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!
