1. Advanced Geoprocessing
Introduction
By now, you have likely created a several geoprocessing models in ArcGIS. For most of you, these models were built expressly to complete an assignment. They may have not been pretty, or even all that robust, but they got the job done and perhaps even left a trail of what you did to arrive at your final product. As GIS becomes more a part of your life, however, and you are juggling multiple projects or are generating tools to be used by others in your team, you’re going to have to be a bit more organized and thoughtful about how you go about go about your work.
In this section, we re-examine geoprocessing models in ArcGIS. In particular, we establish some best practices for approaching a spatial analysis projects as well as dig deeper into many of the more interesting and powerful uses that ArcGIS Pro geoprocessing models are capable of.
Scenario/Materials
The basis for our exercise will be a simple analysis using historical hurricane tracking points available via NOAA’s International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS). Instructions for obtaining these data are included in the exercises. Our analysis will consist of selecting points associated with a specific storm, deriving a storm track from these points, and selecting which US counties, if any, intersect its path.
Learning objectives
The set of exercises below will reveal a number of best practices associated with developing workflows in the ArcGIS Model Builder as well as some more advanced techniques you may have not learned in previous courses. By the end of these exercises, you should have competency with the following:
| Section | Learning Objectives |
|---|---|
| 1. Preparing for analysis | ♦ Refine goals into actionable objectives ♦ Create efficient and robust GIS workspaces ♦ Obtain, organize, & tidy data in preparation for analysis ♦ Construct effect geoprocessing workflows ♦ Create geoprocessing models from those workflows ♦ Tidy your geoprocessing models for clarity |
| 2. From workflow to tool | ♦ Set model elements to be parameters ♦ Add variables to models & explain their utility ♦ Explain the importance of a variable’s data type ♦ Set model outputs to use specific symbology ♦ Convert models into geoprocessing tools |
| 3. Conditional processing | ♦ Explain conditional execution in model workflows ♦ Control execution of processes using preconditions ♦ Include branching and merging in your workflows ♦ Explain iteration in model workflows ♦ Describe the different iterators in ArcGIS Pro models ♦ Use a for loop to repeat a processing task |
| 4. User interactivity | ♦ Explain what makes feature set variables unique ♦ Enable user interactivity in your tool |
| 5. Documenting & sharing your tool | ♦ Add documentation to your geoprocessing tool ♦ Share your tool as a compressed zip-ball ♦ Explain what a geoprocessing package is ♦ Distribute model workflows via ArcGIS Online |
Overview
In this section, we will explore two spatial analyses, one as a group to learn the concepts, and one on your own to apply these concepts and ensure you understand their uses and importance. In the first analysis, we’ll develop a set of models to summarize social and environmental sensitivities near animal operations (swine, cattle, poultry) in North Carolina. And in the second, you’ll develop an interactive tool that allows a user to identify food shopping options within a set distance of HBCU campuses.
