Fall NEARC 2024

The Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission (CCRPC) and Blue Raster will give a short oral presentation on the approach and the GIS tools used to create a user-friendly web-based experience for the ECOS Regional Plan.
CCRPC has been producing a Regional Plan to protect the county’s resources and to guide its development since 1976. CCRPC has branded their regional plan as the ECOS Regional Plan, a sustainability plan for the most populous county in VT. Currently, the ECOS Plan consists of disparate content types consisting of 8 pdf documents of existing conditions and policy, 70+ GIS Layers in a web map viewer, and 100+ indicators for tracking progress on the ECOS strategies. This has made access and useability a challenge.

For the 2026 update, CCRPC wanted a solution to better integrate all the types of content that makes up the ECOS Plan to increase understanding of the ECOS Plan among community audiences. CCRPC has partnered with Blue Raster to build the ECOS Plan website on ESRI’s Hub platform.

Using ArcGIS Hub Premium, Blue Raster designed and deployed a visually pleasing user-friendly Hub site for CCRPC’s ECOS Plan. The ECOS Plan Hub site brings to life the dense pdf document by using a topic-based icon system to connect community users with their topic of interest with just a few clicks. A user can then access key insights on that topic portrayed through short narratives, geo-spatial data and indicators. Additionally, the user can choose to translate the site into numerous languages using Hub’s translation widget.

Most of the data indicators for Chittenden County come from the Decennial Census and American Community Survey. Because CCRPC is committed to keeping the ECOS Plan data indicators current on an annual basis, they were looking for a solution to minimize manual updates and processing time. Blue Raster configured Hub to connect to ESRI’s Living Atlas and Community Analyst, so the ECOS Plan site is updated as soon as new data is available. This required custom coding of the Hub’s chart widget to connect to these services. Blue Raster also customized the chart widget to expand the number of variables and formatting of the charts shown on each ECOS Plan topic page.

Learn how CCRPC collaborated with Esri partner Blue Raster on a Hub site to connect community and increase understanding of the CCRPC ECOS plan by using the Living Atlas, dynamic charts and more!

Vermont, one of the most rural states in the U.S., is leading the charge to expand broadband internet access to its citizens. The Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB) is responsible for overseeing this work and distributing funding to and collaborating with regional collaborators. Stone Environmental, an Esri Silver Business Partner, empowered the VCBB with ArcGIS Online to manage data. Learn how Stone and the VCBB use ArcGIS Hub, ArcGIS Dashboards, and Experience Builder to bridge the digital divide in Vermont. We'll dive into a specific case study looking at the State-led BEAD Challenge process and the challenges and unique solutions Stone configured to meet federal requirements and the needs of Vermont addresses lacking adequate access to broadband services.

In the field of public engagement, the effective collection, analysis, and presentation of data are essential to fostering community involvement and informed decision-making. Esri’s ArcGIS offers a suite of powerful tools designed to seamlessly integrate these facets, notably Survey123, Dashboards, and StoryMaps. This presentation showcases the collaborative use of these ArcGIS products to enhance public engagement across a Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) planning project with the Androscoggin Transportation Resource Center.

Survey123 plays a pivotal role in gathering public input and feedback efficiently. This tool enables project teams to collect georeferenced data from participants, ensuring that public opinions and observations are spatially contextualized. Surveys can be customized to address specific needs such as community needs assessments, call out areas of concern and allows the public to voice any additional thoughts they may have. By utilizing Survey123, communities can engage with diverse demographics, ensuring that a broad spectrum of voices is heard and considered in the decision-making process.

Once data is collected, ArcGIS Dashboards deliver an intuitive platform for analyzing and interpreting the information. Dashboards can be tailored for both public and private viewers, providing real-time insights and visualizations that are crucial for transparency and responsive planning. Through interactive charts, maps, and lists, stakeholders gain a comprehensive understanding of the collected data, thereby informing decisions and strategies effectively for a successful project.

Finally, StoryMaps combines narrative text, images, and multimedia with geographic data to create compelling, interactive presentations of project findings and additional details. This tool transforms raw data into an engaging story, facilitating a deeper connection with the audience and enabling a broader understanding of the project's impacts and objectives. The storytelling aspect is crucial for bridging the gap between data and the public, making complex information accessible and engaging.

By leveraging Survey123 for data collection, Dashboards for analysis, and StoryMaps for presentation, this integrated approach not only enhances data-driven decision-making but also fosters greater public participation and engagement. Attendees will gain insights into the practical applications, benefits, and best practices of using ArcGIS products in community-engaged projects, ultimately driving more inclusive and informed outcomes.

The University of New Hampshire started our journey of Indoor GIS mapping more than a decade before ArcGIS Indoors was a glimmer in ESRI’s eye. We’ll discuss our early days of CAD georeferencing and conversion utilizing model builder, python and currently FME as well as poor CAD drafting versus the nobel sensibilities of GIS and realizing the third dimension. Furthermore, revelations on early indoor asset data collection via old school printed maps to Collector and finally Field maps and aligning to the ArcGIS Indoors schema. We’ll discuss the constant struggle between aligning our ever changing physical infrastructure to our “digital twin” or vice versa, whether it’s discovering “new” rooms to physical signage mismatches. Join us as we dive into the trials and tribulations of Indoor GIS mapping through the years and what it might hold for the future of space management and beyond at UNH.

Higher Education has attempted to grapple with the efficient utilization of space for decades. The issues adding to the challenge vary from internal politics to the lack of reliable or complete data sources for decision making. Many techniques and tools can be used to try and assess or quantify the use of space. No single one seems to offer the solution. The University of New Hampshire leadership recently engaged with a software vendor to try and find a new technological approach to solving the space problem. We are currently implementing the use of this software platform that utilizes AI for the mapping of devices via wireless access points and uses the data collected for the assessment of space utilization. That’s the claim anyway. This talk will go over the challenge of the university’s leadership expectation for a technological “easy button” as well as implementation challenges associated with this solution. Join us as we attempt to hold a software contractor/consultant accountable for their claims in relation to leadership expectations and whether the solution holds up to the sniff test when compared to traditional tools used to asses space utilization.

70% of the total cost of ownership of most assets happens long after the asset is built and installed. Once the asset is designed, built, and installed, owners have minimal control over the total cost of ownership throughout the lifecycle of that asset. Developing a true asset lifecycle management program is a powerful methodology and allows owners to save more than 40% on the total cost of ownership over the asset's life. Trimble Unity utilized Esri GIS in a truly seamless process to take control of your asset management program and maximize the asset's true potential, reduce costs, and improve overall performance.

This presentation focuses on using FME to work with Surficial Geology GIS data that has been stored in everything from Feature Services to e00. Surficial Geology can refer to the unconsolidated sediment, landforms, or surficial bedrock present in an area. This project focuses on the unconsolidated sediment and landforms, which vary depending on the region. The goal of this project is to derive “high-level” insights from publicly available data where the desired information is often buried within a paragraph. This presentation will cover the challenges and techniques that were applied within FME to wrangle these data. Each state that has been processed so far has provided its own challenges and unique issues.

With the availability of federal and state funding, states such as Massachusetts have a financial opportunity to ensure that every broadband serviceable location (BSL) across the state has access to at least one high speed internet connection. Though great progress has been made, there are still a few remaining pockets of unserved and underserved locations across the commonwealth.

The Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI) is administering federal broadband infrastructure funds allocated to Massachusetts through the American Rescue Plan Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. MBI saw a need to develop more accurate statewide BSL data to support its objective of deploying federal funds to achieve universal access to high-speed internet service. The licensing requirements, data sharing and distribution constraints, and low data accuracy of existing address level BSL data prevented MBI from leveraging third-party data.

To get a complete view of the broadband landscape in Massachusetts, Sanborn collaborated with MBI to create a state-owned BSL layer using publicly available 911 and parcel data using Safe Software's FME and Esri ArcPro QA/QC tools. The resulting data allows MBI to more accurately target federal funds for the state of Massachusetts to achieve viable broadband mass market service availability to every residential and business address in the state.

The Road Centerline Update Request App (https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/5b7c6df52704408da630658a1a922ac1) was developed using ArcGIS Experience Builder to help Vermont Agency of Transportation Mapping Unit staff and other outside state agencies report issues with the Vermont Road Centerline Data and to enter pending changes for annual updates to Town road mileage.  The intent was to create a spatially enabled tracking and reporting system for the Mapping Unit and to eventually replace an access database that tracks pending changes. In the future, this app will hopefully be shared with municipalities to use to report any new, discontinued, class changes, or mapping problems with existing roads.  If applicable, this reporting can then be used in conjunction with Certificates of Highway Mileage that each town must submit annually to VTrans.

Survey123 can improve data collection efforts through the use of Arcade scripting, Microsoft Power Automate, and calculations within the SurveyConnect application. By using factors like geographic location, previous survey responses, and layer attributes, Survey123 can auto-populate answers and simplify your workflow. Learn to take advantage of these features in collaboration with other services like ArcGIS Online and Field Maps.

During major storm events, the Vermont Agency of Transportation activates the Transportation Incident Command Center (TICC) using the Incident Command System (ICS) structure. This structure includes a significant mapping component in the Planning Section that aids in situational awareness by providing a Common Operating Picture (COP) of the extent of highway closures and openings, as the Agency responds to the storm damage. A simple dashboard has been developed to provide insight to the number of closures, partial openings, and segments that were opened. The Common Operating Picture (COP) is accessible to the TICC, State Emergency Operations Center (SEOC), as well as the public. The COP is generated through a feed of authoritative closure and opening information from the Traffic Management Center and the 511 system, repackaging it to provide a clear count and extent of closures across the state.