Welcome to GIS Tutorial 1 for ArcGIS® Pro. This step-by-step workbook focuses on ArcGIS Pro but also covers ArcGIS OnlineSM and some of its major apps for mobile computing, including Esri® Story Maps, Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS®, and Collector for ArcGIS®.
ArcGIS Pro is Esri’s next-generation, 64-bit desktop software with an intuitive user interface for creating, using, and analyzing professional 2D and 3D maps. ArcGIS Pro’s tasks, ModelBuilder models, and apps also allow you to build operational systems that help organizations use GIS on a daily basis. You create tasks to guide complex workflows, and you build models to automate multiple geoprocessing steps, all without computer coding. The apps provide GIS results and capabilities to all who need them.
ArcGIS Online is a complete cloud-based mapping platform for making, using, analyzing, and sharing maps. You can easily publish maps authored in ArcGIS Pro to ArcGIS Online and integrate them with maps from Esri’s Living Atlas of the World, available in ArcGIS Online. The Living Atlas, curated by Esri, is the world’s foremost collection of ready-to-use maps. With your finished maps stored in ArcGIS Online, they are easily shared in ArcGIS Online apps.
Esri Story Map apps allow you to incorporate text, charts, and other content with interactive maps to tell a story or to make a report on a GIS project. Want to see the story map that you’ll build in chapter 3? Open http://arcg.is/2n17PX0 in your browser on your computer, tablet, or smartphone (look for an information button on your tablet or smartphone to see nonmap content). Operations Dashboard monitors an organization’s demands for services and performance with maps, statistics, charts, lists, and queries. Collector allows for collecting and updating spatial and attribute data in the field using mobile computing devices.
This book is a complete learning system for GIS, including features we have evolved in more than 25 years of teaching GIS using Esri products and writing tutorials. Our books are used successfully by students in classes as well as by self-learners. We’ve taught high school students, in-career professionals, undergraduate students, master’s students, PhD students, and distance-learning students across many disciplines. We teach using a combination of lectures and lab sessions, and we always include student-designed GIS projects as a final requirement in our courses. Our interactions with students are important sources of ideas and feedback for our books.
This book includes wide-ranging real-world data and GIS applications that require integration of different GIS processing steps and workflows to solve realistic problems. This book addresses many topical issues, including these examples:
The book presents essential concepts at the start of each chapter or at the start of tutorials. Sections on concepts are separated from tutorial steps to ensure continuous, hands-on computer work.
Short chunks of step-by-step tutorials are illustrated with screen captures and brief comments when helpful. We try to limit these short sections to a maximum of 10 steps each to help you stay focused. These small chunks facilitate learning and retention, and provide a sense of accomplishment.
In Your Turn assignments within tutorials, you will repeat steps just taken but in slightly modified ways. These short assignments help you begin to internalize steps and workflows.
On the book’s web resource page (esri.com/gist1arcgispro), you will find related assignments to help you apply each chapter’s concepts and workflows independently. The tutorial steps expose you to GIS and serve as a reference, while the assignments provide additional resources for more in-depth learning. In the classroom, instructors will likely ask you to turn in assignments for grading.
The four parts of this book are organized in a sequence that best motivates and facilitates your learning of GIS.
In part 1, “Using, making, and sharing maps,” the first three chapters of the book introduce you to the ArcGIS user interface through finished maps. You will symbolize a range of map types using cartographic principles and build map layouts and Esri Story Maps to present your results.
The five chapters in part 2, “Working with spatial data,” prepare you for finding and understanding spatial data. You will store and process spatial data in file geodatabases, geoprocess spatial data for mapping and analysis, digitize your own spatial data, and geocode tabular data for mapping.
The three chapters in part 3, “Applying advanced GIS technologies,” focus on analyzing spatial data and maps to solve problems. You will apply a number of unique GIS methods for analyzing spatial relationships, including buffers, service areas, facility location, and data clustering. You will use raster GIS (which works with satellite images and other continuous data) to analyze demand for services. Part 3 concludes with an exploration of 3D GIS to model urban redevelopment projects.
In part 4, “Managing operational systems with GIS,” the final two chapters of the book provide hands-on experience in building operations management systems. In chapter 12, you create tasks and a ModelBuilder model to prepare and publish weekly graffiti location data on a map. You also create an operation view using Operations Dashboard with the published data for police to use in preventing graffiti by serial artists. In chapter 13, you build three ModelBuilder models for a public works supervisor to use in scheduling and routing graffiti removal. You will also create a Collector app for the supervisor to enter assessments on graffiti removal on a mobile device while in the field.
GIS is our favorite subject to teach and a favorite class for our students to take. If you have any questions or feedback, you can reach us via email at gorr@cmu.edu or kurland@cmu.edu. Bon voyage!