Wednesday, April 24

Annie Cahill, GISP - Datamark

Workflows for NG9-1-1 Data Management

NG9-1-1 is transforming the role of GIS professionals who are managing GIS data for public safety. As geospatial first responders, GIS professionals must provide accurate, timely, and complete data in order to route 9-1-1 calls in NG9-1-1, and establishing proper workflows is critical for data management. Join DATAMARK to discuss the considerations for establishing these workflows to support 9-1-1 call routing.

Kansas Abernathy - Oklahoma Transportation Cabinet

Teaching the Teachers the Importance of GIS: A Look at the Struggles of School Outreach and What Oklahoma has Learned.

This will be an in-depth review of how the Oklahoma Transportation Cabinet has used the ESRI School Web Map competition as a source of outreach and a way to increase knowledge and use of GIS. This will include the mistakes and pitfalls discovered, as well as what strategies have been adopted. Attendees will also be shown what steps they can take to facilitate the competition within their own states.

Miriam Gomez - City of Carrollton

From Paper Stacks to Dashboards: An Adaptation of Survey123 and Survey123 Connect for Environmental Operations

The City of Carrollton's Environmental Services Department began to feel the strain of their extensive responsibilities and outdated workflows for repeat tasks. The city's GIS Department was asked to help with streamlining and simplifying components of their day-to-day to help prolong workflow retention and information availability. With the help of Survey123 we were able to create paperless data collection surveys for water quality monitoring and dashboards that gives quick insights for reports and long term environmental management and regulation. At a later date, we deployed Survey123 Connects' Advanced Forms to collect inspection data, provide a detailed history, and a dashboard for internal use to help address gaps and provide statistics for reference and reporting. The new Survey 123 Connect implementation also gives the City of Carrollton's citizens a more transparent and user-friendly experience regarding local businesses Health scores.

Seth Adams - WGI Geospatial

Avoiding the Distress of Sidewalk Assessments

This presentation examines WGI’s approach to sidewalk data collection and assessment and how that data plays a pivotal role in helping clients plan for ADA compliance. From a comprehensive technical method for sidewalk assessment, WGI's system allows for in-depth GIS analysis of external factors including census data and publicly available GIS data sets. This system gives clients a powerful platform to run various scenarios to develop analysis results that support robust maintenance and capital improvement planning. The discussion underscores not only the collection and analysis of sidewalk data, but the significance of using that data in conjunction with other datasets to empower clients with actionable insights, facilitating improved maintenance, compliance verification, and providing a blueprint for sidewalk design and reconstruction.

Paul Giroux, GISP - Greater Sudbury Utilities

Greater Sudbury Hydro Utility Workflows Explained: GNSS, Inspections & Public Reporting

Greater Sudbury Hydro Inc. will present three workflows they've implemented using ArcGIS Online for cloud first high accuracy data collection and validation, annual inspections and for public reporting of streetlight issues. Each process will be presented briefly so attendees can learn about some of the no-code patterns used, the challenges faced and lessons learned. Products included in the presentation: Workforce, Survey123, Field Maps and Power Automate.

David Allen, GISP - City of Roanoke

ArcGIS Pro Tasks - What are They and Why Should I Use Them?

ArcGIS Pro has an element in the Catalog View called Tasks, and they are vastly underutilized and perhaps misunderstood. In this presentation I'll talk about what Tasks are, when they are most valuable, and how they can be used to automate processes - including calling models and scripts! Sometimes it's hard to understand how a new element like Tasks might be valuable but once you see it in use you'll be writing these things like mad. I'll even show you how to make an editing task that you will absolutely use every day!

Heather Geyer - Fugro

Addressing 911 Challenges with 3D Data

The (FCC) estimates that 10,000 lives could be saved each year if the emergency dispatching system could get help one minute sooner to those calling for emergency assistance. We have a solution that gives emergency responders easy and quick access to 2D and immersive 3D data which will significantly improve situational awareness, reduce response times, and ultimately save lives. This is why the use of accurate, reliable, and current 2D and 3D imagery has great benefit to public safety staff as to help them manage the often-difficult emergencies they encounter.

Garri Grossi, GISP - SCAUG

SCAUG and YOU

You're here. Now what? This introductory session will explain the history of SCAUG and what the organization offers its members professionally.

Patrick R. Gray - City of McAllen

GIS and Engineering: Utilizing GIS & Drone Cartography with Engineering

An introduction to the utilization of drone technology and its use in generating related cartography

Holli Gill - Waggoner Engingeering

Leveraging GIS Technology for Improved Infrastructure Management

This presentation will delve into the practical applications of  GIS technology for enhancing infrastructure management, with a focus on water and sewer utilities in small municipalities. 

Through real-world examples and case studies, attendees will learn how GIS technology can revolutionize the way municipalities manage their water and sewer systems. From asset inventory and condition assessment, GIS provides a comprehensive platform for streamlining operations and making informed decisions.

By attending this session, participants will gain valuable insights into how GIS technology can be effectively leveraged to improve infrastructure management practices, enhance operational efficiency, and ultimately, better serve the needs of their communities.

DFW Metroplex Arc User Group Meetup 

Metroplex Arc User Group Kickoff Meeting

The Metroplex Arc User Group is launching an initiative to enhance the experience for ArcGIS users in the DFW Metroplex.

Robbie Highfield - City of Fate

Utilizing ArcGIS Urban for Fiscal Analyses

In 2023, the City of Fate TX, began using ArcGIS Urban to improve the fiscal analysis model for evaluating the net gain/loss of proposed developments, starting with Lafayette Crossing; a 267-acre planned development. As one of the first cities to utilize ArcGIS Urban for this purpose, they’ve unlocked additional insights that have improved their ability to conduct fiscal analysis. Utilizing a geodesign approach, Fate’s model highlights a visual representation of the fiscal data rather than solely providing numbers in a spreadsheet, allowing them to systematically evaluate adjustments to each project while improving its fiscal bottom line. With this approach, they aim to assist the city in achieving fiscal responsibility and sustainability while supporting growth.

Greg Hakman, GISP - Esri

ArcGIS Experience Builder: Tips and Tricks

In this session we will provide tips and tricks to expose the hidden gems of ArcGIS Experience Builder. Learn how to do things like copy widgets from one page to another page, display a message or an image when there is no selected feature, filter multiple layers at once, work with layer visibility so you can use one web map for multiple maps, and more!

Nicole Dogan, GISP - Town of Flower Mound

Increase your Impact: Learn How to Enhance Your Presentations to be More Engaging with Your Audience

Are your presentation skills limiting the shine of your GIS abilities? Can’t get buy in from members at the top of your organization because they can’t work out what you do, or why? Can’t explain to those who hold the purse strings why you need additional fundings? Having trouble sharing your skills with other GIS’ers? Not because your work isn’t good but because you can’t grab their attention in your presentations! Sound familiar? Come to this 30-minute session to get some tips on what you should, and shouldn’t, be doing during presentations so that you can connect with your audience and communicate more effectively. You’ve done all the work to get this far. Don’t you owe it to yourself to do the best presentations that you can? We will look at types of presentations, content, visuals, and personal presence to delve into how to improve your presentations and really make them pop! Let me help guide you to effectively communicate your message to your audience.

Olesya Powers - City of Rockwall

Making your Asset Management Data Work for You

You’ve gotten away from pencil and paper. You’ve even gotten away from the first Asset Management software package you ever tried. Your Asset Management System is now a well-oiled machine. It works hard for your organization every day, collecting data with every button click. But what is that data doing?

From automating GIS updates to keeping the public informed of the latest health information, the City of Rockwall has put that data to work. Take a peek at the magic behind the apps and learn how to make your data work for your organization.

Eric Lomeli - Esri

ArcGIS: A Foundation for Digital Twins

Urban environments are diverse, complex, and constantly evolving. Despite the interdependence among them, systems and domains like sustainability, planning, mobility, building, and operations are too often treated independently of one another. In this session, you will learn about digital twins of the built environment and how to apply workflows to simulate in the digital world before moving to the physical one. Cities and organizations need a new paradigm through which to understand the interconnectedness and relationality inherent in planning and modeling; they need a digital twin.

Candace Perry - Center for Spatial Analysis

Adapting to Changing Tools: Migrating from WebApp Builder to Experience Builder

In February of 2023, Esri announced the retirement of ArcGIS Web AppBuilder, with the recommendation of migrating WebApps to Experience Builder. The developer team at the Center for Spatial Analysis shares their experience migrating our Apps from WebApp Builder to Experience Builder in anticipation of Web AppBuilder’s eventual retirement. The team shares their insights, challenges faced, and tips & tricks gained while navigating the customizable interface that Experience Builder provides.

Amy Rose - City of Dallas

All Things Stormwater: A Special Interest Group Get Together

Are you part of a stormwater group who would like to meet others in the region that do the same? Join us for a gathering of all things stormwater to network and talk about things important to you. Stormwater assets, compliance, and fees are possible topics. We will use the lean coffee technique to develop a crowdsourced meeting agenda. At the beginning of the session everyone will have a chance to contribute a few topic ideas and then the group will use dot voting to select the most popular topics to discuss. We will keep going until time is up or we run out of topics. Be prepared to bring your insight and your questions.

Stephen Ross - Eagleview

Eagleview - Products and Use Cases for GIS Professionals

EagleView is a leading provider of high-resolution aerial imagery, property insights, and analytics that transform the way people work. Please join us as we dive into the products and services that Eagleview provides for GIS professionals and use cases for high resolution oblique imagery and related solutions.

J. Scott Sires - Dallas College

Student Applied Innovations to Support Indoor Real-World Solutions

Our project is to digitally map interior space for 99 college buildings (4.8M sq. ft.). Deliverables are a geodatabase of features for each room, must-have attributes, and a web app providing the workflow experience facilities users need. GIS courses are contextualizing GIS lessons with students performing all steps to study the project, develop workflows, tools, and resources. As paid part time employees they collect point cloud data and attributes, and process the data to create features. The impacts include improved student experiences, portfolio content and project-heavy resumes.

Our project includes: 1. ArcGIS Indoor Information Model, 2. Survey123, 3. Lidar - 3D , 4. Dashboard 

Problem addressed: Creating up to date, as-built, floor plan vector features, with attributes that will support several facilities workflows and the implementation of ArcGIS Indoors.

Chris Shuma, GISP - City of Frisco

Special Event Operations – Frisco Variant

The City of Frisco saw a need for a secure solution to plan large scale events and share information between event stakeholders. The first phase was building a replacement to a Google MyMaps product which was used in previous years by the traffic engineering group. Using the Special Event Operations ArcGIS Solution as a starting point, we will explore and extract what we needed to build the Frisco Variant. We will also look ahead to the future and what challenges lie ahead as we are early in the overall project scope.

Scott Stafford-Veale - VertiGIS North America

Put ArcGIS Utility Network into Action with VertiGIS Networks

VertiGIS Networks is a suite of web-based products with the functionality you need to put ArcGIS Utility Network into action and unlimited configuration options to take it even further. The rollout of your Utility Network is accelerated with web and mobile interfaces that work online and offline to support your critical workflows. From visualizing and tracing, to designing and editing – the powerful web apps in VertiGIS Networks can enable your organization with tools that make Utility Networks easy, functional, and performant for everyone. Come see it for yourself!

Danielle Smilovsky, PhD - Conrad Blucher Institute at Texas A&M, Corpus Christi

Overview & Importance of InSAR Applications & Services for Texas

In Texas, Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technology has proven highly effective in tracking and analyzing a range of geological and environmental events. This presentation provides a comprehensive overview of InSAR's diverse applications in the region, with a specific focus on its role in natural hazard assessment, oil and gas operations, land subsidence, and urban infrastructure monitoring.

InSAR's capacity to identify millimeter-scale ground deformations. This capability is particularly valuable for monitoring subterranean operations associated with oil and gas extraction, facilitating the identification of potential environmental impacts and supporting resource management.

Overall, InSAR emerges as a crucial tool for Texas' coastal management, contributing to sustainable practices, infrastructure resilience, and proactive responses to environmental changes. In the dynamic and varied geography of Texas, InSAR proves to be a vital tool for tackling issues with land subsidence, resource extraction, urban growth, and hazard management due to its capacity to deliver precise and timely information on ground deformations.

Suzanne Whitcomb, GISP - Town of Little Elm

Effective Communication Plays a Crucial Role in Establishing a Robust GIS Framework within Your Business.

How often have you found yourself in your office, with various teams approaching you? To establish GIS within your agency, it's essential to dismantle the figurative walls. Transitioning from a mere idea to realizing the capabilities of GIS requires several discussions. As these conversations persist, the focus shifts to asking, "Have you consulted GIS?" before proceeding with initiatives. Daily, we transform ideas or spreadsheets into practical solutions. This presentation aims to guide you on initiating and sustaining these conversations, nurturing relationships, and achieving tangible GIS outcomes through effective communication.

Brent Wilson - Woolpert

Consolidating & Advancing Capabilities in 60 Days: Tulsa Airports’ Rapid Ready Story

Tulsa’s two busiest airports were utilizing multiple software systems, spreadsheets, paper forms, and other methods to meet airport needs. They then chose to implement Rapid Ready, a GIS-based solution by Woolpert that utilizes Cityworks software and is a component of Trimble’s asset lifecycle management solution. Rapid Ready is used to support the airports’ airfield and landside operations, Safety Management System best practices, Part 139 inspections, maintenance activities, inventory, and asset costs. In just 60 days, Tulsa consolidated and advanced its capabilities without a large, expensive custom implementation while still positively impacting all employees of Tulsa airports and the customers they serve. This presentation will walk through the steps taken through this process and the results that were achieved.

James Walker - Garland ISD

Garland ISD Application & Reporting for Door Security Audits

This presentation covers the steps Garland ISD took to address the Texas Education Agency mandate that all schools in Texas inventory their exterior doors and begin weekly safety audits during the school day. (1) collect necessary data and update database. (2) set up an application for campus administrators and security staff for auditing and inspections. (3) set up reporting and a scheduling application for campus and district administrators. (4) created a dashboard using ArcGIS Insights so that the security department can monitor door audits in real time.

Victor Gutzler, GISP - City of Arlington, Parks & Recreation

Restaurant Kitchen Inspection Using Survey123 & Dashboard

Survey123 is mainly known as a tool for collecting GIS asset field data, but it can also be useful for collecting inspection data for non-GIS routines like daily food permit inspections for restaurant kitchens. This presentation shows an ArcGIS Online Dashboard summarizing Arlington Parks restaurant kitchen inspection data and the process of setting up the Survey123 form and backend feature service dataset driving the dashboard. The process of exporting inspection results to pdf will also be covered.

Laura Carr - NewEdge Services

So You Want Your Data Systems to Talk? - NewEdge will Tell You How.

Everyone wants their software systems to be integrated, but few understand how to get there. This presentation will focus on how you can prepare to integrate your software systems and allow information to flow across your municipal divisions and departments. We will have an emphasis on work order management and GIS but tips and tricks will apply to all systems such as utility billing and financial systems. This presentation will go through how to prepare for integrations, what to expect and pitfalls that our developers have encountered while integrating the Cityworks work order system with 3rd party data systems such as document management and plan review software.

Jordan Carmona, GISP - HEB

Spatial SQL: [GP Tools]? Where We're Going We Don't Need [GP Tools]

For most of us in GIS, SQL serves a rather discrete purpose in its utilization within definition and attribute queries; while a smaller subset, pun intended, apply SQL to the creation of views and database triggers. The most overlooked aspect of SQL, is spatial SQL. This presentation introduces spatial SQL as a tool to create outputs and deliverables that would normally require manual workflows or complex Python automations. The goals of this discussion is to demystify spatial SQL and show practical use-cases that can be applied in enterprise environments.

Scott Trapolino, GISP - City of Olive Branch, Utilities

Lead and Copper Analysis: Utilizing Non-Spatial Data to Streamline Fieldwork

This presentation will share some challenges encountered, applications created, and hopefully inspire any size organization to empower non-geospatial users. When developing applications to streamline workflows it is necessary to look at all datasets available to meet the needs of end-users. Creating this application, we were challenged by using multiple non-spatial datasets maintained by different departments to complete analysis and allow our public works department to fulfill state requirements in a spatial way. After reviewing ESRI's Lead and Copper Management Solution we quickly realized it was not an option due to our data and time restrictions. Our only option was to build a basic application that would allow for our Public Works Department to utilize institutional knowledge to save hundreds of man hours and provide the data required to meet state requirements in a timely manner.

Samual Amoako-Atta, GISP - Halff

Integrating Geo-Social Governance with Community Flood Risk Resilience

Geographic Information System (GIS) continues to be the location-based tool facilitating the management of complex data and assets that enables better decision making and governance to create smart and resilient communities. GIS professionals play a pivotal role in bridging the gap between technical expertise and community engagement. By integrating geo-social governance strategies, we can build resilient communities better equipped to withstand flooding events.

This presentation will empower GIS professionals to take leadership in creating flood risk communities through:

• Geospatial Data Integration: Leverage Federal, State, Regional, and local agencies, data, and tools related to flood risk management to prioritize flood risk mitigation measures.
• Risk Communication and Analysis: Integrate demographic and socio-economic data, critical infrastructure, and essential facilities to understand community susceptibility.
• Capacity Building: Advance local stakeholders’ use of GIS as a tool for community-centric engagement, planning, and implementing mitigation actions.

Amy Rose - City of Dallas

All Things Stormwater: A Special Interest Group Get Together

Are you part of a stormwater group who would like to meet others in the region that do the same? Join us for a gathering of all things stormwater to network and talk about things important to you. Stormwater assets, compliance, and fees are possible topics. We will use the lean coffee technique to develop a crowdsourced meeting agenda. At the beginning of the session everyone will have a chance to contribute a few topic ideas and then the group will use dot voting to select the most popular topics to discuss. We will keep going until time is up or we run out of topics. Be prepared to bring your insight and your questions.

Lisa Uhlich - Town of Little Elm

Power BI: GIS’ MVP

Power BI is a powerful business intelligence product that provides a range of tools for data modeling, exploration, and analysis and is widely used in the business and government communities for data-driven decision-making. Pairing Power BI with GIS can revolutionize the way you analyze and visualize spatial data. By integrating these powerful tools, you can unlock new insights and uncover hidden patterns in your data. Moreover, this combination of Power BI with GIS simplifies the process of joining spatial and non-spatial data for a comprehensive analysis. With Power BI’s user-friendly interface and robust data modeling capabilities, you can easily create relationships between different datasets and build complex data models that incorporate both spatial and business data. This integration allows you to gain deeper insights from your spatial data and make more informed decisions. Whether you’re visualizing demographic trends, analyzing customer locations, or tracking environmental changes, the combination of Power BI and GIS provides a powerful toolkit for exploring and understanding your data landscape.

Charles Woods - City of Frisco

Leveraging Deep Learning Techniques to Generate Urban Trees Inventory

Recently a Landscape Architect with the City of Frisco expressed the need to inventory trees located along right of ways in residential areas. The City had a few GPS points collected over the years by the parks department, but the collection process was far from complete. Given we had very little data and time, we decided to leverage ESRI’s Deep Learning Models to generate the initial data for the project. The data was transferred to a hosted feature service in ArcGIS Online for use in a WebApp to edit the data using aerial imagery. During this session I will present a brief overview of the types of Deep Learning models used in ArcGIS Pro, standard definitions that pertain to Deep Learning, Machine Learning, and AI, and the licenses/downloadables needed to use these tools. I will then demonstrate the process of using an Object Detection model to identify trees around the venue.