December 2021

The December 2021 meeting was held online via Zoom and included the following presentations.

State of the Region – Shelley Broyles, NCTCOG
Brief overview of the regional projects and other GIS-related work that is happening at NCTCOG.

Exploring Dallas County’s Chemical Inventory with GIS – Bernardo Salazar, Dallas County
Every year, chemical facilities meeting reporting quantity thresholds submit a list of chemicals to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality under the TIER II Program. The Dallas County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management explores this chemical inventory to understand chemical risks across the county. 

GIS Urban Design Proposals – Cauner McDonald, NCTCOG and University of Texas at Arlington
This presentation focused on the development process and publication of two proposals for Alliance Town Center in North Fort Worth via ArcGIS Urban.

Fostering GIS in Local Government: Non-GISers Using GIS – Betsi Chatham, City of Grapevine
The City of Grapevine began its GIS journey over 20 years ago, and within a few years most, if not all departments gave complete buy-in. As with any small government GIS shop, an obvious pain point developed: too much work for limited staff resources. Furthermore, to provide value-driven GIS services efficiently for all customers with no chance of increasing staff time or positions was not only frustrating, it seemed impossible. The concept of empowering customers with GIS technology became a new business goal. The foundation of this goal was achieved by fostering the use of GIS by non-GISers through web-based services and apps such as Map Viewer, ArcGIS Collector, ArcGIS Survey123, ArcGIS Tracker, and Community Analyst. The examples showcased in this presentation showed how they could fit into other organizations and/or be leveraged by customers.

“Let’s Go Redistricting” – Bret Fenster, Collin County
Starting with population estimates and the ArcGIS Districting extension/add-on, Collin County creates commissioner precinct plans before the Census 2020 numbers are released. Once the Census 2020 figures are downloaded and processed, the planning process begins anew as they work to create proportional populations within commissioner precincts.

Do More with ArcGIS 2021 – Kathleen Clancy, Esri
The recent releases of ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Enterprise bring a host of new capabilities and functionality to GIS workflows. This presentation demonstrated how these recent releases can enhance Geographic Information Systems. 

Cooking with Attribute Rules: Using Esri’s Data-Sous Chef – Jordan Carmona, Town of Prosper
While it is true that you can't make an [actionable] omelette without [data entry]-ing a few eggs, modern spatio-culinary techniques allow us to whip up datasets with ease. Esri's Attribute Rules provide methods to knead, chop, and whisk away the labor of manually mincing data. This presentation sifted through examples of attribute rules, peeling back their logic, and clarifying an approach to tackling new recipes using Esri's 11 secret herbs and spices.

Remote Sensing Options Leveraging Satellite Imagery – Chris Wilson and Connor McKissick, Planet Labs, and Sam Moffat, Woolpert
Woolpert and Planet partner to provide end-to-end remote sensing solutions. In this session, Planet showed how satellite imagery is used to detect change in areas of interest, helping customers prioritize further action either through higher resolution options or site visits. Local government use cases included land use and permitting, emergency and disaster management, asset monitoring, construction monitoring and water quality monitoring.

Do LiDAR Data Provide Practical Significance to Improve Classification Accuracy over NAIP Data? – Mukti Subedi, Texas Tech University

Recording