Living Atlas of the World: an Introduction

Leveraging the Living Atlas to Build Engaging Maps that Enhance Understanding and Contribute to the Community


Patrick Ryan, Esri, Solution Engineer, National Goverment

Keith VanGraafeiland, Esri, Product Engineer, Living Atlas

Ashley Miller, NOAA, Oceanographer, GIS Team Lead


Agenda:

Introduction

What's New and What to Know

Living Atlas Overview

Contributing to the Living Atlas

Wrap-Up/Questions


ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World

The ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World is the foremost collection of geographic information from around the globe. It includes maps, apps, and data layers to support your work.

ArcGIS Living Atlas is an integral part of the ArcGIS system; you can use it to make maps in ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Enterprise, or use it within ArcGIS Web APIs and SDKs.

Living Atlas of the World | ArcGIS


What's New?

ArcGIS Living Atlas is updated frequently, and has evolved and expanded greatly over the past year. Content is often published on its own release schedule, so it’s possible to miss an update or new offerings during the course of the year. The following is a short list of recent release milestones.


Esri Vector Basemaps

The Basemap category includes maps and layers that provide reference maps for our world and context for your work. Basemaps can provide general reference information, create styles for focused maps, component layers to create basemaps, historical maps.

What is changing?

Many raster basemap services will move into Mature Support and Vector basemaps will be the primary version of basemaps.

A select set of raster basemap services will never enter Mature Support because they are foundational basemaps, and there are no vector basemap service equivalents.

Create a custom basemap style that matches your brand and the type of app that you are building.

One of the biggest benefits of the Esri Vector Basemaps is the user ability to customize styles. Change colors. Replace fonts. Turn off layers.

Access the Vector Tile Style Editor app from the Change Style icon under any Esri Vector Basemap layer. The Style Editor app is also  accessible from the Esri Developers site 

The Community Maps Editor is a web app that enables you to edit parts of the Esri basemaps to add detailed features.

Expanded set of point-of-interest (POI) and other "Places" data from Esri partner SafeGraph. Places are symbolized by category (e.g. shop, school, theater, etc.), with unique symbols for over 100 types of places. Will be updated to include data for many other countries around the world.


The U.S. Census Bureau - American Community Survey (ACS)

The premier source for detailed demographic information for the United States. Within the Living Atlas, there are 78 layers that cover 89 different ACS tables. These cover topics such as housing, population, employment, income, race, age, insurance, education, veteran status, internet connectivity, and more.

This information helps users like yourself answer questions such as:

The ACS helps local officials, community leaders, and businesses understand the changes taking place in their communities.

Travel Time to Work

Choropleth Map

Vehicle Availability

Bi-Variate, Size and Color Map

Housing Tenure by Heating Fuel

Predominance Map


Policy Maps

"A policy map is a map where the opportunity to intervene is made clear." - Steven Goldsmith

Esri Maps for Public Policy


Live Feeds

Putting the "Living" in the Living Atlas

National Weather Service (NWS)

A series of new real-time weather maps and layers have been made available to the public. These new layers are hosted as feature services.

USA Weather Watches and Warnings

Official weather warnings, watches, and advisory statements for the United States.

5 Minute Update Frequency

National Weather Service Precipitation Forecast

Precipitation forecast for the next 72 hours across the Continental United States.

6 Hour Update Frequency

Current Weather and Wind Station Data

Current Weather and Wind Station Data, created from METAR station data, provided from NOAA and contains approximately 11 weather variables for each location.

1 Hour Update Frequency

Live Stream Gauges

Real-time stream gauge observations of stage height and discharge contributed by the GIS  community .

24 Hour Update Frequency


Imagery:

The Imagery category includes imagery of various types, such as multi-scale imagery built for use as a basemap, multi-spectral imagery that reveals different characteristics, temporal imagery that reveals change over time, and imagery of places affected by major events.

Basemap Imagery

World Imagery

World Imagery provides one meter or better satellite and aerial imagery in many parts of the world and lower resolution satellite imagery worldwide. The map includes:

    15 meter TerraColor imagery at small and mid-scales (591M down to 72k);

    2.5 meter SPOT Imagery (288k to 72k) for the world;

    USGS 15 meter Landsat imagery for Antarctica;

    Digital Globe 0.3meter resolution imagery in the continental United States;

    And 0.6 meter resolution imagery in parts of Western Europe;

    1 meter USDA NAIP imagery is available in select states of the US

    In other parts of the world, 1 meter resolution imagery is available from GeoEye IKONOS, AeroGRID, and IGN Spain

    Additionally, imagery at different resolutions has been contributed by the GIS User Community.

Multispectral Imagery

What is the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP)?

The  National Agriculture Imagery Program  (NAIP) acquires aerial imagery during the agricultural growing seasons in the contiguous U.S. A primary goal of the NAIP program is to make "leaf-on" digital ortho photography available to governmental agencies and the public within a year of acquisition.

NAIP is administered by the USDA's Farm Service Agency (FSA) through the Aerial Photography Field Office in Salt Lake City. 

Temporal Imagery

World Imagery Wayback

Event Imagery

MODIS Thermal Hotspots

This layer presents detectable thermal activity from MODIS satellites for the last 48 hours.

Sentinel-2 Shortwave Infrared with DRA

European Space Agency: multispectral, multitemporal global imagery obtained via two satellites placed in the same orbit and phased 180 degrees from each other. 


World Terrestrial Ecosystems

USGS, Nature Conservancy and Esri

Map of World Ecosystems, broken down into 431 classes based on the unique combinations that arise from a massive union of global datalayers on

  • temperature,
  • precipitation,
  • landforms, and
  • vegetation/land cover.

The 250-m per pixel resolution provides a level of detail necessary for practical land management.


Recent Federal Contributions of Note

USA Federal Lands

This layer displays lands in the United States managed by six federal agencies:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

500 Cities Project: 27 measures of chronic disease related to unhealthy behaviors, health outcomes, and use of prevention services.

Bi-variate, Relationship Map showing the correlation of obesity and coronary heart disease.

Social Vulnerability Index: CDC's Social Vulnerability Index uses 15 U.S. census variables at tract level to help local officials identify communities that may need support in preparing for hazards; or recovering from disaster.

The Geospatial Research, Analysis, and Services Program (GRASP) created and maintains CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index.

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)

Have you ever wanted to add the locations of schools to your map? Or wanted to see where the school district boundaries lie with your area of interest?

These questions can be answered quickly and easily with the official national source from NCES. With multiple school years available, you can choose the most appropriate vintage for your needs.

U.S. Forest Service (USFS)

NorWeST Modeled Stream Temperatures: Western United States historical and projected stream temperature data from the NorWeST stream temperature model, including stream lines with modeled mean August stream temperatures for 1993-2011, the 2040s, and the 2080s.


Way Way Back Machine

USGS Historical Topographic Map Explorer

Use ArcGIS Online to Save Data for use in ArcGIS Pro

Digitize the features for the different time periods


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