1. GIS in a Nutshell with ArcGIS 10.2
GIS in a Nutshell with ArcGIS In this session we’ll start with some GIS fundamentals then we’ll get into a our selected software package, ArcGIS. All hands-on and participation activities have a green Activity in the title. Otherwise you can just sit back and watch/listen, but you’re welcome to ask questions throughout
We’re condensing down a roughly 2-day workshop or a 2 3 hour class period into 3 hours, here. I’ve also teach a more detailed and complete undergraduate class that goes into more detail about what you can do with ArcGIS.
So rather than walking through problems step by step in a stilted way and trying to cover all the bases, my goal is to give you opportunities to work with a few common tasks in ArcGIS and solve problems yourself. By the end of the workshop you’ll have enough comfort with ArcGIS to get started using it and to know where to look to solve stumbling blocks.
One final note: you’ll want to refer to the powerpoint slide-deck attached to this as you’re going through the activities, since the activities themselves don’t provide much detail about how complete them.

2. What is GIS Definition Systems = hardware, software, methods
GIS = Geographic Information Systems: system used to create, store, edit, analyze, format, and deliver data related to geographic location
Systems = hardware, software, methods
GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems: these are systems used to to create, store, edit, analyze, format, and deliver data related to geographic location. So Geographic Information is data related to location and systems refers to the technology, the hardware and software, but also the common methods for organizing and working with the data.

3. Geographic Information
What is GIS Ad Hoc
Data with “geographic component”
Geographic Information
This is an example of ad hoc GIS information. Look familiar? It’s just some data with a location field, in this case, state name. We know states are objects with locations in space, but we may not know their locations, or for instance the exact locations of their boundaries.

4. Geographic Information
What is GIS Formal
… in geographic context
Geographic Information
When we add this data to a GIS we can immediately visualize in a way that helps us to understand

5. Geographic Information
What is GIS? Layers
Geographic Information
One of the most important aspects of GIS is the layering of disperate classes of information. Not only do these fall in different thematic areas, but come from different agencies often using different organizing concepts and in different data formats. GIS allows us to both visualize these disperate data and, is everything is in related to everything else via location, to interact with the data in a powerful new way.
Layers generally correspond to a particular data file, or file set, or geodatabase feature class (e.g., table (or table set))

6. What is GIS Geographic Reference
Geographic Referencing (“Georeferencing”) of information by geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude)
Unprojected coordinates are usually in decimal degrees like , 
Projected coordinates are expressed in relation to a flat plane, in familiar distance units like 18S  meters  meters
Geographic Information
In GIS the geographic reference system is the central organizing principal. Generic geographic information has a location reference like state, with an implicit understanding of spatial location. With GIS that location is made explicit with numerical coordinate systems and projections. I mentioned georeferencing before, which is the process of brining that generic geographic information into a GIS and relating it to an explicit coordinate location. Unprojected or geographic coordinate systems tend to use angular coordinates, since they are related to the paradigm of a globe or a sphere. Projected systems use linear references, reflecting the paradigm of a flat wall map or a monitor.

7. What is GIS? Primary Data Types
Vector
Raster
Store x,y coordinates to represent locations and boundaries of map features
Point (x,y), line [(x,y),(x,y), … ], polygon [(x,y),(x,y), … ]
In a grid, cell values represent the dominant characteristic of that cell
Lines
Polygons
There are two primary GIS data types.
Vector data is very useful within tables and databases, since you can directly relate a vector object with a table row.
In the state example we had a vector object, the state boundary polygon, that was related to all of the table data about the state, like its population.
There are 3 main classes of vector data are points, lines, and polygons. Points are represented as a single coordinate pair, a latitude and longitude. A line requires at least 2 coordinate pairs, but could have additional pairs to add line segments to a polyline. A polygon requires at least 3 coordinate pairs, but could have additional pairs to add complexity.
Raster data is expressed as a grid with each cell in the grid equal to a single value. We can move between the vector and raster data types, though data is sometimes lost in the change. For example, a set of points could be converted into a grid with each cell representing the number of points in that cell, however we lose any other values attached to each point object. It is important to recognize that images are almost always expressed as raster data, here we can recognize that pixels are the cells, and their colors or shades are related to each cell value.
Points

8. What is GIS Common Data formats
Shapefile (.shp, shx., .dbf, .prj)
File geodatabase (.gdb)
Personal geodatabase (.mdb)
Various imagery files (.img, .tif, .sid, .jp2, .asc, .hdr, GRID (directory))
Common generic geographic data formats (.csv, .xls, .txt (tab-delimited), etc., or non-georeferenced images)
Map Document IS NOT DATA (.mxd)
Knowledge of different GIS file formats is immediately necessary.
A shapefile is the the standard vector format. You’ll often see GIS data distributed this way. Although it’s called shapeFILE it is actually a few files together in a directory. The files have to remain together and with corresponding names (the part before the extension). If you work exclusively with the files in ArcGIS you can make sure that you won’t cause disconnections between them.
Geodatabases are commonly used in ArcGIS, it is a way to provide some of the query and data management functionality. File geodatabases are the standard format, personal geodatabases have been discontinued at this point. Although .mdb can be opened in Microsoft Access, I would encourage you to stick to working with it only in ArcGIS.
There are a number of imagery formats that you can open in ArcGIS, many of them are also used for non-geospatial imagery (though these can be georeferenced). The ESRI GRID format is used as an output for processed data, but is not stored with any file extensions, rather as a set of tiles in a directory. Other imagery formats, likewise come in such filesets.
Common generic geographic data (non-GIS) include standard delimited and spreadsheet formats as well as non-Georeferenced imagery
Finally, the map document is NOT DATA but rather a pointer to your data and a place where visualization and workspace settings are stored

9. What is GIS? Examples Visualization Reference
Now we’re going to look at some examples of GIS outputs
The whole area of visualization is the most familiar aspect of GIS to most people
Visualization is simply producing a visual representation of data
The most common form of GIS visualization are reference maps. A reference map could be the road atlas you pick up at a gas station or a the google map you use to find an unfamiliar restaurant. Of course roads and other features on the map change, so a GIS is need to manage that data and also to add some style to it.

10. What is GIS? Examples Visualization Thematic
Going one step further in that direction is a thematic map, in which some attribute of a data layer is emphasized through symbology. This is the kind of map we’ll be producing in this session. In this example tornado injuries are symbolized by dots of varying size and population per square mile by polygons of different shades of lavender.

11. What is GIS? Examples Visualization Charts
You can create all kinds of different charts from a GIS. Although a GIS is primarily used for mapping there are other kinds of visualizations that are supported by the systems which are used to manage and work with this data.

12. What is GIS? Examples Visualization Web/Interactive
Web and interactive maps are an output that I work with a lot. This type of map provides the ability to embed media and links to other web-based resources, as well as giving the audience more control over how they view and interact with this information.

13. What is GIS? Examples Visualization 3D
3D information is one that has really taken off on the consumer side with Google Earth, but also with the explosion of sensors such as lidar and radar, that provide 3-dimensional data. Just by adding a third coordinate of height to the latitude, longitude pair we can more accurately model the physical world and to provide more rich and sometimes immersive visualization experiences.

14. What is GIS? Examples Visualization Animation
Our final example for visualization is animation. This is applying the time component to a visualization, providing a more rich feel for how the data, how the environment, is changing.
Of course these visualizations can be mixed with one another, for example providing a 3D animation on the web … lots of exciting opportunities for visualization.

15. What is GIS? Examples Analysis Networks and Movement
On the analysis side, although I’m showing you v
Next you’ll see some examples of analysis provided through corresponding visualizations
This is not an exahaustive list of the analyses you can do, just a few examples of the diverse areas geospatial analysis is being applied to.
Here is one example of anlysis where networks and movement is modeled, for example doing routing and shortest path
Analysis

16. What is GIS? Examples Analysis Imagery/ Remote Sensing
Being able to work with imagery and remotely sensed data, this allows for example relating sensed data with vector objects and doing classification to relate sensed objects with discrete categories
Analysis

17. What is GIS? Examples Analysis Volumetric
Volumetric methods are the analytic counterpart to 3D visualization
Analysis

18. What is GIS? Examples Analysis Proximity
Through proximity analysis we can explore things like density, clustering, and other spatial relationships
Analysis

19. What is GIS? Examples Analysis Tables and Reports
Many of these analytical methods are supported by corresponding data outputs, such as with tables and reports
Analysis

20. ArcGIS Introduction
ArcGIS is the most popular GIS software in the world
It is a powerful suite of tools, which satisfies the largest variety of use cases
It is a propriety software developed by Esri, and licensed to UD, other software available
Learning the basics can take hours while mastering the software can take years
Now we’re going to get into the actual software that we’re working with today
Why are we focusing on ArcGIS?
It’s the most popular GIS software out there, which allows us to leverage existing file formats, customizations, and documentation
It’s a very powerful suite of tools, there are components and add-ons which satisfy the maximum amount of use cases. I challenge you, as a novice GIS user, to think of a case that can be accomplished with the capabilities of ArcGIS.
Although it is proprietary software developed by Esri and is ordinarily very expensive. However, we have a very permissive site license that allows us to provide GIS software at little or no cost to members of the UD community. There is other GIS software that is free and open source that I can point you towards and support and we do license other geospatial software packages, as well.

21. What is GIS Activity
How do you envision GIS being used in your job area (department, center, field)?
Here’s our first activity. How do you envision GIS being used in your job area … think about how you might use this in your department if you’re faculty or staff, or in your center if you’re in research, or perhaps in your field of practice, if you’re a student.

22. ArcGIS Software ArcMap ArcCatalog
In the ArcGIS Sofware suite there are two main tools, though there are others that you can also use such as the cloud-based ArcGIS Online, server based ArcGIS Server, and others. For most folks it comes down to these two main pieces of desktop software. Today we’re going to be exclusively focusing on ArcMap. I thought I’d mention ArcCatalog as well, since you may want to use this, as you move beyond the beginning steps with ArcMap. ArcMap is used when you’re primarily working towards a visual output, so this is what you’ll use for creating maps and map layouts and so on. ArcCatalog provides most of the same functions as ArcCatalog, but with the most basic visual display. ArcCatalog is often used, for instance, when you’re creating new data layers and geodatabases.

23. ArcGIS ArcMap Startup
When you start up ArcMap, you’ll see this screen; this is where you select your default geodatbase, which is where data that you create during analysis gets stored. You can also select from among a few different templates. We’ll just select a blank map, but you can also select a template, which will produce a default map style for you to print or export, with things like a legend and title already added in there for you. In today’s activity we’re going to work with a geodatabase that has already been created, selected by default, and saved to a map document. In the future you’re going to want to know where your default geodatabase is, so you can ensure it’s in a stable location, for example not on the C drive if you’re working with a shared system or lab machine.
So moving forward, we would select blank map here to create a new map.

24. ArcGIS ArcMap Data Frame
Editor Toolbar
Menu Bar
Standard
Toolbar
Tools
Toolbar
Table of Contents/
Data Sources/
Selection/
Visibility Pane
Next you’ll see the main display in ArcMap.
There are a few areas of this windows to take notice of.
The menu bar is where you can access everything that’s not already visible. For example, though we have a few toolbars already displayed, we can add or remove additional toolbars from the customize menu.
From the standard toolbar we can access different actions with our map document
From the tools toolbar we move around on the map and do simple interactive actions
The data frame takes up the main part of the window and is where we visualize data and selections
In the table of contents are we have a collection of tabs for interacting with the display and selection in the data frame
From the table of contents we can right click a layer to get a contextual menu that gives us some important options for interacting with the data. One to make special note of is Properties which gives us the layers properties dialog, from which we can access the symbology tab to change layer symbolization
Note that you can toggle between the data frame and the layout frame on the lower left hand corner of the data frame. The layout frame is where we can add and view non-spatial objects such as titles and legends in preparation for printing
(Right Click)
Context Menu
Data Frame/
Layout Toggle

25. ArcGIS ArcMap Table of Contents Pane
Toggle Table of Contents/
Data Sources/
Selection/
Visibility Pane
Turn layers
On/off with
checkbox
Change layer
Drawing order
By moving up/down
The tabs in the table of contents pane include
The drawing order, which tab gives you control over how layers are displayed or not displayed, their position over top of eachother, and how they are grouped together. You can check layers on and off here for display and drag them up and down to display one on top of another.
The data sources tab is particularly important if you are moving between systems or working with non-visual data, for example a non-georeferenced table. One important capability there is seeing data listed by the place it is stored.
The visibility tab provides a more sophisticated way to control visibility, which is important when you’re dealing with scale dependencies which is display which changes according to map scale
The selection tab shows you what you have selected and lets you control selection, for instance when you want to have only certain layers selectable. That would be useful if you need to have many layers displayed for context, but only want to be interacting with one or a subset of them.

26. ArcGIS ArcMap Toolbars
Here’s those toolbars and the menu bar that I showed you earlier.
From the standard toolbar you can create, open, or save a map document, add data or basemaps to it, or open up other main areas of ArcGIS. For instance, the ArcToolbox button allows you to access the advanced capabilities of ArcGIS not contained in toolbars. The Python window provides programmatic interaction.
The tools toolbar has controls to navigate around and do simple queries, measurements, and selections. The mouse wheel can also be used to zoom in/out.
Hover your mouse cursor over a button to get a small dialog about what the button does, this is called a tooltip

27. ArcGIS ArcMap Attribute Table
The attribute table displays the tabular data associated with your layer and provides controls for interacting with this data. For instance you can add or remove columns from this table and calculate field values like you would with spreadsheet formulas.

28. ArcGIS Add Data
You can add pre-map web basemaps from this button, before you browse to local data
“ Connect To Folder” to connect to data outside of home directory. After you’ve entered the Add Data dialog, you must click the Connect To Folder button to browse to that location
The add data button is where you add data layers to you map. In addition to local data layers on your computer you can also add map services, which are web based map resources. Among these are which you can add through the little upsidedown black arrow next to the add data button. Basemaps give you a reference map for context without the need to acquire, add, and style all that data yourself.
One thing to be aware of: if data exists outside your home directly you will likely have to use the connect to folder button to be able to browse to that location

29. ArcGIS Activity
Download and extract the data from  
Open
Add all data layers to map
Rename “us_counties” to “Counties”
Explore Counties map layer attribute table
For our next activity we will download a .zip archive of some data and map documents, extract, and open it with ArcMap.
We will add the data layers to our map, then rename one of them.
Finally we’ll open the Counties layer attribute table
First allow me to demonstrate this, then you can try it yourself

30. ArcGIS Symbology
Next we’re going to learn about how to prepare you data and map for output, whether by printing or exporting an image
I had mentioned the symbology tab within the layer properties dialog. This is where you’ll apply symbols to a layer. In this case we’re using a quantity symbology, since we have numerical data, and applying a graduated colors type symbology, which has colors gradually changing according to the distribution of the data and breaks that we assign. You can see that we’ve chosen FEMALES for our value field. In this case the FEMALES field is FEMALE population. If we wanted to get a ratio of FEMALE to MALE population we could choose the MALE field for our normalization. It is only necessary to choose a normalization field when a ratio or desired. In many cases, since geographic objects often vary in size, area would be chosen for a normalization field in order to not overstate values for larger geographic objects.

31. ArcGIS ArcMap Layout Frame
Layout Toolbar
Insert Menu
The layout frame is where you’ll be adding layout elements to your map, including title, legend, north arrow, etc. These elements are all available from the Insert menu. The layout toolbar is mostly used when it’s necessary to decouple the layout and data views. Otherwise these views are synchronized with respect to extent, scale, layer visibility, etc.
Layout Frame
Data/Layout
Toggle

32. ArcGIS Export Image, Print, and Saving
You can “Export Map” to an image file or “Print” from the File menu.
You can save the map document, which contains pointers to your data and your map styles, by selecting “Save” from the File menu. If your system changes your data may not be located.
Exporting and printing a map are available through the file menu
… another reminder, the map document is only a pointer to your data and a collection of preferences. You can save your map document work via the file menu save command.

33. ArcGIS Activity
Change symbology of Counties layer to show ratio of Female (Value) to Male (Normalization) population.
Switch to the layout frame. Experiment with adding map elements (you may want to try a title or a legend, for instance).
Export the map as a graphic. .png is best.
Save work.
If you have extra time, try experimenting with different symbologies and improving your layout
In the next activity we will be changing symbology to show female to male population ratio
Then we’ll switch the laytout frame to add some layout elements
Then export the map as a graphic, I like the .png format and save our map document
You can try other symbologies and layout elements if you have time.
First I’ll demonstrate this, then you can try yourself

34. ArcGIS Identify
In the next section, we’ll learn about selecting features from data layers and getting information about features
The identify tool can be used to get a quick list of a feature’s attribute values

35. ArcGIS Selection Tools
Executive Overview of GIS
ArcGIS Selection Tools
The simplest way to do select is interactively with the cursor. You can click a feature to select it or shift click to select many features.
To select features based on some tabular value connected to that object, use the select by attributes tool. We can type the query in freehand if we know the syntax, I will also show you a way to generate the query with the interface.
To select features based on a geographic relationship use the select by location tool. In this case you can see that we can create a new selection or add to an existing selection, select the layers whose features we wish to work with, and specify some kind of spatial criteria for selection
The Polis Center

36. ArcGIS Setting Selectable Layers
Executive Overview of GIS
ArcGIS Setting Selectable Layers
Indicate which layers you want to be able to select features from interactively by viewing TOC as List by Selection
Toggle layers as Selectable or Not Selectable by clicking
Displays selectable layers and number of features selected (in this example, zero for all layers)
Here’s the selection tab in the table of contents pane, that I mentioned earlier
This quickly displays which layers have features selected in them, allowing you to select all features or deselect features from a layer
You can also set which layers are selectable and not selectable
The Polis Center

37. ArcGIS Calculating Statistics
To calculate statistics about a selection, just select the features you are interested and then right click on the field you are interested in calculating stastistics on, from the attribute table
This will produce summary statistics on the field as well as a frequency distribution graph, to give you a quick idea of the data values

38. ArcGIS Activity
Select by Attribute, from Counties, name = ‘New Castle’
Select by Location, select where intersecting selection (New Castle)
Find statistics of selection (counties intersecting New Castle)
If you have extra time, try this activity on a county that interests you and compare the results
In the next activity we will try two of the selection methods, select by attribute and by location
Once we have features selected we’ll generate statistics about the selection
And if you have extra time try this with another county and compare the results of the statistics
I’ll demonstrate this and then you can try it out

39. ArcGIS Join
Add your non-GIS data file. It might be saved as a spreadsheet file
Right-click on the GIS layer with a common location field as the non-GIS (e.g., state name) from data Joins and Relates, Join.
Select the common fields from the Join dialog
Now that the data is joined, you can change the symbology to switch to one of your new fields
The final section is on the standard join
The standard or table join allows us to georeference generic geographic data to a GIS layer through a common field.
To do this we should take note of our common field, add GIS and generic data to our map document. Then, from the geographic data layer context menu, initiate the join.
When that’s all done we can change the symbology to visualize the new data fields.

40. ArcGIS Export Data
You can select a feature or a set of features to export only those to a new shapefile/layer
Export data from the Data contextual menu on the layer of interest
Sometimes you’d want to save this new joined data layer as and entirely new layer, for example if you wanted to send it to someone else. You can do this by exporting data from the layer contextual menu. If you select a feature of set of features only those will be available in the exported data set, by default.

41. ArcGIS Activity Remove all layers
Add a basemap from the Add Layers button
Add non-georeferenced location-based data (westNile.csv) to the map
Add a related GIS layer to the map
Do a standard join
Export as a new shapefile
If you have extra time, try with your own data from the web or try an improved layout to print or export
In the final activity we will
Remove all layers and add 3 things to the map: a basemap, our non-georeferenced location based data and our GIS layer. We’ll then do the standard join and export a new shapefile. If time permits try joining your own data from the web or try to improve on the layout.

42. ArcGIS Gotchas
The map document (.mxd) file does not contain your data! It just references it
A shapefile is really a collection of files that must be kept together
Make a new folder for every new project. Keep all map documents and data in this directory. This is a good way to stay organized and ArcGIS’s internal shortcuts will be automatically relevant.
Create a file geodatabase in the project folder. Make this the default geodatabase for this map document and all subsequent for the project. Otherwise your new layers will be written to Default.gdb  which gets cluttered and data may be lost on a shared system
Do not use spaces or other special characters (except the underscore character) when naming any file or folder.  I recommend you use lower-case letters, digits and the underscore character only!
Under File--Map Document properties, check the "Store Relative Pathnames" box.  Then when you end a work session, you can "save" the state of your session as a Map Document (MXD) file on your USB drive.  
New data frame automatically matches first layer  subsequent layers usually reprojected
I would be remiss if I did mention a few of the most common stumbling blocks encountered with ArcGIS. The first two I’ve already mentioned about mxd’s and shapefiles. A good practice is to make a new folder for each project and keep .mxd and all data in this folder. You would also want to create a file geodatabase here and make it your default. Use of spaces and special characters is risky when it will be reflecting in file or attribute names, for instance. We had trouble with that in the in-class presentation and ArcGIS 10.0, apparently ArcGIS 10.2 is a little more forgiving. Still, those are problems best to be avoided. You’ll want to set ArcMap to store relative pathnames. This will save you headaches with removable drives, or if you need to move or share your folder for any reason. Finally, projection and coordinate systems can be an issue with your data. Often times ArcMap will handle projection for you, but other times you will need to reproject the data on your own. This is the kind of issue for which you may want to contact me or to look into one of the other help resources to be mentioned at the end of the presentation.
In part, from

43. Review Activity Real-world examples of vector data?
Real-world examples of raster data?
Example of how you would use the Select by Attributes tool to solve a problem
Example of how you would use the Select by Location tool to solve a problem
Do you have data that you’d like to view in a map that isn’t GIS data?
How could the statistics tool be used to solve a problem?
Please consider the following review questions. This will help you think about how you might use what we’ve learned today.

44. To learn more Tooltips ArcGIS Help menu www.udel.edu/gis/learn
Esri Virtual Campus
Here are some resources for solving questions in ArcGIS and for learning more about how the software is being used
Tooltips are those great little info displays we get when we hover over buttons
The Help menu is available from the menu bar and has a few excellent resources
The UD GIS learn page has screencasts and other learning resources as well as information to sign up for Esri Virtual Campus courses. These courses have some more step by step instruction, in case you found today’s workshop a little confusing. They also cover a selection of specialty and advanced topics.
The arcgis resources site has collections of resources for different audiences, whether you’d like to see all material for ArcGIS Desktop 10.2 or all material for professionals in a given field

45. Questions? www.udel.edu/gis consult@udel.edu
thanks to FEMA for allowing us to reuse some slide content
If you have questions, please contact us at You are also welcome to contact me directly at but consult will make sure to route you to the right person if there’s a better person to answer the question, or if I am unavailable.