Archived GIS Snippets
Published in 2013
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Esri Goes Hollywood
Esri City Engine 2013 and New SDK with Maya Plug-In to be Previewed at Siggraph 2013
When Esri merged geospatial technology with digital urban design in CityEngine in 2011, it created a revolutionary new methodology for 3D cityscape creation. At Siggraph 2013, taking place in Anaheim, California, July 23-25, Esri will demonstrate the powerful capabilities of CityEngine and other GIS solutions for digital artists in film, television, and game design.
Creating realistic 3D city designs is a notoriously expensive process, typically involving teams of designers and multiple specialized software programs. At Siggraph, Esri will show how CityEngine helps simplify and improve the quality of urban designs by connecting spatial datasets with building design rules, resulting in more impressive and accurate 3D models.
“Designing realistic cities is one of the more challenging and expensive tasks in the entertainment industry,” says Dominik Tarolli, Esri’s business development director for 3D markets. “Using CityEngine to build 3D metropolis models gives designers an edge by integrating geography into the artistic process.”
CityEngine’s highly automated drag-and-drop process for creating cities has been used in movies such as Cars 2, Total Recall, and Man of Steel, as well as in TV commercials and video games.
first published week of: 07/29/2013
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Esri Introduces ArcGIS for Electric and Gas
Esri released ArcGIS for Electric and ArcGIS for Gas—ready-to-use maps and apps designed for utilities. Both are freely available to Esri customers. Developers and utility experts at Esri spent years studying industry needs and trends to come up with solutions that help utilities quickly respond to outages and engage with customers.
"It's never been easier to geoenable your utility," said Bill Meehan, Esri's director of utility solutions. "ArcGIS for Electric and ArcGIS for Gas will help utilities get much more value from their data. More than that, this is a chance for utilities to truly revolutionize their business."
ArcGIS for Electric includes damage assessment and streetlight problem apps, along with a public outage viewer to help utilities communicate with customers during an outage. ArcGIS for Gas includes damage assessment apps and an exposed pipe collector app. Both applications also help Esri customers get started quickly with ArcGIS Online, where they can create and share interactive maps and apps. They can also access ready-to-use content, apps, and templates available for the web, smartphones, and tablets.
Visit esri.com/ag4e and esri.com/ag4g.
first published week of: 12/09/2013
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Esri Joins Global In-Location Alliance
GIS technology provides the ability to accurately map, manage, and navigate indoor facilities.
Esri announced that it has joined the worldwide In-Location Alliance. Esri joins a growing number of companies that have come together to drive innovation and market adoption of high-accuracy indoor positioning and related services. Esri will help to define standards for indoor mapping and logistics across many industries including health care, higher education, finance, government, and retail.
"This is an exciting, new frontier for GIS and location analytics, and we are able to help the global community indoor logistics with standardized, high-accuracy mapping and analysis tools," said Wolfgang Hall, Esri's industry manager for logistics and supply chain management.
The Alliance began in August 2012, and provides a forum for collaboration for members to share their experiences, provide solutions based on a common architecture, and work together towards common interests.
Esri and its partners have provided technology for indoor mapping for many years, predominantly in facility mapping. The Esri ArcGIS platform of desktop, server, mobile, and cloud software and services gives users the ability to do the following:
- Move from existing architecture drawings to navigable indoor maps
- Create a common operating picture for indoor asset tracking using the facility management data model
- Manage data for both private and public use for safety and security
To learn more about Esri's initiative for indoor logistics, visit esri.com/indoors.
first published week of: 07/01/2013
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Esri Launches Public Beta of Geotrigger Service
Esri launched the public beta version of its cloud-based Geotrigger Service that helps developers easily create location-aware apps for iPhone and Android without compromising battery life. The beta Geotrigger Service is available at no cost and feedback from developers will be used to shape the official release.
The Geotrigger Service allows apps built on the Esri location platform to quickly gather business intelligence such as where people are and when the app is used. Developers can also design apps that send messages to users when they arrive at or leave areas defined by a geofence.
“On the Esri location platform, we already offer a host of services for developers from geocoding and geoenrichment to routing maps. The Geotrigger Service boosts this offering with location-awareness and location-based alerts,” said Johan Herrlin, Esri’s senior business strategist.
Developers can use the Geotrigger Service for apps across all industries including:
- Retail and Loyalty: Engage customers with personalized content and deals the moment they enter a store.
- Real Estate: Send messages to prospective home buyers when their search criterion matches a nearby home.
- Energy Management: Use location to automatically manage power consumption at home or in the office.
- Tourism: Bring public attractions to life by informing tourists of interesting locations as they explore a city.
- Public Alerts: Notify citizens about events such as road closures or civic emergencies based on past locations.
For more information, visit esriurl.com/geotrigger.
first published week of: 12/02/2013
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Esri Maps for Office 2.1.1 Released
by scott ball
Esri Maps for Office is a powerful add-in for Microsoft Office that brings the capabilities of Esri’s mapping platform to Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint. Esri Maps for Office is available with an ArcGIS Online subscription and makes use of the extensive repository of available geographic information as well as the significant sharing, searching, and collaboration capabilities in ArcGIS Online.
New features of Esri Maps for Office include the following:
- Localization support for 21 languages: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Danish, Dutch, Estonian, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish
- Support for pop-ups in web maps
- Bug fixes and usability improvements throughout the product
Check out the Esri Maps for Office site on ArcGIS.com for information on getting started, how to download, and getting help using the product. If you have specific questions or issues, take advantage of the Esri Maps for Office forum to get help from the Esri user community. Additionally, Esri Support Services is available as a personalized support option.
first published week of: 10/07/2013
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Esri Maps for Office 2.1.2 Released
by scott ball
Esri Maps for Office 2.1.2 is a powerful add-in for Microsoft Office that brings the capabilities of the ArcGIS platform to Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint. Esri Maps for Office is available with an ArcGIS Online subscription and makes use of the extensive repository of available geographic information as well as the significant sharing, searching, and collaboration capabilities in ArcGIS Online.
This version includes the following bug fixes and usability improvements:
- Enrich Layer tool improvements, such as: more efficient memory usage to handle larger enrichment requests and an improved progress indicator.
- Fixed a bug that caused Excel to crash after installation of Esri Maps.
- Fixed a bug that displayed incorrect images in the Search pane.
- Fixed a bug that caused custom location type lookups to fail in Japanese, Russian, and Chinese languages.
- Cleaned up localized strings for Key Facts, Wealth, Policy, and Health on the Search pane.
To download the app, watch how-to videos, or get help for Esri Maps for Office, see the app page at http://doc.arcgis.com/en/maps-for-office/.
first published week of: 12/02/2013