Lab 2: Geospatial Web Services

Goal:
Successfully create and publish a geospatial web service using ArcGIS Online for Organizations and the ArcGIS server hosted by the Geography and Anthropology department here at UW-Eau Claire.

Methods:

Part 1:
The first task was to create a map on ArcGIS Online. To do this we had to download a zip file containing various feature classes for Wisconsin; such as, lakes, streams, the counties, cities, interstates, highways, etc. within Eau Claire.

Since we were not going to use all the feature classes for this first map we needed to sort the data. We did this in ArcMap by bringing in the counties, cities, interstates, and highways. Once all feature classes were in the map we compressed the map (send to- compressed (zipped) folder).

Once our folder was zipped we headed of to ArcGIS Online and added the zipped folder by browsing the local files. The only things that remained was to add a title, summary of the map, and give it the appropriate tags. Tags are important because they enable a client to search for relavant data. Below in figure 1 you can see the image of map created.



Figure 1.

Part 2:
The next task was more complex. Again we were trying to make a map and upload it to ArcGIS Online; however, this time the map was created using an Excel spread sheet with latitude and longitude data for fire occurences in Wisconsin 2004.

To make this map we had to open up an Excel file with data containing X- and Y-coordinate data, as well as fire occurence data. Before the data could be uploaded to ArcGIS Online, it had to be converted to a CSV file (comma separated file). This was simply done by going to 'save as' then in the drop down menu for 'file type,' the .xlsx had to be changed to .csv.

The next step was important. When uploading the data to ArcGIS Online you had to click the reticule for loacating features using 'Latitude/Longitude.' In this same menu there was the field names, field types, and location fields for your .csv file. The 'POINT_X' row needed to be changed to longitude, and the 'POINT_Y' to latitude. After this was done, the map needed to be more user friendly. To change the map we had to go to the legend and click the "configure Pop-up." This brought up fields for OBJECT_ID, FIREDATE, FIRE_YR, POINT_Y, POINT_X, and FID. For this assignment we only wanted the firedate to show up, so we unchecked all the boxes leaving only the firedate. This made it so the feature service would only show the fire occurence date for each location when clicked on in the map. The results from the .csv file can be seen in figure 2.



Figure 2.