Through the use of two new mapping services, ACOG has greatly enhanced its ability to provide dynamic maps and data to both member local governments and the public at large.
ACOG serves as a clearinghouse of regional data and these new tools – GoMaps and ArcGIS Online – tremendously streamline the process of generating interactive maps from a wealth of data and informational assets.
In this second of two entries, ACOG’s new tools will be discussed as to how they not only enhance ACOG’s geographic information system (GIS) capacity but also put ACOG’s regional data in the hands of local governments and citizens alike.
ArcGIS Online
Esri’s new online subscription service, ArcGIS Online, is a giant leap forward in the world of online GIS. Now, organizations such as ACOG already using Esri software products can build interactive maps in a number of minutes that can be shared worldwide. Esri has taken on the role of maintaining the tools and functionality of the application so that users can focus on what they know best – their data – rather than the behind-the-scenes web development. With ArcGIS online, ACOG staff can take any dataset and publish it on the fly as a data or map service available to share with other users (publicly or permission-based) as it is completely self-contained in an application with built-in tools for data editing and analyses.
Starting this fiscal year, ACOG has subscribed to this new service in order to increase project or program-based mapping services. This service extends the GIS data sharing capacity of this agency by providing a quick mechanism for staff to build a map from a variety of sources already published in the cloud or uploading it directly from their computer. As ACOG has partnered with ROK Technologies, Inc. to serve as a host for our own GoMaps application, ACOG staff already has a number of map layers that have been published to the cloud immediately available for mash-up. Applications can be fined tuned for land use data, traffic crash analyses or even as a forum for collecting member suggested changes to the federal functional classification system for roads.
Staff has already published a series of demographic maps with data that the agency uses in the long range transportation planning process. These maps have been published using ArcGIS online and embedded in the website, but the source of the data on the maps comes from multiple live sources. To view ACOG’s suite of ArcGIS maps available now, please visit: http://acog.maps.arcgis.com.
Let us know what you think of the application or how you are using it in the comments section below or by emailing Darla Hugaboom at dhugaboom@acogok.org.