Capital Bikeshare Community Survey

| Kevin McMaster

With 6000+ bikes covering 180+ square miles of the region, Capital Bikeshare is a great way to explore Metro DC and travel to and from various destination points. The network of 600+ bike stations is constantly expanding, and community feedback is an important part of deciding where to locate new stations. To facilitate the presentation of proposed locations to the general public and gather community feedback, SymGEO was honored to help build the Capital Bikeshare Station Request Tool using Esri’s ArcGIS Online technology. This work was featured in the Esri case study “GIS-Driven Initiatives Promote Active Transportation in Washington, DC“.

“The SymGEO team helped DDOT quickly implement a complex, public facing tool with a simple user interface to help us gather a high volume of public input data, which is extremely useful for Capital Bikeshare planning purposes. Their knowledge of GIS and ESRI products helped make a challenging project with many stakeholders simple and quick to turn around.”

– DDOT Project Manager

The tool leverages an ArcGIS web map and ArcGIS Web AppBuilder for the application as well as Survey123 for the gathering of comments on proposed bike stations, and it is hosted on ArcGIS Hub. Sharing feedback for a selected station opens a survey page for that station using URL parameters so that the comment is connected to the appropriate station.

If a resident would like to suggest a location for a new site, an alternative survey is launched with additional data capture fields.

The Request New Capital Bikeshare Location survey was constructed using Survey123 Connect and offers the ability for a user to suggest multiple sites in the same submission.

“This is great stuff. Thanks again for pulling this together so quickly!”

– DDOT GIS and Applications Manager

Talk to SymGEO today if your agency or organization is interested in community engagement with the power of Esri’s ArcGIS Online platform – we are certified experts and here to help.

Hurricane Tracker

| Kevin McMaster

With Hurricane Florence rapidly approaching the Carolinas, the scale and power of the storm was truly terrifying. From eye of the hurricane video, provided by the NOAA Hurricane Hunter (9 second mark below), to overhead imagery from NOAA showing the churning vortex, it was only a matter of time before the devastating effects of the hurricane would be felt.

Armed with Esri technology and the thirst for knowledge, SymGEO explored the Living Atlas of the World data sets until we found The National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD).

“The NDFD was designed to provide access to weather forecasts in digital form from a central location. The NDFD produces gridded forecasts of sensible weather elements. NDFD contains a seamless mosaic of digital forecasts from National Weather Service (NWS) field offices working in collaboration with the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). All of these organizations are under the administration of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Wind Gust is the maximum 3-second wind speed (in knots) forecast to occur within a 2-minute interval at a height of 10 meters. Wind gust forecasts are valid at the top of the indicated hour. This feed consumes NDFD’s files and calculates the amount of forecast wind gust for the next 72 hours.”

– from NDFD metadata

This information was explored in ArcGIS Online and showed the scale and timing of the expected hurricane landfall.

Finally, this data was wrapped in a time-aware, mobile responsive template in ArcGIS Online and tested to make sure it was pulling current data.

Check out the Hurricane Tracker today and let us know if you have an idea that SymGEO can help you with!

Sledding Locator

| Kevin McMaster

Sledding and July don’t usually go together, but what better time to plan out the winter’s adventures? This is the quintessential example of an idea that took 6 months to mature and then a few hours to accomplish, thanks to the power of Web AppBuilder and Landscape Modeler.

Like all great solutions, I was trying to do something else (boring technical details redacted), but happened on the Landscape Modeler which had most of the needed architecture already in place. By wrapping the model into an application configured using Web AppBuilder, the Sledding Locator was created in a matter of hours.

This application leverages a weighted raster overlay (WRO) model that specifically targets northern-facing sloped areas with roads in the general vicinity. When combined with some of the other basemap layers, particularly imagery to see if it’s relatively open lands, users will be able to tell if it’s worth scouting out for sledding potential following a snow-storm!

From the technical Esri documentation: Weighted overlay has three conceptual steps. First, each raster layer is assigned a weight, as a percentage, in the analysis. This allows you to emphasize the relative importance of each layer in the analysis. Second, values within each raster layer are mapped to a common suitability scale. This allows you to compare the different types of information in each raster layer. Third, all raster layers in the analysis are overlaid. Each raster cell’s suitability value is multiplied by its layer weight and totaled with the values of other raster cells it overlays. The result is a suitability value that is used for symbology in the output raster layer.

Two input rasters have been reclassified

A number of other handy tools are included in this mobile responsive application so users can add their own data, add map annotations (drawings and text), or share the application with their friends.

Check it out today and let us know if you have an idea that SymGEO can help you with, or send us pictures of awesome hills you’ve found with the app!