May 2021

The May 2021 meeting was held online via Zoom and featured 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.

NCT9-1-1 UAS Program Overview – David Dean, NCT9-1-1

Geospatial and GIS Needs in Planning for Drones and Advanced Air Mobility – Sam Moffat, Woolpert 
Unmanned aircraft (UAS aka drones) and advanced air mobility (also known as flying cars) is emerging fast in and around cities and towns. Whether it be for data collection, package delivery, or emergency response, these technologies will require planning, geospatial data, and infrastructure. This presentation focused on some of the data and systems needed to begin operations and sustain a safe and forward-thinking future.

Arlington, TX Unity Council Report – Tony Herhold, City of Arlington
Recently, the City of Arlington Unity Council published an extensive report outlining the current socioeconomic state of Arlington residents through the lens of race and ethnicity. The report contains a number of recommendations for working toward and achieving racial equity in the City. By utilizing extensive demographic and GIS data surrounding various economic, health, housing, and other factors, the Unity Council Report will provide the City with a useful guide for equitable decision-making going forward.

Geospatial Strategy: A Roadmap for Success – Jacob Blind, Eric Lomeli and Kathleen Clancy, ESRI
It takes more than technology for an enterprise GIS to be successful, it requires dynamic vision, business, and management skills. This session will discuss the components of an effective geospatial strategy, how it must align with the needs, goals, and challenges of your organization. A geospatial strategy defines how your organization will use GIS to achieve its goals. An effective geospatial strategy connects your business needs with the right people, processes, and technology to help overcome organizational challenges and improve results, highlighting a roadmap to connect with your organization's strategic plan. With a geospatial strategy, you can use GIS to achieve location intelligence – the ability to understand why and where things happen – so that you can make better decisions and operate more efficiently. A successful geospatial strategy will allow leaders to make smart decisions quickly while boosting the Return on Investment (ROI) throughout all departments of your organization.

Adapting GIS for New Permitting Software Tyler EnerGov – Gini Connolly, City of Hurst
Increasing levels of service in a community demanding more online availability necessitates more thoughtful data designs and GIS-centric work processes. Migrating to a new, entirely online permitting system required the City of Hurst to refine addressing, work management and land suitability, all leveraging the power of GIS. Tyler’s EnerGov provides a citizen portal to allow citizens to apply for building permits and planning applications online, while providing robust software to permitting, planning and code enforcement functions in the office and in the field. 

Texas Open Data, From Soup to Nuts: An End-to-End Use-Case for Texas Open Data Portal – Jordan Carmona, Town of Prosper
This presentation focused on a classic extract-transform-load (ETL) operation using the State of Texas Open Data portal. It looked at how to interact with their Socrata platform using the SODA API, ingest the data with Python using the GeoPandas library alongside the ArcGIS API for Python, and some light data engineering to make it suitable for loading into an Esri-based GIS.

NCTCOG’s Map Your Experience Public Involvement Tool – James McLane, Amy Johnson and Carli Baylor, NCTCOG
While NCTCOG's Transportation Department has been using ArcGIS Online and similar tools to communicate spatial information with the general public for some time, receiving spatial information from the general public is a new endeavor. Tools like the new Map Your Experience! Crowdsource Reporter application have allowed the department to continue its public involvement activities even as the pandemic has forced in-person events to be cancelled. The tool is designed to provide input to a variety of plans, notably including the upcoming update to our long-range transportation plan. Considerations in developing this application included maximizing its applicability to a wide variety of planning activities, processes for storing, processing, and censoring comments, and potential duplication with similar tools.

Innovations that Alter Career Paths – J. Scott Sires, Brookhaven College
Computers, mobile phones, the Internet, email, IoT, XRs (extended realities (AR, VR, MR)), AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Machine Learning, and similar technologies have become some of tools Geospatial Technology professionals use. This presentation focused on emerging innovations that are expected to change our workflows. The discussion shared Dallas College's observations of emerging technologies and its plans to incorporate them into its educational program.

Recording