NC GIS Conference 2023

Enjoy a nice cup of coffee to get the morning started in the Exhibit Hall and prepare for a wonderful day of conference activities.

Welcoming remarks, Keynote Address by Bill Johnson ‐ “Carpe Geo – A Field Guide to Enjoying Your Career Journey”, and conference details

Open geodata

Maximize your GIS investment by integrating your CMMS with Esri’s ArcGIS platform using a modern, GIS-Centric approach. Understand how work management can be accomplished faster and more accurate as work orders are developed from the map using GIS-Centric technology. Become versed in the best practices for identifying assets in the field, creating work orders, attaching work history to assets, and analyzing the data through reporting. Get an overall picture of how budgets are being consumed and how capital planning tools can help prepare for upcoming expenditures.

Timmons Group is working with multiple clients in the Mid-Atlantic, and across the country, to plan for and implement the Utility Network. This presentation will highlight our proven approach to implementing the Utility Network, prerequisites to do so, and lessons learned from past projects.

With over a decade of research & development, Ecopia has created an advanced proprietary extraction system using a semi-automated approach to provide governments with planimetric level detail data, with the accuracy of a GIS professional. State organizations can leverage this data for a variety of use cases, including: hazard mitigation, coastal resilience, and transportation planning. Besides the low cost, updating, and speed of content creation, one of the key benefits that this approach provides is the customization and adaptability of these datasets. These datasets can be overlaid with in-house information such as parcel data, census data, floodplain data, or right-of-way mapping data, to ensure that each government is getting the best possible final deliverable that integrates well into their current workflows. Dr. David Maidment from the University of Texas at Austin provides an excellent example of just how critical this data is after a study of Ecopia’s data found that the Texas Road inventory was missing over 53% of true roadway assets. “I’ve had a chance to look into the road and bridge data more carefully. They are stunning, a convincing and comprehensive 2D coverage of the road and bridge system that we can make into 3D by adding LIDAR data, building bridge slabs, etc. I hardly know what to say. You don’t know what you lack until you see what you have now.” Furthermore, Ecopia can advance the products that states are leveraging and create a more refined, tailored solution that meets the unique requirements of local governments. A number of municipalities across the US have been utilizing Ecopia’s semi-automated impervious surface extraction methodology to calculate their stormwater utility fees and integrate these datasets into their flood models. The City of Jacksonville requires highly detailed information on how stormwater interacts with infrastructure and the environment as they are a coastal community. To effectively understand and plan for stormwater events, the Public Works Department relies on geospatial data to power mapping and analytics. The City compared multiple geospatial data providers, ultimately discovering that Ecopia’s price per parcel for a land cover dataset was 84% lower than other vendors. The presenter will examine the primary advantages of leveraging Ecopia’s methodology through project specific examples, which include: the speed of content creation, data standardization, and flexibility in customizing impervious layers to the unique requirements of individual municipalities.

Enjoy a nice cup of coffee to get the morning started in the Exhibit Hall and prepare for a wonderful day of conference activities.

Welcoming remarks, Keynote Address by Bill Johnson ‐ “Carpe Geo – A Field Guide to Enjoying Your Career Journey”, and conference details

The spatial distribution of human population and inequality in social amenities in Urban and rural regions played a crucial role in the impact of COVID-19. Contemporary research has measured the differences between rural and urban/suburban communities with regards to social, economic, political and health phenomena as well as the varying impact of COVID-19 in these communities; however, there is no study on the space-time changing pattern of COVID-19 cases between rural and urban regions from 2020 till date in North Carolina (NC). This paper is an attempt to quantify the space-time temporal trends for COVID-19 between rural and urban areas in North Carolina on the backdrop of socio-economic and demographic phenomena. This paper will examine how economic inequalities and spatial population distribution greatly impacted the rate of change of recorded COVID cases and fatalities which further underscores the disparities in distribution of social amenities between rural and urban areas. Geospatial analysis using Geographic Information Systems was employed to explore the space-time pattern of COVID cases across the 100 counties in North Carolina on the backdrop of demographic and socio-economic data for North Carolina. A time series analysis was run using a six-month epoch for COVID cases in rural and urban North Carolina while utilizing data from the NC COVID-19 dashboard. The emerging hot spot analysis tool was deployed to carry out space-time pattern mining of the impact of COVID-19 cases in rural and urban counties as well as the changing pattern of the cases at different age units. The resulting space-time patterns reveal that further extensive study may be necessary to fully quantify the impact of COVID-19 in low income and low access communities in contrast to urban regions.

Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas that is 25 times more potent than Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and highly efficient at trapping heat in the atmosphere. Since the start of the industrial revolution, atmospheric methane levels have been rising primarily due to increased emissions from anthropogenic sources. Examples of these sources include oil and natural gas systems, wastewater treatment facilities, landfills, and various industrial processes. Among the many anthropogenic sources of methane, there are also natural sources of methane. During a MethaneAir pass over of the North Salt Lake area on August 11th, 2021, a notable methane plume was observed. The objective of this research was to determine the potential sources of this methane plume using a combination of meteorological simulations generated from the Weather Research and Forecast model (WRF) and nearby wind measurements obtained from MesoWest. The results generated from this analysis indicate that WRF was able to accurately reproduce winds across the study domain when evaluated with local wind measurements. Overall, the meteorological analysis present here suggests that winds across the study domain were stagnant, indicating that the source of the methane plume was likely local. We hypothesize that the methane plume originated from a local gas refinery. Pinpointing local sources of methane will be important for leading future efforts to quantify methane leaks and for determining how these individual methane leaks might contribute to global increases in methane concentrations that we are currently observing.

Soils have been identified as a potential major carbon sink, and as carbon emissions continue to increase around the world, attention is being turned to soils as a possible way to offset these emissions. Healthy soils may be able to sequester carbon from the atmosphere in a variety of different compounds, storing it underground for many years. College campuses are a unique place to study soil carbon sequestration because they typically have ample green space that can be closely monitored and maintained by the university. While prior research on college campus soil carbon sequestration has focused on the role of land cover, the call to further investigate the role of soil compaction is based on related research in agricultural environments. This study seeks to examine whether land cover or soil compactness has a greater effect on soil carbon sequestration on a college campus. The study area is the Historic Neighborhood of Elon University in North Carolina which is the oldest area on campus, established in 1889. This part of campus features many different types of land cover with varying soil compaction levels. Areas of different land covers have been mapped using GIS software and ground-truthed in order to provide error estimates throughout analysis. Soils of low, moderate, and high compaction have been identified. Compaction measurements and soil samples were taken from randomly selected points provided by the GIS map within each land cover in order to mitigate the potential for researcher bias in sampling. Soil samples from each point will be analyzed using Loss on Ignition (LOI) to determine the amount of soil organic carbon (SOC) present. The results of this study will inform best management practices for university landscaping crews to promote soil carbon sequestration on Elon’s campus.

During the initial invasion of Ukraine, there was a unique hold out of Ukrainian fighters in the city of Mariupol. During the fighting, over 2,000 Ukrainian fighters held out for two months against the Russian military in the Azovstal steel plant, a compound with miles of underground tunnels underneath, giving the Ukrainian fighters a complex to hide, fight, and regroup from. Russia shelled the city surrounding the steel plant, with an estimated 87,000 civilians documented to have been killed. This research aims at detecting changes of the landscape in Mariupol due to war activities using satellite imagery data. This understanding would give NGO’s, aid agencies, and governmental organizations a quick method to estimate total damage in a relatively quick span.

Assessing the vulnerability of coastal resources to exposure factors related to climate change (e.g., flooding) allows for the identification of suitable management actions, such as the development of green infrastructure (GI). GI has been advocated by researchers and policy makers as an important strategy for enhancing city sustainability and resilience. GI addresses societal issues by aiding in the management and restoration of critical ecosystems that provide benefits to society and biodiversity. The logic behind GI implementation focuses on its versatility, however, some uncertainties remain around how, for whom, and to what extent GI can function. This project seeks to develop a methodology that establishes the evidence base for the effectiveness of GI in vulnerable coastal watersheds. I hypothesize that including metrics of change in ecosystem dynamics derived from satellite data will enhance existing models of GI suitability. In this project, I aim to complete three objectives focused on southeastern North Carolina: (1) model flood and sea level rise exposure to derive a flood exposure index, (2) analyze satellite-derived timeseries of vegetation change metrics to derive a vegetation type and condition index, and (3) compute a final GI suitability index (GISI).

The USFWS performs Species Status Assessments on Federal Species of concern to  determine if protection is warranted.  As part of that process, changes in habitat  in aquatic species’ range over time is taken into consideration.  Summary statistics of Landcover by USGS 10 digit and possibly 12 digit hydrologic Units (HUCs) and changes that occur over time are a part of that process.  Using an entirely open source GIS stack consisting of GDAL, QGIS , and GRASS GIS installed on a laptop, summary statistics of NLCD classes were generated by 10 digit and 12 digit  HUCs for the 48 CONUS States in the United States and assigned as attributes in geopackage layers, as well as .csv files for distribution. 

Enjoy a nice cup of coffee to get the morning started in the Exhibit Hall and prepare for a wonderful day of conference activities.

Welcoming remarks, Keynote Address by Bill Johnson ‐ “Carpe Geo – A Field Guide to Enjoying Your Career Journey”, and conference details

Starting a GIS program from scratch can be very intimidating. Where and how do you start? At the local government level, geospatial technology is used to make informed, data-driven policy decisions. This presentation will outline the key elements and best practices of a successful Stormwater GIS Program. Key elements of a successful Stormwater GIS Program include strategic planning, data management techniques, selecting optimal field data collection technology, asset management, collaboration with internal and external colleagues, and GIS outreach. The development of data standards will be discussed to emphasize the importance of departmental collaboration. Diversity and inclusion efforts are considered every step along the way to cultivate accountability within the organization. Commentary on lessons learned will highlight the use of GIS to address challenges faced by local governments. The Durham County Stormwater GIS Program was implemented in 2021, and we are continuously working to streamline our workflows to best support our citizens and stakeholders.

Managing and understanding underground infrastructure has many challenges on a university campus with more than 10 utility systems. Some of the challenges include identifying utility ownership, depth, size, age and material, understanding the impacts of utility isolation, managing utility access, and numerous other needs. The NC State Enterprise GIS team has developed enterprise GIS data for most key utility systems on campus. This GIS data supports a wide range of end users and needs including the University Locator, University Surveyor, planners, construction managers, field technicians, engineers, landscape architects, and people working in real estate, environmental health & safety, grounds, and other areas. This data is the basis for key web mapping applications which allow users to view utility locations, critical attributes and highlight characteristics of the utility systems such as age, ownership, or material type. This presentation will highlight two applications, the NC State Utilities Viewer and the Utility Assessment Dashboard, and include a discussion of the ArcGIS Enterprise architecture and workflows that allow for sharing accurate and up-to-date utility information with end users.

Our Web Application Utilities Viewer has been our biggest GIS success story at NC State. This application shows a highly accurate and functional roadmap of all our underground infrastructure. The aforementioned attribute data as well as project information and work order assets have been identified and hyperlinked. Linking construction project documentation to utility assets was a low-hanging fruit opportunity that has benefitted all users with access to Utilities Viewer. The former process for finding As-Builts, project documentation and photographs was very labor intensive. It typically involved picking the brains of project managers, contractors or field crews for institutional knowledge. Like many organizations, when an employee retires or moves on, that invaluable information leaves with them. Utilities Viewer has had a positive impact for both veteran employees as well as new hires with no knowledge of our active systems.

Another successful Web Application is our Utility Assessment Dashboard. This dashboard serves the same enterprise GIS data as Utilities Viewer, but this application highlights our old, active legacy infrastructure. Facility planners are able to visually identify which pipes to replace in lieu of traditional spreadsheet lists. We are currently upgrading our legacy underground Electrical Distribution System. During this process we’re using the dashboard to identify adjacent water lines to replace while roadways are closed during construction.

By having a solid understanding of our underground systems, our safety culture has improved tremendously. Engineers and field crews are quickly able to identify where to isolate pressurized/energized utilities to safely perform maintenance. Knowing these key isolation points, we can communicate with campus users (our customers) which buildings/departments will be impacted. Our next goals are to explore the use of ArcGIS Field Maps for data collection efforts and additional applications to further share the capabilities of GIS to both existing and new users.

In the mid-1990s, the NC Rural Economic Development Center funded a project to map water and sewer infrastructure in rural counties to obtain a clearer picture of its age and condition. The data was never statewide nor comprehensive and was not updated. By 2019, lack of access to accurate, current infrastructure data became a topic of discussion by the NC Geographic Information Coordinating Council (GICC). For purposes ranging from emergency management to transportation planning to economic development, the Council recognized a great need for access to utility infrastructure data, yet very little data was easily accessible. The GICC chartered an Infrastructure Working Group (IWG) to review what data was available, what data could be shared, and what barriers existed to data sharing. The IWG reviewed data for water, sewer, stormwater, natural gas, electric, and telecommunications. The group concentrated on utility infrastructure, as the state already has well developed transportation data. Through the collection of use cases, surveys, interviews, and discussions, the IWG gathered information on the need for infrastructure data, methods for sharing and securing data, security concerns from data producers, and the differing views around open data sharing. The IWG’s findings did not result in a simple solution for infrastructure data sharing. Rather, the group discovered a nuanced, sometimes contradictory field, where there is no one-size-fits-all method to sharing geospatial representations of utility infrastructure data. Risk tolerance, data quality, or organizational culture were the predominant influences of data sharing methods. This presentation will review the lessons learned by the working group, the nuances of infrastructure data sharing, the sensitivity of this subject within the infrastructure community, and how risk tolerance plays a major role in whether data is shared. Preliminary findings and recommendations shared with the GICC will be presented.

Municipal Boundary Data: Best Practices and Update Panel Discussion:

• Bob Coats (Governor’s Census Liaison, NC OSBM)
• Dr. Mike Cline (State Demographer, NC OSBM)
• Rich Elkins (Land Records Manager, NC Secretary of State)
• Steve Averett (GIS Manager, City of Greensboro)
• Colleen Kiley (GIS Coordination Program Manager, NCDIT)

Maintaining Annexation History Utilizing GIS:

When property was annexed into a municipality can be an important question to answer when questions arise about taxation, applicability of development regulations, or figuring out what office might have records of an old permit.  By maintaining a layer with each separate annexation, along with important data about them, these questions can be more easily answered.

As GIS folks, we are often asked what we do or how we can help. For some reason these questions catch us by surprise. So we blurt out things like, we are google maps on steroids’ or we make maps or we analyze spatial data. While these are not untrue, they really don’t provide a good understanding of the true power we bring to the table. Having a well thought out elevator pitch to explain what you do is important for letting those you serve understand your value and that of GIS.

This presentation will explain what an elevator pitch is and what a good one should include.

Enjoy a nice cup of coffee to get the morning started in the Exhibit Hall and prepare for a wonderful day of conference activities.

Welcoming remarks, Keynote Address by Bill Johnson ‐ “Carpe Geo – A Field Guide to Enjoying Your Career Journey”, and conference details

This presentation is for local and private GIS organizations who provide mapping services for ISO/OSFM fire insurance ratings, or individuals interested in how your local fire department is rated. The North Carolina Department of Insurance -Office of State Fire Marshal (OSFM) provides fire department ratings for all jurisdiction in North Carolina with a population less than 100,000 and is responsible for the collection and quality control for the GIS data provided for the inspections. The accuracy of the data submitted can have a sizeable effect on the overall outcome of the rating, so this presentation will cover the basics of a rating inspection, what are the GIS requirements, how to prepare for an inspection, and answer any questions that arise.

The new FCC National Broadband Map was released late last year, along with more granular address-level broadband availability data. This presentation will highlight what the NC Department of Information Technology’s Division of Broadband and Center for Geographic Information and Analysis are doing to improve the broadband maps in the state. See how to leverage the new data and tools to get involved in the broadband expansion efforts, as well as how county and local data is directly impacting the funding programs throughout the state.

NC has made great progress related to NextGen 911 GIS data preparedness since the kickoff in June of 2019. Come hear from the 911 Board Executive Director, the NG911 Network Engineer, and the Assistant CGIA Director on the current status and what’s next for NextGen 911 in the State of NC.

OpenPlains is an open-source platform developed to remove barriers to community engagement in geospatial modeling. The platform provides a web interface and application development tools for GRASS GIS, enabling the development of custom interactive geospatial models. OpenPlains is demonstrated through two interactive web applications: a spatial-temporal watershed analysis application that allows participants to investigate the landscape evolution of subwatersheds and a participatory urban growth forecasting application. Both demo applications work in any location in the contiguous United States (CONUS).

The current Executive Administration has issued several executive orders that place a focus on social equity and environmental justice for Federal programs and agencies. While Federal agencies are working to incorporate these orders, many other programs – regional, state, local, and non-governmental – are also considering these principles. This presentation will introduce the audience to numerous publicly available social and environmental vulnerability datasets that can be used to inform any type of project on its social implications.

The 2020 Census is an important benchmark for demographic and geospatial standards and data. This session discusses new changes to the decennial census, available and upcoming data releases, opportunities to challenge Census counts, and the impact on the State estimation and projection process.

Enjoy a nice cup of coffee to get the morning started in the Exhibit Hall and prepare for a wonderful day of conference activities.

Welcoming remarks, Keynote Address by Bill Johnson ‐ “Carpe Geo – A Field Guide to Enjoying Your Career Journey”, and conference details

The vulnerability of tidal wetlands to sea level rise (SLR) can be quantitatively evaluated by comparing the factors that increase their elevation with those that decrease their elevation. One of the factors that increases the elevation of wetlands is sediment accretion and therefore can ameliorate rising sea levels; however, sediment delivery via river systems is heavily influenced by humans through land use development and watershed management that can both increase sedimentation rates (e.g. erosion, land cover change, impervious surfaces) and entrapment (e.g. dams, stormwater ponds). Using data from National Wetlands Inventory, USGS National Hydrography (NHDPlusHR) and suspended sediment model data (SPARROW), and NOAA SLR scenarios we computed the rate of sediment accumulation across all tidal wetlands of the coterminous United States. To perform this massive data integration and analysis, several models were developed to integrate and process the sediment data to the wetlands data for each hydrologic unit within each region of the US. Importantly, the SPARROW sediment data which is at the watershed (HUC-4 level of geography) was applied to the NHD stream segments/river reaches, and then these were applied proportionately to the adjoining tidal wetlands. We compared two approaches to calculating the sediment accretion in the marshes: 1) total amount across all creeks/streams within the HUC and 2) subset each creek/stream into separate calculations of sediment accretion on each creek and adjacent wetlands. These two approaches enables users to see the total watershed perspective and potential sustainability of the watershed and also the higher resolution of each creek. Results from this work are currently being assessed using field data from several published sites across the US. A website/dashboard is also under development to publish all data from this work so that anyone can visualize any coastal watershed of the US and visualize the sustainability of the wetlands.

Sea level rise related to climate change will impact the habitats of coastal species of concern to the USFWS. National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) and other conservation dedicated lands will be impacted as well. The graphical products provided by NOAA though the seal level rise viewer https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/ and associated downloadable datasets only provide inundation data at 1-foot or 1-meter intervals with references to timing of the inundation only provided at specific local gage locations. Planning responses to climate-induced sea level rise requires the creation of data sets that estimate sea level rise at a landscape scale for each scenario over time that shows the impact with high resolution elevation data sets.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides local Relative Sea Level Rise (RSLR) data at 10-year intervals at Mean Higher High Water (MHHW) for each of the Global Climate Change Sea Level Rise Scenarios as a grid of points spaced at 1-degree intervals with additional points for the locations of permanent tidal gages along the coast. This data set covers all coastal areas for States, Territories and Possessions of the United States. These data points for the coast of North Carolina and adjoining coastal areas of Virginia and South Carolina were used to create 100m resolution Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) interpolated surfaces for each of the 10-year time steps for each of the 2017 SLR model scenarios and intersected with the NOAA 3m DEM and a modified 5ft DEM for the coast of of NC and estuarine -connected SE VA.

The resulting direct and indirect potential inundation data layers were intersected with the PAD-US conservation lands data set, https://www.usgs.gov/programs/gap-analysis-project/science/pad-us-data-overview non-DOD conservation lands data set, with refuge boundaries for the area, and with known habitat for a plant species of concern in the study area to determine projected impacts over time under each of the sea level rise scenarios at 10-year intervals.

The presentation will include efforts at validation using 2020 imagery from the Planet constellation and plans to update to the 2022 RSLR projections.

The correlation between saltwater intrusion and the conversion of Coastal forests to Ghost Forests is of the upmost concern in Carteret County, North Carolina. A ghost forest is the dead and dying remains of a once thriving coastal forest that has been invaded by encroaching saltwater. These forests are vast with coastal wetlands, swamps, seagrass, and vegetated shorelines, providing Carteret County with a critical ecosystem that is rich in biodiversity. This crucial ecosystem sequesters and stores copious amounts of carbon, mitigating the effects of climate change, regulating water flow, and protecting inland coastal communities from extreme weather events and sea level rise. Unfortunately, due to the compounding effects of anthropogenic activities this coastal system is shrinking. Spatial analysis utilizing Esri software was used to encapsulate data representing the extent of saltwater intrusion and its explanatory factors. National Landcover Data was obtained from the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium from the most recent year of 2019. Sea-level rise (SLR) scenarios procured from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Office for Coastal Management, depicting 2ft, 4ft, 6ft, 8ft, and 10ft sea-level rise were utilized to aid in the identification of coastal forest transition to Ghost Forest setting a 50-meter buffer from the shoreline. Spatial analytics was run to show the percentage of pixel conversion from land to saltwater for the years 2020 through 2100 under failure to curb future emissions scenario. Results show there are substantial shifts in land cover implicated by sea level rise. For instance, deciduous forests decreased 51% at 4ft sea-level rise during the time period 2020-2040. Projections indicate pixel conversion percentages will decrease over time signifying the transition and disappearance of our coastal forest. Building living seawalls in areas that are under direct threat of transitioning to Ghost forests can mitigate the negative effects of sea-level rise.  These natural, living shorelines provide stabilization and serve to accommodate natural protection, reduce erosion, and act as barriers that allow forests to adapt in place without up-slope migration.   

Many munciplaities are managing assets today (CMMS) but not too many are utilizing tools to evalaute thier performance aginst a maintenence management strategy or analyzing data, including GIS data, to develop and manage work against budgets and developing multi-year budget requests to meet goals. In short they are not doing true GIS based asset management (EAM). This presntation will review how municipalities can move to true GIS based EAM, what is needed and how to do this.

GIS has abandoned a proprietary world for a more open enterprise environment, where many operational systems must successfully integrate. Maintaining staff with the skills to manage a modern GIS enterprise can be hard for many orgs and outside help is often sought for high-level support. Some vendors now offer Managed Services, which can take many forms, but is meant to support the enterprise GIS in some manner. This presentation will discuss the evolution of the GIS Managed Services industry.

Sensors and Instrumentation are being deployed in our communities to help better understand assets status and usage. This IOT revolution represents several opportunities to better understand our city and provide staff and citizens with information and knowledge. This presentation will be a walk through of some simple and complex examples for the City of Raleigh.

Enjoy a nice cup of coffee to get the morning started in the Exhibit Hall and prepare for a wonderful day of conference activities.

Welcoming remarks, Keynote Address by Bill Johnson ‐ “Carpe Geo – A Field Guide to Enjoying Your Career Journey”, and conference details

ArcGIS Insights provides the city of Greensboro with powerful tool for analysis and reporting of GIS data. As of late, the City has adopted Insights for analyzing and showcasing data that is not always inherently spatial in nature. Using Python and SSMS, data from the City’s Plan Review, Fire, Asset Management, Budget, and Parks systems can be visualized in spatial and non-spatial formats. The resulting dashboards and insights workbooks have sparked a growing interest in the organization and community and are serving the City in becoming a data driven organization.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NC DOT) is the agency responsible for designing, building, and maintaining transportation infrastructure in North Carolina. As governments at all levels are attempting to distribute benefits and costs more evenly amongst various demographic groups, it is important that NC DOT understands the groups of people they are impacting when proposing and building projects. We developed two online platforms specifically tailored to provide demographic analysis and visualization options that NCDOT practitioners can use for either quick analysis of an area in question or more detailed analysis for regulatory/permitting purposes. First platform is the custom developed JavaScript based “Demographic Analysis Web App”. The second platform is the “EJ Dashboard”.

The NCDOT use 5 year rolling averages of American Community Survey (ACS) data to evaluate demographics in project areas. Therefore, the goal of the “Demographic Analysis Web App” was to develop an application that enables the NCDOT to view the previous 10 years ACS data at various geographic scales, visualize and analyze how it changed over time and how data in various areas compares to other areas. This application enables the client to visualize any ACS variable at all available scales. It also makes it very easy to compare to other selected areas and to higher geometries. The application is written in JavaScript so the platform is flexible and easy to expand as NCDOT’s needs evolve. The use of Dynamic Map Image Layers and JavaScript enabled the use of on-the-fly joins and rendering, which the which allowed for an extremely flexible application, that meets all the project requirements. In order to load the data, we first developed a Python script to parse raw census data and map the data to appropriate fields in non-spatial tables in a geodatabase. When data in new tables or fields is detected, the code creates a new table for field in the geodatabase. We then added the Census block groups, tracts, zip codes, counties and state feature classes to the geodatabase. Next, we loaded geodatabase into a PostgreSQL enterprise geodatabase and published to ArcGIS Enterprise on the server as a map service. Developing the application using JavaScript allowed us to achieve On-the-Fly joins of multiple tables. The application also renders the web map with “Dynamic Map Image Layers” in order to enable the user to visualize the ACS data for any selected geometry, table and field in the entire database. The user can select any geometry, any table and any field in the database and create a visualization.

The “EJ Dashboard” is a fast-drawing web-based dashboard designed for quick visualization of areas for select demographic categories of interest. EJ score was calculated two different ways to be visualized. First method is using “Standard Deviation” that is calculated by giving values from 1 to 4 to Low Income and Minority layers. Block groups below the county average are assigned 1 and 2 (for full and half standard deviations below average), while those a half and one standard deviation above the county average are assigned values of 3 and 4. We add the values for a total score out of 8. The second EJ calculation method was “Quantile” that is calculated by assigning values from 1 to 10 to Low Income and Minority layers. These values are assigned for every 10%, so block groups below 10% equal 1, and those above 90% equal 10. Values are added for a total score out of 20. We also included demographic groups like “Hispanic”, “Low Income”, “Minority” and “Over 65” as well as “Language Needs” categories such as “Language Assistance” and “Limited English”, “Limited” and “Mobile Only” Internet access, “No Car” or “One Car” vehicle access as well as “Home Ownership”. The numbers dynamically change based on the selection made on the interactive map. There are also two separate displays showing 15 year trend in 5 years intervals and 5 year trend in 1 year intervals in each selected category.

In the Summer of 2021 and in response to a call for proposals from Forsyth County, the Spatial Justice Studio @ the Center for Design Innovation was contracted to develop a Neighborhood Opportunity Atlas (NOA). The focus of the proposal was to provide a more holistic analysis of conditions across the county that can be used to identify, compare and assess neighborhoods in Forsyth County now and into the future for planning, programming, budgeting and evaluation. The atlas was presented as an innovative, statistical, and geographic product that could provide quantitative census tract level information for a wide range of community indicators and begin a process to identify, target and tackle underperforming neighborhoods.

The goals of the NOA included:
• developing a holistic analysis of neighborhood conditions across a wide range of variables;
• expanding upon the Distressed Communities Report – 2016;
• creating a ‘benchmark’ document for evaluating projects, programs and budgets; and
• growing conversations focused on making decisions that promote access, equity, inclusivity, justice and sustainability within Forsyth County.

The NOA uses a combination of the knowledge of urban studies and the power of data science to begin to explore opportunities and challenges at the census tract level. By combining these two areas, Forsyth County can get an accurate baseline for existing conditions within communities throughout the County and target programs, policies and budgets to help all neighborhoods achieve a level of spatial justice. In the end, the NOA will provide information, but that alone will not make a difference, political will and community engagement will also need to be parts of the solution to making all of Forsyth County sustainable.

This presentation will provide an overview of the process, highlight the resulting interactive website that was created, and discuss the challenges and opportunities moving ahead.

This presentation will cover how remote sensing technology – including UAS, street-level mobile imagery, and lidar – are used to inventory roadway assets. We will review how the latest sensors and machine learning software are being deployed today for pavement modeling, sign inventories, and stormwater management including real-world examples. We will also talk about how machine learning algorithms can be leveraged by GIS users to make the most of their data and build their asset database.

This presentation provides an overview of lessons learned from UAS survey and mobile data collection projects. Discrete example of project hiccups and corrections will be discussed focusing on the technical side of the experience. Frequently mobile data collection, inspections, and UAS inspection can be implemented as complimentary technologies. However it requires adapting each parties workflow to provide that level of collaborative engagement. Implementing a “collect quality data first” mindset is found to be a better tactic than a “fix it during processing” despite potential delays in the field or longer field days.

Faced with a backlog of requests, aging equipment, and a limited number of field staff, Davidson County Environmental Health turned to the GIS Division for assistance in upgrading their field data collection processes and workflows. GIS staff began with a database design from a neighboring county, and with input from Environmental Health staff honed the design to suit the needs of Davidson County. This presentation will provide an overview of the database design process and its use in several ArcGIS Online solutions. Applications include ArcMap, ArcGIS Pro, Field Maps, Web AppBuilder, and Dashboards.

Blue Raster is a full-service GIS firm and Esri Gold Business Partner with over 20 years of experience supporting private and public sector clients. Currently, Blue Raster is working with a number of State and Local government entities, across a variety of industries, to provide innovative solutions that leverage spatial data and technologies, providing meaningful insights and data-driven maps that serve their communities. To deliver valuable solutions to these organizations, Blue Raster often utilizes a combination of technologies such as ArcGIS Enterprise, ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Hub, ArcGIS Dashboards, ArcGIS Velocity, ArcGIS Field Maps, Survey123, Experience Builder, and custom JavaScript API applications. Attendees will learn how Blue Raster’s solutions modernize and transform workflows for State and Local Government with examples from Manassas Park, VA, Virginia Department of Transportation, Chester County, PA, Georgia Secretary of State, and a special focus on the Town of Chapel Hill and the City of Wilmington.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) Shellfish Sanitation and Recreational Water Quality’s (SSRWQ) section completes shoreline surveys every three years throughout the coast of North Carolina. These efforts identify potential pollution sources which have an impact on shellfish growing waters and the health of shellfish consumers. The surveys themselves includes assessments of point source and non-point source areas of potential pollution, such as marinas, on-site wastewater systems, agricultural areas, wastewater treatment plants, and stormwater drainage systems. In order to make these surveys more consistent while ensuring access to real time data, a Field Maps application was created to collect all data associated with the various types of pollution sources. This presentation will cover how the Field Maps application was created, considerations that were taken, and a demonstration of how the application is used in the field.

The landscape of Greenville, North Carolina, like most municipalities in the State, is dotted with dry detention basins (DDBs), constructed surface depressions built by developers to satisfy peak-discharge requirements imposed by stormwater management plans. DDBs were a popular option due to their low cost and simplicity; however, to remain effective at slowing the flow of stormwater runoff into streams, DDBs must be properly inspected and maintained. Additionally, DDBs are inferior to more modern stormwater control measures when it comes to removing pollutants such as excess nutrients from runoff, meaning that existing DDBs may be candidates for retrofit projects. Unfortunately, a comprehensive list of DDB locations within the Greenville ETJ is unavailable due to historically poor registration requirements (which now have been corrected), limited resources to comb through thousands of pages of physical construction documents, and the loss of many such documents during the flooding caused by Hurricane Floyd. This knowledge deficit has complicated the City of Greenville’s efforts to implement inspection protocols and retrofit plans for DDBs within their jurisdiction.

In partnership with the City of Greenville and the Center for Watershed Protection, we have developed a simple, low-cost GIS-based approach for identifying and classifying surface depressions, including DDBs, from LiDAR-derived elevation contours. Our technique utilizes free, open-source software such as Python and PostGIS along with freely available public data, and is completely vector-based, making it an efficient and cost-effective solution for expanding DDB inventories.

We leverage the use of random forests, a type of ensemble machine learning algorithm, to classify the surface depressions and improve the accuracy of the results compared to single-tree models. Computable shape metrics, such as shape complexity index, linearity, and fractal dimension, are used to train the algorithm to identify DDBs in the dataset, allowing us to avoid a hard dependency on ancillary data. A set of 118 manually labeled contours, randomly split 50/50, were used for training and validation. The model scored 96% accuracy in validation, indicating its effectiveness in identifying DDBs.

As climate change continues to cause longer and more intense precipitation events, and growing human populations continue to drive an expansion in total impervious area within watersheds, runoff that exceeds the capacity of stormwater infrastructure, including many thousands of DDBs, will become increasing more common. By providing a low-cost, straightforward method of quickly updating DDB inventories, we hope to provide communities with the ability to implement more efficient DDB inspection protocols and retrofit plans to combat these growing challenges.

The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries is tasked with managing 13 different species in coastal waters. This task can be contentious, which necessitates the need for clear communication of the science and reasoning for management efforts. This presentation focuses on the building of Interactive Story Maps to educate the public about the different fish species and management efforts in North Carolina. While, this presentation will focus primarily on Spotted Seatrout, all state management species will have stories available to the public. Each story integrates web maps, web apps, and displays a wide array of biological data.

The Gallery Ballroom

The field of aerial imagery has exploded in the last two decades. Advancements in technology and capture methodology have made aerial images better, cheaper, and more accessible to a wide range of users. Today aerial imagery is used in a number of diverse sectors including engineering, construction, transportation, energy, state and local governments and many more. In this presentation we will provide an overview of the aerial imagery Industry, insights into photogrammetry derived data, and multidimensional data applications, all while showing how Nearmap has been able to adapt and evolve with these changes and improvements.

AECOM’s global GIS/Digital team includes over 2,000 practitioners working with hundreds of clients in state, federal and local communities, across our disciplines in Environment, Transportation, Water, as well as our Buildings + Places (B+P) group. Here in North Carolina, we have over 400 employees based out of AECOM’s three offices in Raleigh, Charlotte, and Wilmington. Our local staff have performed geospatial-related services for numerous state and local government agencies in NC, some for as many as 20 years. Please join us for AECOM’s vendor showcase, where we’ll highlight various local GIS projects we’ve been working on within the environment, transportation, and water industries, as well as some exciting new digital innovations we’ve been working on!

Learn how a variety of state agencies use GIS to provide more efficient services to the public. These lightning talks will provide insight into the importance of GIS to state government.

Emergency Event Management System (EMS) provides automated, coordinated, rapid and information-driven response capabilities for emergency events in the DC Water jurisdiction. EMS builts upon Enterprise GIS and Enterprise Asset Management Systems and pulls data from variety of other integrated systems as well. EMS provides a real-time integrated platform to monitor emergencies impacting the water/sewer/stormwater distribution and collection systems/services and acts as an early warning system for non-routine or critical events allowing DC Water to provide a faster response and reduce the overall impact of events

In EMS, various dashboards with variety of real-time and other data feeds are implemented. One of these dashboards is Incident Tracking Tool is an interactive (for Command Center users only) to manage reported incidents and related work orders to address city-wide emergency events and incidents related to DC Water’s services. The WaterTrack and FloodTrack are view-only dashboards for providing real-time information regarding the incidents, workorders, vehicles, PCS, SCADA, and other sensors data in DC Water’s jurisdiction including the ones obtained from third parties such as Washington Aqueduct.

Water Crew and Sewer Crew dashboards track crew vehicles, their assignments and locations. Alert dashboards give information about water and flood related critical incidents and send update emails to DC Water users based on certain thresholds. Additionally, EMS provides capabilities to sent updates to customers using Message Management System (MMS) which integrates with Email/SMS regarding emergency workorders impacting users water/sewer services.

The dashboards have been integrated to online weather services for rain and event data. They are designed to give alerts in case of non-routine critical events in sewer collection and water distribution systems.

With climate change impacting water access around the globe, local groundwater monitoring projects can provide a large-scale lens on potential opportunities and issues related to data acquisition, processing, visualization, and interpretation. Since the fall of 2017 the Robeson County Groundwater Monitoring Project (RCGMP) has utilized a group of existing and newly drilled wells across the county that connect to the Black Creek aquifer to record continuous groundwater levels. The data collection process has not always been smooth and those working on the project have had the opportunity to learn from missteps as the project continues. This paper will discuss some of these issues faced to date as a ‘better practices’ suggestion to similar projects. More importantly, however, this paper will discuss some of the issues specific to our groundwater modeling and the creation of potentiometric surfaces relating to edge effects in data processing, and the impact of larger scale data collection on understanding the local groundwater surface compared to existing groundwater surface maps for Robeson County.

The Gallery Ballroom

In this study, spatial analysis and mathematical approaches were used to explore possible characteristics of low/high resilience. The definition of resilience as the ability to withstand or adapt from disturbances was adopted in this study. The purpose of the study was to explore variables that connect to resilience and therefore describing characteristics of low/high resilience, so communities may determine what efforts are needed to strengthen their ability to be prepared and prevent damages from disturbances. Our analysis was conducted at the county-level focused on the year 2015 in the contiguous United States. The data consist of CO2 emissions by sector, socio-economic damages, community resilience, and projected climate variables. The process for conducting the analysis consisted of creating a binary classification for the resilience data, which then led into a Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) analysis to determine which variables to remove and keep. Using GIS and computer language R, a logistic regression model was implemented to determine which of the selected variables were closely related to high or low resilience, in addition to raster maps that depict where possible high resilience would occur and the spatial distribution of the chosen model variables. From the analysis, it was found that most of the chosen variables would result in an outcome of high resilience. The predicted areas of resilience raster map had a different result then what was expected. The findings from this study will help to enable further analysis of the statistical significance of the chosen variables as characteristics of low/high resilience.

Maps are increasingly used to communicate climate change and are an important medium to disseminate messages about it to the public and policymakers. However, partisan polarization remains at record levels, which has led to controversial debates over climate policy. Despite abundant research on first-order beliefs, second-order beliefs, or beliefs about what others believe, remain an understudied and potentially highly influential factor tied to weak climate policy action. This research takes advantage of the growing popularity of using public opinion maps for climate change communication in order to understand why people believe what they do about others. This study will answer two main questions, How do students who hold a range of opinions exhibit second-order beliefs on climate change?; and Which types of web map interactions are most valuable for updating second-order beliefs? This research uses a pre and post-map observational experimental design to understand how interactive maps work to reveal and update the content of second-order climate change beliefs. The interactive map of NC climate change opinions was created using open-source web mapping technologies (CartoDB, and Leaflet library). Map reading tasks were developed to evaluate tradeoffs between usability and utility among participants with different types of climate change beliefs. The analysis examined specific areas of interest on the map using eye-tracking technology. Ultimately, this research evaluates how interactive maps in cartography and GIScience can be used as effective communication devices in policy-relevant domains.

This is a student project built to demonstrate recent trends of urban sprawl in the Atlanta Metro Area from 2010-2020. Atlanta, Georgia’s urban infrastructure is continuously expanding, covering an increasingly alarming amount of what was, for the most part, previously vegetation. The project consists of a student-coded website featuring interactive elements that allow users to compare qualitative and quantitative urbanization and population density data side by side to highlight increasing sprawl in Atlanta. Inspired by the resource SocialExplorer, this website improves upon data delivery by adding a more interactive temporal component and showing both vector density maps and raster satellite imagery simultaneously. The project was the first place winner of UNC Chapel Hill’s 2022 GIS Map Day Competition.

The cost of owning and maintaining a vehicle can be prohibitively expensive. Public transportation can enable individuals without vehicles to access improved employment opportunities, essential services, and other amenities. A key part of designing and operating public transportation is determining how to allocate transportation resources across a network. Evaluating whether a public transportation system meets the demands of residents is important for creating equitable outcomes. This research applies a transportation equity analysis modified from Jiao & Dillivan’s (2013) research to Chapel Hill, NC, to determine whether Chapel Hill Transit is meeting the transportation needs of the town’s residents. This methodology calculates z-scores for public transportation demand and supply, which are then combined to show gaps and incongruities between the two. This analysis provides a relative transportation equity score at the Census block group level, thus allowing comparisons to be drawn between different areas within Chapel Hill. This analysis can play a role in helping transportation officials identify areas that may need increased investment in transportation services and infrastructure.

Our research aims to observe if there is a correlation between gentrification in New Hanover County, North Carolina, and the impacts of flooding from Hurricane Florence in 2018. The study intends to contribute to a rising interest in natural disaster impacts on community resilience and social changes within neighborhoods. Topics such as these are becoming increasingly crucial to act upon as we face a rise in the intensity and frequency of natural disasters due to climate change. A large portion of research on this phenomenon has occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana, following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. However, few studies outside this area specifically look at natural disaster impacts on local social changes, specifically gentrification. New Hanover County has a variable socioeconomic demographic and, similarly to New Orleans, is highly vulnerable to intense storms and flooding. The methodology for this research is mixed, pulling from both quantitative and qualitative methods to observe the relationship between Florence’s flooding and gentrification from a numerical and residential perspective. Overall we intend to piece together a more holistic outlook on the process of gentrification in New Hanover County and how Hurricane Florence could have taken part in shaping some of these changes.

Through lightning talks, learn the many ways local governments use GIS to provide value to their citizens, staff, and communities. This session is hosted by the Local Government Committee and those interested in learning more about the committee are encouraged to attend.

Parcels are a powerful resource, providing critical information used in many areas such as public health, emergency management, utility management, economic development, transportation planning, land development and forestry management. Unfortunately, the usefulness of this parcel information is limited if it is not easily accessible and contiguous across county boundaries. The North Carolina Seamless Parcels Enterprise System is a collaborative project which has succeed in providing locally sourced County level parcel data for all 100 North Carolina Counties. In this Seamless Parcel Program, county data stewards can directly upload their data in its native format to a Transformer which then creates a seamless, up to date parcel fabric for North Carolina. This presentation will outline the collaborative efforts required to implement and maintain the Seamless Parcel Program, review past, current and future program improvements, and finally highlight the important use cases for the Seamless Parcel Dataset.

Migrating a GIS to the cloud involves more than just installing software and moving data. There are other factors to consider to ensure that it is worthwhile for an organization. The North Carolina Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (CGIA) has completed its transition to a cloud environment. As the State’s GIS coordinating agency, CGIA not only administers the GIS open data portal, NC OneMap, but also directly contributes several key data sets such as addresses, orthoimagery and parcels. Based on the experience gained, our presentation will highlight factors to consider when determining what should be operated in the cloud or whether a migration is an appropriate move. We’ll also include successes and pitfalls we encountered along the way along with some “gotchas” that you can potentially avoid.

The Gallery Ballroom

Adam Blythe, Anna Stefanowicz, James Goethe, Dianne Enright, John Cox, Mark Crook, Seren Homer, Raleigh Myers, Melanie Williams, Todd Meyer, Faith Johnson, Jacob Mouw, Dan Madding, & Amy Axon

GIS staff from the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) will present GIS based projects which showcase how we have embraced the use of GIS technology to 1) improve efficiency in our work process; 2) develop work flows that connect data collection, storage and publication; and 3) improve transparency within our Department by serving the information to the public in an accessible and visually pleasing format. The topics for the presentations are: Division of Waste Management’s Land Use Restriction Data Creation and Consolidation Project; DEQ Drone Projects; and Division of Water Resources’ Sanitary Sewer Overflow Project.

As sea levels rise and coastal storm events occur with increased intensity and frequency, many coastal communities—both human and natural—have become more vulnerable to the resulting impacts. A recent project led by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, NOAA, and UNC Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center has produced GIS-based Regional Coastal Resilience Assessments for all U.S. coastlines. The assessments identify areas of open space where implementing nature-based solutions, such as wetland restoration, has the greatest potential to benefit fish and wildlife while also building resilience for communities exposed to flooding threats.

Through the integration of geospatial analyses using raster modeling and spatial analytical techniques, two key composite index layers were created to (1) inform areas of high flooding threat, and (2) to highlight areas of dense critical community assets and population. These two composite index layers were combined to generate a final community exposure index that showed where community assets are exposed to coastal flood threats. Two additional composite index layers were also generated to show the presence of terrestrial and aquatic fish and wildlife species, combining to create a final fish and wildlife index.

Finally, resilience hubs were developed to provide a lens with which the community exposure and fish and wildlife indices values could be analyzed and ranked to better understand where proposed mitigation and restoration projects could be most favorably located. These hubs identify natural open spaces or habitats suitable for conservation or restoration efforts capable of generating dual benefits for protecting fish and wildlife habitat while also building resilience of coastal communities.

The assessments are delivered through a custom interactive mapping tool called the Coastal Resilience Evaluation and Siting Tool, in which users can view and interact with the assessment results, analyze possible project sites, and download input and final data.

The City of New Bern has been impacted by multiple storm events as well as severe flooding depending on how the wind blows. Rather than simply replace homes, businesses and infrastructure, the City is working with multiple agencies to better understand the impacts of these events and ways the City can design better, changes storm water systems and other design standards to make the citizens and the City as a whole more resilient and better at withstanding such events. In mid 2022, the City adopted a new resiliency plan that uses on 6 pillars: Health & Safety; Housing; Economy; Infrastructure, Natural Resources and its Cultural Heritage.

This presentation will focus on what do to once you have a master address repository (MAR) in place. Over the past few years MapForsyth has worked on the consolation and cleaning of the county’s address data. Now that MapForsyth has a working MAR, we are working through the integration process. MapForsyth has partnered with Twin City Data to complete MAR integrations with other databases and systems throughout the County. This presentation will highlight the process, reporting and ROI of integrating the MAR with other systems. We will share the lessons learned from this process.

Addresses have been identified as a priority statewide framework dataset and an essential component to State agency programs such as N.C. Broadband, and as a fundamental requirement for validation and accurate call routing within NG911. The purpose of this abstract is to understand important need to know and to define the core process workflows that complete a full-circle approach of address maintenance and sustainability through applied enhancements and quality control beyond 911 requirements.

The presentation identifies the application of consistent standards to addresses and the methods to capture values and apply quality control for enhanced attributes. It defines analytical approaches for assessing completeness, location precision, and to identify potential for locations to update for subsequent updates. It provides the means for access to quality control assessments that provide an easy and intuitive incentive for the authoritative providers to find and address quality control issues. It demonstrates how to load supplemental geocoding services hosted through NC OneMap. Finally, it directs the end-user how to find the data and QC results.

The session will provide an update on the horizontal and vertical datum change in 2025, the new North Carolina (NC) State Plane Coordinate System, what NC Geodetic Survey is doing to prepare NC for the datum change and the retirement of the United States Survey Foot.

The Gallery Ballroom

NCDOT’s Transportation Planning Division (TPD) taps into the technology and spatial analysis capabilities available with GIS data and software to generate long-term, long-range transportation plans for municipalities, counties, and large metropolitan areas. Engineers at the Transportation Planning Division utilize a comprehensive, data-rich, multifunctional GIS Database and a suite of custom tools for their analysis. Comprehensive Transportation Plans (CTP) are developed with data-driven recommendations backed by geospatial-based analysis across multiple transportation modes. The GIS Unit at the North Carolina Department of Information Technology-Transportation serves the TPD in providing a full-service package of data, tools, maps, documentation, technical support, analysis assistance, and project development.

Three main components make up the GIS array used in the CTP process: data, tools, and maps. A quarterly-updated statewide geodatabase containing over 150 supporting data layers, a custom-designed road network for multi-modal transportation representation, and additional transportation-related data, is provided as a starting point to create a specific CTP Study Area Geodatabase. Specifically designed data schemas aid TPD in transportation analysis and recommendation entry for a CTP. An ArcGIS Pro Ribbon loaded with powerful, custom-designed tools automate data processing, calculations, and validation, illustrated report production, and formatted transportation recommendation information documents. All generated based on information existing in a CTP Study Area Geodatabase. A large set of custom-designed maps with preloaded data definitions and queries are at the ready to import any CTP Study Area Geodatabase. The number of maps for a CTP, ranging anywhere from 30 to 100, help visualize and identify recommended transportation improvement needs, developing long term solutions for the next 30 years.

An overview of the GIS Database design and analysis methodologies used by NCDOT’s Transportation Planning Division will be presented, with a focus on specifics regarding how the data is designed to enable geospatial analysis for transportation improvement planning. Live demos of several of the custom tools designed to produce formatted, illustrated reports directly from the geodatabase will also be shown.

Every year the Town of Cary completes a Pavement Condition Survey (PCS) that involves approximately 500 miles of town-maintained roadways within the town’s limits to determine Pavement Condition Ratings (PCRs). The PCR allows identification of roads that need to be further investigated for next paving season. Phase II of this process is a Pavement Repair Survey (PRS) of approximately 21 miles that involves walking the individual segments to determine necessary pavement repairs. This information is developed into design plans and quantities/cost estimate so the contractor can make the necessary improvements to maintain quality of roads the citizens of Cary expect. Phase III includes construction management.

Our project team has been involved with this annual project for over 7 years and each year makes improvements to the process. For example, the Worst First method for identification of streets for the PRS phase evolved into the paving groups with permanent numbers. This change reduced construction fatigue, mobilization, outreach, and construction costs.

For the FY 23 Street Improvement Project we assessed how we could improve the process of the data collection for the continuous improvements. Previously, field data was collected solely on hard copy maps and then had to be manually transcribed into GIS and CAD formats for development into plans. This process was very time and labor intensive. We transitioned into all mobile data collection utilizing Field Maps paired with a GNSS receiver. The field collection time for the data took approximately the same amount of time as the paper maps from the previous years, but the pre and post processing time significantly decreased.

The NCDOT Rail Division is required to visit and inventory every public road railroad crossing once every three years. Railroad crossing data has been managed in a proprietary database that lacks geospatial capabilities, and data collection has been facilitated using paper forms. The Rail Division is working towards transitioning to ESRI’s Field Maps digital form solution to increase productivity and streamline the ingestion of onsite assessments by field technicians. It will also assist managers by applying data metrics to track progress and manage resource needs.

Forsyth CARES is a collaborative effort by MapForsyth, Town of Kernersville Police Department, Forsyth County Emergency Services, Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office and City of Winston-Salem Police Department. The goal of this initiative is to provide emergency responders with specific situational awareness regarding individuals with medical and/or mental health needs prior to arrival on scene. The data also provides important neighbor and contact information to assist in searching for missing persons or performing death investigations.

The registry of voluntarily provided, personal information is collected via crowd-source using ESRI Survey123 and provided to emergency communications centers and first responders through various means. To date, the registry includes participants with dementia, Alzheimer’s and autism, to name a few. The information provided by participants, or a loved one, can prove critical in emergency situations. Examples of this data include physical characteristics, recent photo, medical devices used, current medications, primary method of communication/language spoken, vehicles available, along with many others.

The presentation will outline the entire process of the project; from need and concept (by Kernersville Police) to full county-wide implementation across multiple jurisdictions, agencies and PSAPs. This will include discussions on the development of end-user products built on the ESRI platform of products, the use of Python and Arcade and computer-aided dispatch (CAD) integration.

On January 31, 2022, nearly 600 tons of fertilizer were threatened by a large fire at Winston Weaver Fertilizer Plant in Winston-Salem, NC. Quick decisions and actions were required in the interest of public safety. Use of GIS began almost immediately once the need for an evacuation was determined and was used throughout the remainder of the incident.

NC Emergency Management has several projects going on including updating our building footprint dataset. We are working with local governments to collect elevation certificates. The goal is to get First Floor Elevations and other attributes.

Other projects and topics include:
A new tool to extract attributes from the statewide parcel dataset.
A new routine for converting forecasted rainfall into (flood) occurrence intervals.
RAFT the new web based tool for displaying what roads will flood at different occurrence intervals (50 year, 100 year).

For the past 120 years, Beck Knob cemetery has been a repository of centuries worth of history and culture. It was provided by Joshua Beck as a resting place for slaves and their families. Through the years Beck Knob has been documented through photographs and small mapping expeditions. In 2022, North River Geographic Systems, Inc and Platinum Geomatics set out to map the people buried in Beck Knob. This has turned into a large data collection project using Mergin Maps (Mobile Client for QGIS). It’s also turned into a providing ground for Pleasant Gardens Cemetery and possibly the start of a project anyone with QGIS can use.

This presentation will focus on how MapForsyth has worked together with local historian and the former director of Historic Bethabara Park (Rod Meyer) to develop a set of ESRI Story Maps which highlight the routes of the 18th century King’s Roads (“Great Wagon Road”), along with points of interest from the North Carolina border to Salisbury, NC. By combining GIS technology such as Historic Aerial Photography from NC OneMap with Digital Elevation Models, Hillshades, and current Orthophotography, Mapforsyth was able to map the routes that Rod had walked in the early 1990’s as part of his personal research project, and organize the maps, photos, and field notes from his research into a set of Story Maps organized within a Hub Site that preserves this information amid the rapidly changing landscape.

This session is designed to cover the various facets of a professional career, especially from a geospatial perspective. Included will be a discussion of certification and professional credentials in general, and the GISP specifically, and how this area can help an individual succeed early and throughout one’s career. GISPs who may have questions about renewing their certification are also encouraged to attend. In addition, we will spend a little time talking about the GIS Certification Institute. Come see what is new and exciting at the GISCI and what we have planned for the future. This session is ideal for anyone that wants to learn more about the GISCI and the GISP program. The GIS Certification Institute (GISCI) is a non-profit organization that promotes the advancement of proficient GIS professionals through its international GISP® (Certified GIS Professional) certification program. The Institute fosters rigorous professional and ethical standards, community engagement, and professional mentoring within the GIS industry.

Since its inception, the NCDOT Research Project program, has supported more than 500 research projects. While information about each is accessible through the NCDOT Research Project database portal (https://connect.ncdot.gov/projects/research/Pages/ProjectSearch.aspx), these projects have not been mapped to display the spatial distribution of the recipients of the awards, along with a summary of the awards by organization. Interactive maps through a portal such as ArcGIS Online (http://www.arcgis.com) and Esri StoryMaps (https://storymaps.arcgis.com/) which utilize AGOL’s cloud-based maps provide a means by which NCDOT research projects can be mapped as point features and these real-world point locations can serve as links to additional information about the projects to include the PI(s), committee chairpersons and managers, year of project, project number, images and link to final reports. These user-friendly and interactive mapping tools developed by the Department of Environmental, Earth and Geospatial Sciences (DEEGS) at North Carolina Central University complement the existing NCDOT Research Project database by providing another means to market, query and search this valuable information. These tools furthermore provide maps, documents and images related to field sites related linked to NCDOT projects that can be stored and accessed using cloud services.

This session will provide an overview of the Federal Geographic Data Committee’s activities implementing the Geospatial Data Act and other Federal geospatial policies, the National Spatial Data Infrastructure strategic planning activities, and coordination with the broader geospatial community.

The Gallery Ballroom

With the advent of increasingly detailed and interactive virtual options for the presentation and usage of data, the possibilities of using such maps and visualization tools have expanded. The Viable Utility Reserve (VUR) program in the Division of Water Infrastructure (Division) within NCDEQ is broadening their information sharing and staff resources through the usage of GIS-based data visualization tools. The base dataset for these visualizations is a large, detailed spreadsheet containing data for all local governments in North Carolina with water and/or wastewater utilities and includes items such as the total VUR assessment score (updated annually), financial metrics, compliance data, population served, and all individual criterion scores for the aforementioned financial, compliance, and physical metrics. Overlapping, existing maps also include information about county boundaries, NCDEQ regional office service areas, and sectors covered by the various councils of government. An internal dashboard provides a wealth of comprehensive information on local governments with water and/or wastewater utilities for usage by staff, whereas a simpler web map shares the most important information with the general public. The VUR GIS dashboard is utilized by Division staff to identify local governments designated as distressed from those that are not designated, easily review financial/compliance metrics used in the assessment/designation process, and quickly locate these utilities through a search and selection option. A public web map has been created to provide a simpler interface for the website, and features basic color-coded designation status by local government, recent assessment scores, and contact information for VUR staff to assist the public in locating the correct person for questions. Although these two maps use the same base dataset, they provide support to the VUR staff and the Division in diverse ways and can be used to provide varying pictures of the currently designated local governments depending on the needs of staff and/or the public.

The spatial distribution of human population and inequality in social amenities in Urban and rural regions played a crucial role in the impact of COVID-19. Contemporary research has measured the differences between rural and urban/suburban communities with regards to social, economic, political and health phenomena as well as the varying impact of COVID-19 in these communities; however, there is no study on the space-time changing pattern of COVID-19 cases between rural and urban regions from 2020 till date in North Carolina (NC). This paper is an attempt to quantify the space-time temporal trends for COVID-19 between rural and urban areas in North Carolina on the backdrop of socio-economic and demographic phenomena. This paper will examine how economic inequalities and spatial population distribution greatly impacted the rate of change of recorded COVID cases and fatalities which further underscores the disparities in distribution of social amenities between rural and urban areas. Geospatial analysis using Geographic Information Systems was employed to explore the space-time pattern of COVID cases across the 100 counties in North Carolina on the backdrop of demographic and socio-economic data for North Carolina. A time series analysis was run using a six-month epoch for COVID cases in rural and urban North Carolina while utilizing data from the NC COVID-19 dashboard. The emerging hot spot analysis tool was deployed to carry out space-time pattern mining of the impact of COVID-19 cases in rural and urban counties as well as the changing pattern of the cases at different age units. The resulting space-time patterns reveal that further extensive study may be necessary to fully quantify the impact of COVID-19 in low income and low access communities in contrast to urban regions.

The NC 911 Board Orthoimagery Program is in the 4th project of a four-year cycle with the 2023 Southern Piedmont and Mountains Project. As the program begins planning for a possible 4th statewide cycle from 2024 through 2027, we look back at the evolution since 2012 and discuss the future of the program. This will include possible changes to the deliverables through NC OneMap, impacts of the AWS cloud, and potential AI/Deep Learning object detection.

This presentation will focus on NC DOA SPO’s use of ArcGIS Online and Indoors technologies to analysis and reporting on the performance of the state’s real property information. The process for collecting and utilizing building space data for space allocation and planning analysis will be presented. These new tools and methods are streamlining the states evaluation of its real property resources and providing helpful new applications for quickly visualizing and evaluating business intelligence. Several ArcGIS-configurable applications designed to provide quick, easy-to-understand real property performance evaluation and decision support for mandated real property performance measures will be demonstrated.

The location accuracy of wireless 911 calls continue to improve with the deployment of new device location technologies. As a result of more accurate caller locations indoors, maps detailing indoor spaces are now in demand for 9-1-1 call takers and emergency responders. Some cutting edge technology endeavors are now underway to allow our ECC’s to take advantage of both publicly available and locally authoritative purpose built indoor GIS data sets. The presentation will discuss the technologies behind indoor maps and how it is being used for situational awareness and responder safety.

The relationship between the GIS and Surveying Professions has historically been antagonistic at best. Both sides have worked to protect what they view as their areas of expertise often without fully understanding what the other does. This presentation will discuss why this conflict exists and then discuss recent efforts by the National Society of Professional Surveyors (NSPS), National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) and the Urban and Regional Systems Association (URISA) to better define where the line between the professional practice of GIS and Surveying is located.

In this presentation, we will focus on how Lumbee River EMC, an electric cooperative in southeastern North Carolina, has leveraged OMS and GIS data to create reliable outage response processes, both internally and externally; and how these processes allow the cooperative to effectively communicate outage information to members, employees, board members & the general public.

Upon completion of the presentation attendees should be able to:

-Recognize opportunities for OMS/GIS integration within their organization.

-Conceptualize communications agreements with local governments and related organizations.

-Develop an effective plan to communicate outage information to members.

The Henrico County, Virginia Department of Public Works (DPW) is responsible for maintaining and inventorying all non-Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) maintained roadways within the county, as well as the related assets thereon. Additionally, Henrico County submits an official Roadway Inventory Report annually to VDOT for funding and state inventory tracking purposes. To date, the county has utilized a Microsoft Excel worksheet to satisfy both internal and external inventory and reporting requirements. In 2021, Henrico County DPW decided to transition their Microsoft Excel based inventory into ESRI’s Roads and Highways (R&H) Linear Referencing System (LRS). The task of converting a non-spatial table into a fully functional R&H LRS was daunting even for the seasoned GIS professionals of Henrico County, so they chose to engage with Timmons Group to help bring their ideas to fruition. With an eye toward maximizing accuracy and end-user functionality, Timmons group worked closely with the County to develop a detailed plan encompassing the entire project lifecycle, from concept to delivery. Beginning with a thorough understanding of the data in situ, Timmons Group employed a hybrid approach to the conversion process – utilizing programmatic matching of LRS segments based on textual intersection descriptions, and then a broad scale manual data conversion leveraging the expertise of our talented team of Technicians, Specialists, and Analysts. Though the actual text-to-LRS conversion represented the bulk of the effort; planning, schema design, QAQC, and final system implementation in ArcGIS Pro Roads and Highways played a prominent role in the project lifecycle as well. As a result of this project, Henrico County has gained a wealth of accurate and functional spatial data that has facilitated an integrated approach to asset inventory and management. This presentation highlights key activities and walks through the project from conception to delivery, demonstrating the key challenges encountered and solutions employed in the successful completion of the work.

Changes are coming to the way in which USGS and our partners will collect, manage, and maintain hydrography data. The National Hydrography Dataset has been the Nation’s most comprehensive hydrography dataset for over a decade. As USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) data is increasingly available we now have an opportunity to integrate USGS elevation and hydrography data and greatly improve the spatial accuracy of national hydrography mapping. The integrated data will be the foundation of a new 3D Hydrography Program (3DHP) which marks the beginning of a new era of water data designed to meet 21st century water resources challenges. 3DHP data will consist of hydrography and hydrologic units derived from 1-meter 3DEP digital elevation models in CONUS (5-meter resolution in Alaska). Reimagining the nation’s hydrography framework is a big and challenging task, but together we can make 3DHP a reality.

Derived from 15-30cm stereo-aerial imagery, Ecopia has produced the first-of-its-kind, high-resolution Nationwide 3D Land Cover Map which will be maintained on a consistent basis. Covering over 3.2 million square miles across the country including 172 million 3D buildings, Ecopia’s 3D Nationwide Landcover offers a highly-accurate digital representation of the built and natural environment across the country. The diverse range of applications benefiting from this unique dataset includes:

• Flood mapping & stormwater utility planning
• Transportation engineering and pedestrian safety
• Public safety and emergency response management
• Conservation, environmental planning, and climate change mitigation
• Property insurance underwriting, risk management, and claims

For decades, NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management (OCM) has produced consistent, accurate land cover, but has seen increased demand for more detailed, local level data. In response, OCM has established a partnership to leverage Ecopia’s high-resolution vector maps in order to deliver Impervious, Vegetation Canopy, and Water classifications for the coastal areas of the Contiguous U.S and entire state of Alaska (over 1.3 million sq. miles of area). These products support NOAA’s efforts at producing 1-meter publicly accessible land cover products for the Nation.

This presentation will focus on the geospatial products produced by Ecopia and those released publicly by NOAA. Specifically, how these products may work together to fit a wide range of needs, and how Federal, State, and Municipal level governments can take advantage of these efforts to obtain high-quality, up-to-date land cover information.

Current, accurate land cover and change information is a common foundational data set that can be used to address a wide range of management issues, from flooding risk and natural infrastructure to policy evaluation and land use planning. Knowing what exists on the ground and how it has changed through time gives planners more information, and the better that data, the better our understanding. For almost two decades, NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management has been producing standardized, 30-meter, land cover and change information for the coastal United States through its Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP). More recently, NOAA has been working to establish an operational higher resolution land cover product line, bringing the national C-CAP framework to the local level and allowing for more site-specific, local applications through the production of higher resolution (1-meter) land cover data. The 1-meter land cover provides greater precision and detail, especially with impervious surfaces, allowing coastal managers to support better hydrodynamic modeling, flood risk assessment, and storm water management practices. This presentation will highlight the methods of recent pilot efforts in North Carolina and other coastal states, showcase several recently released products, and detail NOAA’s vision and schedule for upcoming efforts to expand this data out coastwide.

The Gallery Ballroom

Standard TIN-based methods of DEM generation include the use of Breaklines to set water body elevations. The creation of Breaklines requires manual creation of polygons that can be subjective and cannot be done economically for smaller water bodies within the area of DEM creation. With the advent of high densities of LiDAR data collection, a raster-based approach using ground point statistics to DEM creation gives reasonable values for land areas with gaps for water bodies.

A method to fill the gaps representing impounded water bodies with accurate water levels was put forth at the 2021 North Carolina GIS Conference. This followup presentation will discuss using the USGS National LiDAR data holdings, USGS Water Level gages, Historic FEMA FIS data, NOAA lidar blogs, and timely assistance from another open source geospatial software user to test the accuracy of an automated raster method of estimating impoundment water levels from edge elevation values.

Lets explore visual search and gestalt princples to understand how perceptual psychology can:

1. Improve map readers’ability to accomplish map-reading tasks.
2. Decrease the likelihood that the map reader will make errors.
3. Lessen the map designer’s reliance on experience and intuition.
4. Help identify bigfoot habitats.

The many layers of geospatial data tell a story, similarly the many layers of government administrative data tell a story. How do we change the mindset of data analysis to understand the relationships and interconnections between the two for improved insights on policies and programs.

In 2022, the Wake County government initiated a multi-level collaboration to employ remote sensing methods to analyze land cover throughout the entirety of the 857 square mile county. Among the features collected through the land cover analysis, the study specifically targets tree canopy and will include a ten year canopy change assessment along with a variety of additional analyses looking at future planting opportunities, canopy health, and assessments across numerous environmental and socio-economic factors.

This project is a partnership between Wake County and all twelve of its constituent municipalities; a collaborative effort believed to be an industry first here in North Carolina. The presentation will provide an overview of the project as well as highlight efforts to date

Increasing rates of coastal population growth and climate change impacts including rising sea levels and tropical storm intensification emphasize the need to preserve wetland systems to maintain ecosystem balance and retain essential ecosystem services. Wetland classification and mapping has been performed for decades using aerial or satellite imagery and boots-on-the-ground approaches using a suite of computational approaches. In this study, we devise a fusion approach of LiDAR and multispectral data implemented using machine learning (ML) computational approaches to construct wetland prediction models to map wetland systems and perform wetland classification utilizing the newest, freely available Quality Level 1 (QL1) LiDAR data and most up-to-date multispectral imagery sourced from the National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP). The broad goal of this study was to assess the efficacy of a multispectral and LiDAR derivative fusion approach in mapping wetlands in the coastal plain of southeastern North Carolina at large spatial scales (~2500 acres) and to further current research in the uses of ML and remote sensing in wetland mapping. Moreover, the majority of data preprocessing, extraction, and modeling was performed within ESRI ArcGIS Pro given the widespread and common use of the GIS platform within stakeholder agencies and organizations and our intent of creating a reproducible workflow based solely on freely available data. We established a comprehensive and reproducible workflow was for preprocessing and predictor variable extraction, as well as a methodology for the creation of training data collected in the field and augmented using orthoimagery. Models performed well in classifying wetlands in estuarine systems in comparison to more inland and forested wetland systems. Wetland classes in which stark terrain differences are prominent are more accurately classified than wetland classes in more homogeneous landscapes. Elevation-based variables and spectral-based vegetation indices appear to be the most influential predictors in modeling and classifying wetlands in coastal regions of North Carolina. To increase model performance, particularly within more homogeneous landscapes, further work should be undertaken in the examination of hydrologic distance based explanatory variables, as well as further refinement of hydrological explanatory variable extraction from LiDAR data.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) has been actively engaged in collecting and publishing high-quality lidar-derived elevation data through the 3D-Elevation Project. With ever improving lidar technology, (1) achievable pulse densities and vertical accuracies are increasing well beyond QL2 specification and (2) generally the cost for increasing lidar quality are decreasing. With the newer technologies offering greater terrain resolution, applications previously unavailable or cost-prohibitive to lidar survey have been emerging. High-resolution lidar data provide the gateway to evaluate subtle changes in the terrain morphology, such as karst features, subsidence, uplifts, and fault lines. A recent seismic event near Sparta, North Carolina illustrates an emerging high-resolution lidar application.

The 8.2 version of GRASS GIS comes with a series of new features such as straightforward data management interface and a package for Jupyter notebooks. Many big data handling features from the previous versions are included and improved. Python and REST APIs take the processing far beyond a common desktop use case. This talk will cover how to get the best out of the current GRASS GIS functionality and will provide an outlook to the future. Limited number of lifetime licenses will be given out to the audience during the talk (GNU GPL terms and conditions apply).

ArcGIS Pro is replacing our tried and true ArcMap and ArcCatalog. Since its release in 2015 Esri has been dedicating a tremendous resources to getting ArcGIS Pro so it has the functionality most users expect and is stable. Has Esri succeeded in creating an application that is ready to be your daily driver GIS desktop application? This presentation will try to help you answer that question. We will discuss what the current version of ArcGIS Pro can do, cannot do and other considerations you need to know so you can decide if now is the time to make the switch.

The Town Hall Closing Session is an opportunity to share your thoughts on North Carolina’s direction for further implementing GIS as a key technology in the public and private sectors.  We have had many successes as individual organizations and as a statewide community.  This session will be a facilitated discussion about the opportunities/needs that we need to address in coming years to achieve more on behalf of the citizens of our state.

The Town Hall Closing Session is an opportunity to share your thoughts on North Carolina’s direction for further implementing GIS as a key technology in the public and private sectors.  We have had many successes as individual organizations and as a statewide community.  This session will be a facilitated discussion about the opportunities/needs that we need to address in coming years to achieve more on behalf of the citizens of our state.

The Town Hall Closing Session is an opportunity to share your thoughts on North Carolina’s direction for further implementing GIS as a key technology in the public and private sectors.  We have had many successes as individual organizations and as a statewide community.  This session will be a facilitated discussion about the opportunities/needs that we need to address in coming years to achieve more on behalf of the citizens of our state.

The use of GIS continues to expand at many government organizations. However, many lack a consolidated chart or dashboard illustrating the detailed usage of GIS (layers and fields) and interdependencies between various information products such as maps, apps, and reports.

This presentation introduces you to a simple approach for your GIS and IT departments to author and share these online information model charts and information model dashboards using Avineon’s Model Manager Add-In for ArcGIS Pro and Insights for ArcGIS from Esri. This approach improves collaboration, information sharing, and governance for GIS.

You will see a sample chart and dashboard summarizing the use of GIS by departments, agencies, and offices such as Accounts, Agriculture, Arts, Aviation, Audit, Behavioral Health, Community Development, Culture, Corrections, Courts, Electric, Elected Officials, Water, Sewer, Economy, Education, Environment, Emergency Management, Employment, Family, Finance, Fire & Rescue, Forestry, Fisheries, Health, Human Resources, Housing, Information Technology, Innovation, Justice, Labor, Legislation, Libraries, Military, Museums, Natural Resources, Park, Recreation, Rehabilitation, Police, Public Safety, Public Works, Planning, Ports, Purchasing, Social, Tax, Tourism, Transportation, Treasury, Motor Vehicles, Universities, Voter Registration, Veterans, etc., along with the businesses and citizens served within the communities.

As GIS analysts, repeated daily tasks can consume hours of our workday. Additionally, while the cloud storage capabilities of ArcGIS Online (AGOL) greatly simplify data sharing and public data collection, the credential requirements of AGOL can make scripting tasks cumbersome or potentially insecure when handled outside of the GIS environment. ESRI’s hosted Python Notebooks provide a convenient platform for automating the access and manipulation of data stored in AGOL, including the option to schedule tasks and, with some additional pieces, send notifications. This presentation will highlight workflow efficiencies implemented at NC Wildlife Resources Commission using hosted notebooks and will delve into extensions of the process that allow for convenient email notifications using two different platforms. Lessons learned and hopes for future changes will also be discussed, particularly as they relate to working within the State’s IT infrastructure.

This presentation will detail current threats to GIS environments and analyze cyber related incidents. Focus on SQL / command injection as well as heavy weight and lightweight webshells will provide attendees with tactics to improve their GIS cyber posture.

The Town Hall Closing Session is an opportunity to share your thoughts on North Carolina’s direction for further implementing GIS as a key technology in the public and private sectors.  We have had many successes as individual organizations and as a statewide community.  This session will be a facilitated discussion about the opportunities/needs that we need to address in coming years to achieve more on behalf of the citizens of our state.

The use of GIS continues to expand at many government organizations. However, many lack a consolidated chart or dashboard illustrating the detailed usage of GIS (layers and fields) and interdependencies between various information products such as maps, apps, and reports.

This presentation introduces you to a simple approach for your GIS and IT departments to author and share these online information model charts and information model dashboards using Avineon’s Model Manager Add-In for ArcGIS Pro and Insights for ArcGIS from Esri. This approach improves collaboration, information sharing, and governance for GIS.

You will see a sample chart and dashboard summarizing the use of GIS by departments, agencies, and offices such as Accounts, Agriculture, Arts, Aviation, Audit, Behavioral Health, Community Development, Culture, Corrections, Courts, Electric, Elected Officials, Water, Sewer, Economy, Education, Environment, Emergency Management, Employment, Family, Finance, Fire & Rescue, Forestry, Fisheries, Health, Human Resources, Housing, Information Technology, Innovation, Justice, Labor, Legislation, Libraries, Military, Museums, Natural Resources, Park, Recreation, Rehabilitation, Police, Public Safety, Public Works, Planning, Ports, Purchasing, Social, Tax, Tourism, Transportation, Treasury, Motor Vehicles, Universities, Voter Registration, Veterans, etc., along with the businesses and citizens served within the communities.

As GIS analysts, repeated daily tasks can consume hours of our workday. Additionally, while the cloud storage capabilities of ArcGIS Online (AGOL) greatly simplify data sharing and public data collection, the credential requirements of AGOL can make scripting tasks cumbersome or potentially insecure when handled outside of the GIS environment. ESRI’s hosted Python Notebooks provide a convenient platform for automating the access and manipulation of data stored in AGOL, including the option to schedule tasks and, with some additional pieces, send notifications. This presentation will highlight workflow efficiencies implemented at NC Wildlife Resources Commission using hosted notebooks and will delve into extensions of the process that allow for convenient email notifications using two different platforms. Lessons learned and hopes for future changes will also be discussed, particularly as they relate to working within the State’s IT infrastructure.

This presentation will detail current threats to GIS environments and analyze cyber related incidents. Focus on SQL / command injection as well as heavy weight and lightweight webshells will provide attendees with tactics to improve their GIS cyber posture.

The Town Hall Closing Session is an opportunity to share your thoughts on North Carolina’s direction for further implementing GIS as a key technology in the public and private sectors.  We have had many successes as individual organizations and as a statewide community.  This session will be a facilitated discussion about the opportunities/needs that we need to address in coming years to achieve more on behalf of the citizens of our state.

The Town Hall Closing Session is an opportunity to share your thoughts on North Carolina’s direction for further implementing GIS as a key technology in the public and private sectors.  We have had many successes as individual organizations and as a statewide community.  This session will be a facilitated discussion about the opportunities/needs that we need to address in coming years to achieve more on behalf of the citizens of our state.