Washington, Douglas, and Sarpy). As a Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) they are focused at looking at the metro area as a whole and work to address cross-jurisdictional concerns. MAPA contributes to the regional GIS effort regularly through support for various GIS positions and projects and acting as a “funding umbrella” of sorts when aerial photography acquisition is needed and regional jurisdictions (many outside of the MAPA COG) join together and pool money for these costly products.
Paul Hunt, the MAPA Assistant Transportation Planner states, “The Esri Community Maps Program was brought to our attention by one of our County GIS departments. We immediately recognized the benefits of a seamless MAPA basemap and met with all our county jurisdictions and gathered their participation in the program. We feel there will be many benefits of having the seamless basemap coverage at large-scales for our area for daily (ArcMap desktop) GIS activities as well as providing a basemap for our Web-applications.
“Our biggest jurisdiction, Douglas County NE (City of Omaha), has engaged in Web-mapping application projects where the coverage expands outside their jurisdiction. We feel that contributing our trusted content to the ArcGIS Online World Topographic Map Service will provide the seamless basemap to aid in the success of these applications. “
Metropolitan Area Planning Agency Coverage Map
“We are very gratified and encouraged by the growth of this community map in the past year” states Esri’s ArcGIS Online manager Deane Kensok. “We are finding new publishing opportunities for the user community with this basemap. As for the growth among these neighboring communities, we know that these agencies communicate with their neighbors on a regular basis about GIS activities and see that word-of-mouth can be a great driver for broader collaboration and participation in these community maps.”
Written by: Seth Sarakaitis
How to Edit Overpass/Underpass on Roads with Z Level Values
The original version of the Overpass/Underpass tool included the Auto Edit Tool which was used to process road data with Z Level attributes. The Auto Edit function was removed in subsequent versions because it was producing undesired results. The procedure was to select all of the roads in your database and then run the Auto Edit Tool. The tool would then create 2 five foot long segments at every overpass location based on the road level values in the FZLEV and TZLEV fields. The roads were not merged at the intersection. Overpass segments would only be created where 4 road segments met so if you had a T intersection or five arcs meeting you had to do the edits manually.
The problem we were seeing was that the roads were split into too many short segments. For example, if you had a freeway that crossed over two other roads (split at each intersection) there were originally 3 freeway arcs. The tool would split the freeway 5 feet on each side of the other two arcs, turning your 3 arcs into 7. The value of the road level would then go back and forth between 0 and 1, kind of like this:
These numerous splits made the road symbol look rather ragged. When your data has Z levels, it is generally better to split the arcs only where necessary and assign the appropriate road levels to make the arcs display properly, something like this:
The example described above usually works pretty well. In areas where there are a lot of curves it may look better if you merge your arcs at the intersections.
October 2010 Community Map Contributors
The list keeps growing! Welcome aboard to our newest contributors to the Topographic Basemap!!
City of Houston, Texas
City of Dover, Delaware
Napa County, California
City of Miami, Florida
City of Phoenix, Arizona
City of Waltham, Massachusetts
City of Moncton, New Brunswick
Jacksonville/Duvall County, Florida
Milwaukee County, Wisconsin
Congratulations all on your outstanding map caches!
September 2010 Community Map Contributors
A big welcome to our newest Topographic Basemap contributors!
Outagamie County, Wisconsin
Henrico County, Virginia
Kamloops, British Columbia
Nanaimo, British Columbia
Toronto, Ontario (update)
Their maps and many others can be viewed at http://www.arcgis.com/home/index.html.
Share your community with the world! Complete the participation form and join the Community Basemap program.
Creating the Citation Layer
The Citation Layer is one of the most important elements of the Community Map project and must be delivered to the Community Map team by the time the final cache is to be sent for upload. Your final cache will not be uploaded without its corresponding Citation layer. It is fairly simple to create and is usually comprised of existing boundary layers that have been generalized.
The Citation Layer’s purpose is to acknowledge sources used within your project extent. This is where your organization’s participation is mentioned as the data layer sources are broken down by source provider.
Using a county extent as an example Community Map project, here is how a Citation Layer is created:
1. Under the CM_GDBTemplate.gdb, locate the WorldTopMapSources feature class. This is where you will add your citation information. Also located in the same geodatabase is the WorldTopMapSources_Example feature class which illustrates an example Citation Layer.
2. In ArcMap, copy the county boundary polygon into the WorldTopMapSources feature class.
3. GENERALIZE the layer if it contains a large amount of vertices. This layer will not display so don’t worry if the end result appears jagged.
4. Edit the added polygon for the following fields:
- OrgFullName: Full name of the organization
- OrgHomePage: Web address of the organization’s home page
- DataDnldDate: Date on which the data was downloaded, if applicable
- DataDnldURL: Web address of the data download page, if applicable
- OrgAbbrName: Abbreviation of the organization name, if applicable
- OrgIsAuthority: Organization has legal authority on the data; 1 for YES and 0 for NO
- DataMetaDataURL: Web address of the metadata, if applicable
- DataSvcURL: Web address of the data service, if applicable
- DataSetFullName: Full name of the dataset (you can list all datasets from this organization here)
- DataSetShortName: Short name of the dataset, if applicable
- ESRINotes: Any notes for Esri
- MinMapLevel: 16 (if using Large Scale template only)
- MaxMapLevel: 19 (if using Large Scale template only)
5. If you obtained source data from another organization, for example hydrology from the United States Geological Survey, copy the county boundary you generalized above and edit the necessary fields to credit the United States Geological Survey (USGS) for this data source.
6. If you obtained source for a subset area within your project extent, for example University data for an Area of Interest, copy the University polygon to the WorldTopMapSources. If the polygon does not exist, create a simplified one covering the University location. Edit the necessary fields to credit the University for this source.
7. Your final Citation Layer will probably have several copies of the same generalized boundary referencing several different data source organizations. It may also contain subset boundaries referencing data source organizations for specific areas.
8. Once your Citation Layer is complete, deliver it to the Community Map team. They will send it along with your final cache to the ArcGIS On-Line team for upload.
