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ArcGIS Online Tutorial Creating a Web Map to show Wind Energy in the UK.

May 2012

Contents
Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 2 Exercise 1: Getting started with ArcGIS Online ..................................................................... 3 Exercise 2: Working with data ............................................................................................... 4 Exercise 3: Customising your map ...................................................................................... 15 Exercise 4: Sharing your map ............................................................................................. 21 Post Tutorial Step ............................................................................................................... 22 Best Practise Guidance....................................................................................................... 23 Further Resources .............................................................................................................. 25

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Introduction
This tutorial is intended to demonstrate how to get the most out of ArcGIS Online whilst highlighting many of its features. This tutorial is written with an emphasis towards using UK based content and best practice rather than being a feature/function description. The tutorial will cover aspects of both the free ArcGIS Online personal account as well as functionality of the premium product, an ArcGIS Online Subscription account. Those functions only available to the subscription account will be clearly marked. All data used within the tutorial is available from public sources and is referenced throughout. Additionally all datasets or links to data services have been collated in the ArcGIS Online Group for your convenience. All of this data is processed and ready to use in ArcGIS Online and can be accessed from the group Wind Energy Tutorial. Throughout this tutorial there are opportunities to publically share your data and maps. Exploring these options is encouraged although once you have completed the tutorial it is recommended that you turn off any sharing on your items. This will ensure that ArcGIS Online remains clear of duplicate content. This tutorial will guide you through creating a Wind Energy Atlas for the UK. An example of the finished web map can be found here.

Conventions followed in this tutorial:

Idea
Warning/Suggestion Approximate time to complete: 1 hour

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Exercise 1: Getting started with ArcGIS Online


This first section discusses some of the pre-requisites and suggestions for getting started with ArcGIS Online 1. Sign up for an Esri Global Account at http://www.arcgis.com Whilst you dont need to sign up for an Esri Global Account to view public web maps, to be able to save your work, youll need to create one. To get an account all you need to do is go to Sign In and then Create an account. 2. Use a compatible Browser For the best performance, especially with web maps, it is recommended that you use Mozilla Firefox 2 and higher, Google Chrome, or Internet Explorer 8 or higher. Internet Explorer 6 is not supported; IE 7 is supported but has performance limitations when working with web maps: from the ArcGIS Online Help. 3. Localise ArcGIS Online (optional but recommended) Defining your region in ArcGIS Online sets the featured maps on the home page, content in the gallery, and the default extent of new maps in the ArcGIS.com map viewer to UK specific content. To do this: Ensure that youre logged into ArcGIS.com Click on your name in the top banner to access your profile Click Edit my profile In the Region options select United Kingdom (see below) Click the Save button 4. Choose an appropriate viewer There are 2 viewers for creating and viewing web maps. The ArcGIS.com map viewer does not require a plug-in and can be accessed by clicking the Map button on the toolbar. The other viewer is ArcGIS Explorer Online which requires the Microsoft Silverlight plug-in. If you dont already have this plug -in installed then you will be prompted to download it. In this tutorial we will use ArcGIS.com map viewer to create our web map, however the final result will be accessible from ArcGIS Explorer Online as well as the ArcGIS for Smart Phone and Tablet applications. 5. Create a new empty map Sign in to your account and go to the home page and click on the Map tab (found on the toolbar across the top) which opens a new empty map for you.

17 May 2012

Exercise 2: Working with data


Once you have your opened your blank map you can then start adding your data. This tutorial will show you how to add data from a variety of sources and in a range of formats. All data used in this chapter can be accessed, ready for use, in the ArcGIS Online group found here.

1. Add the locations of the Operational Wind Farms from a CSV file The first data that we would like to add to the web map is the location of the operational wind farms around the UK. This data is available from RenewableUK. Despite the data being in HTML on the website, it is relatively straightforward, with some simple manipulation, to display this data in your web map. This dataset has fewer than 350 records and each record has the Latitude and Longitude of each wind farm. This will be added to ArcGIS Online by creating a Comma Separated Value (.csv) file. Copy all the records from the web page and paste them into a spreadsheet. Upon further investigation you will notice that the Latitude and Longitude are formatted as Degree, Minutes and Seconds however ArcGIS Online requires that you provide coordinates in Decimal Degrees. The formulae below allow you to convert the data within a spreadsheet. Latitude data:
=IF(RIGHT(cell,1)="S",(LEFT(cell,2)+(MID(cell,4,2)/60)+(MID(cell,7,2) /3600))*-1,LEFT(cell,2)+(MID(cell,4,2)/60)+(MID(cell,7,2)/3600))

Longitude data:
=IF(RIGHT(cell,1)="W",(LEFT(cell,2)+(MID(cell,4,2)/60)+(MID(cell,7,2) /3600))*-1,LEFT(cell,2)+(MID(cell,4,2)/60)+(MID(cell,7,2)/3600))

Replace cell with the appropriate location cell that you are wishi ng to convert. Some of the records have no position information so these can be removed. Finally re-format the date column in Excel to contain dates, or alternatively remove it. You are now ready to upload this CSV file into ArcGIS.com map viewer. This can be done by the following procedure: From Windows Explorer drag your CSV into the Map. This functionality is not supported in all browsers so alternatively goto Add | Add Layer from File and navigate to the CSV file.

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It will automatically find the fields within your dataset relating to location however if it finds multiple fields which could be used, you just need to specify which one you would like. Note: If you are adding the data from an ArcGIS Online Subscription account then you will be asked if you wish to create a feature service or if you wish to store the features in the map. Choosing to store the features in the map will be fine in this instance. All of the data is then added to the map with default symbology

Save you map by going to the Save button and filling out the required details

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If the field titles of your CSV are X,Y, Latitude/Longitude or Postcode then ArcGIS Online will automatically detect that these fields should be used to geographically locate your data.

When data is uploaded this way the data is stored inside the map. To edit your data, either manually do it within the map by using the Edit Features tools, but be aware these changes are not fed back to your original CSV or re-upload your data.

There are some restrictions worth noting when adding CSV files this way. There is a limit of 1000 features that you can add to the map using this method. 2. Add the locations of the Offshore Wind Farms from a shapefile If you already have data in a Shapefile then these can easily be added to ArcGIS Online without any modifications. Online, at http://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/energy/downloads/ a Shapefile containing the locations of Offshore wind farms can be found. Alternatively the Shapefile can be found in the group resources. A Shapefile consists of numerous files and in order to upload them into ArcGIS Online all components need to reside in a zip file. To add this to your web map do the following: Go to Add | Add Layer from File

Navigate to offshore_wind_farm_shapefiles.zip At this point it will ask you if you wish to simplify the features or keep the originals. Since this data is relatively simple we will keep the original Features. Note: If you are adding the data from an ArcGIS Online Subscription account then you will be asked if you wish to create a feature service or if you wish to store the features in the map. Choosing to store the features in the map will be fine in this instance. The features will then added to the map as shown below.

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There are some restrictions worth noting when adding Shapefiles this way especially if you data is large or has many features. If you are struggling to bring in less than 1000 features, try generalizing the lines or polygons using ArcMap tool or the ArcGIS.com map viewer before bringing them in. If you want to use more than 1000 features consider either splitting your dataset up into smaller sensible chunks, use an ArcGIS Online subscription account or serve the data yourself from ArcGIS Server. More information about adding Shapefiles can be found in the help. 3. Adding the locations of all Wind Farms via a Feature Service (This step requires an ArcGIS Online Subscription account and ArcGIS for Desktop 10.1) Feature services allow you to serve features over the Internet and provide the symbology to use when displaying the features. They support feature querying, visualization, and editing. Feature services are most appropriate for overlay services that go on top of your base maps. There are a number of ways to create Feature Services in ArcGIS Online and these include uploading data to My Content from a CSV, a Shapefile or GPX. For more information on how to do this can be found here. A new feature in ArcGIS Desktop 10.1 allows you to publish maps straight from ArcMap to your ArcGIS Online Subscription. We are going to use this method to create a feature service from a MXD weve created in ArcMap . The MXD (Map Document) contains the locations of the operational wind farms along with those in the planning, consented and construction. The data has been symbolised and credited appropriately. This data can be found as a map package in the group resources for this tutorial (you may need to select to show All Results under Group Content). To publish this data to an ArcGIS Online Subscription account using ArcMap (10.1 only) you will need to do the following: Start ArcMap 10.1 and open the map you want to publish.
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Go to File | Sign In. Type your name and password for your ArcGIS Online Subscription account, then click Sign In. Click File | Share As | Service. Choose Publish a Service and click Next. Assuming this is the first time that you have published this data choose Publish as a Service Confirm that you are connected to the correct connection and provide you service with a name, in this case Onshore_Windfarms (including underscores). From the service editor the first thing to do is to Analyze the map document. This will check though to see any errors or warnings that might result if the service is published.

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Analysing this document shows four warnings and messages which can be reviewed before publishing. Any errors should be fixed but warnings and messages should be evaluated. The High level severity warning here shows that whilst the map documents data frame is in Web Mercator (Auxiliary Sphere), the data is in WGS84. The application will need to perform any transformations on-the-fly and hence might impact performance.

Once finished analysing the document return to the Service Editor and check the Capabilities options. Check on Feature Access before unchecking Tiled Mapping Under Capabilities | Feature Access uncheck Create, Delete and Update. This will ensure that any other users using this feature service are unable to modify the contents.

Under Item Description check that all the information has been correctly filled in. This information is populated from the Map Descriptions in the map document. Once happy with all of the settings click Publish You will be notified once the map has been successfully published. Once published you can then add this to your Map In the ArcGIS.com map viewer go to Search for Layers, and search for uk wind farm onshore. Select the feature service. Click Add

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Check all to bring in all layers within the Feature Service The map will have display all the Wind Farm data uploaded as a Feature Service

Ensure that you are not displaying too many features in your map since this will slow down performance. Appropriate use of suitable data as well as appropriate scale thresholds should be used to ensure that map performance is adequate. If using Feature Services it is recommended that <1000 features should be displayed at any one time.

4. Adding the Offshore wind speeds as a tiled map service (This step requires an ArcGIS Online Subscription account and ArcGIS for Desktop 10.1) Tiled Map Services support fast map visualisation using a collection of pre-drawn map images, or tiles. These tiles are created and stored on the server after you upload your data. Tiled map services are appropriate for base maps and other layers that give your web maps geographic context. Tiled map services do not support queries or popups. From ArcMap, you can publish a tiled map service to be hosted on ArcGIS Online. The data used in this part of the tutorial was taken from the Atlas of UK Marine Renewable Energy Resources which can be found here. Alternatively the data, processed, symbolised and ready to use can be found as a Map Package within the group resources. To create the tiled map service you will need to do the following: Start ArcMap 10.1 and open the map you want to publish.

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Sign in to ArcGIS Online, and start to publish the service as described in Section 3. Confirm that you are connected to the correct connection and give your service a name, in this case Windspeed_Offshore

Under Caching, modify the Levels of detail. For the purpose of this tutorial set the Minimum Scale Level to 4 and the Maximum to 7. This defines the levels that the data will be viewable at.

This tutorial caches to four levels, however in real applications you may need to cache to more levels of detail.

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Under Item Description check that all the information has been correctly filled in. This information is populated from the Map Descriptions in the map document. From the service editor again, analyse the map document. Once happy with all of the settings click Publish You will be notified once the map has been successfully published and cached (the caching process will be run as a background Geoprocessing task). Once published you can then add this to your Map In ArcGIS Explorer Online go to Add Content and either find the data from My Content or search for it in the Search box Searching for offshore, wind, speed, UK should yield the correct data based on the tags that were set in the published map document Click Add

5. Adding in the onshore wind speeds via consuming an existing map service One of the advantages of using ArcGIS Online as a platform for creating and publishing content is that you are able to consume content already shared by others. ArcGIS Online offers users the option to search for appropriate content and add it to their map. 17 May 2012
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To search for content do the following: Go to Add | Search for Layers Type search terms of interest. In this example if I search for UK, Windspeed.

The service titled UK_windspeeds looks of interest Choosing Add places this service on our map

There are other ways to add data as a service. If you know the URL of the service then you can simply paste this into the search bar. Alternatively you can add the service as a New Item from My Content in ArcGIS Online. This way you can easily re-use the service and quickly find it from within My Content whichever ArcGIS Online viewer you are using. For more information about adding services please see here.

6. Other considerations

Geocoding Postcodes
ArcGIS Online has in-built gazetteers which allow you to geocode postcodes within your data. To do this, import your CSV into the map, and then define the column with your postcode data in as a Location field and then select Zip or Postal Code.

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Working with UK Projections All the basemaps within ArcGIS Online use Web Mercator (Auxiliary Sphere) tiling scheme. For data not in this projection, ArcGIS Online will automatically try and reproject it so it matches the projection of your basemap. At present, if your operational data is in British National Grid, whilst it can be imported into ArcGIS Online the transformation that it uses is not the most accurate and as such an offset may be noticed. Therefore, if accuracy is important for your map it is recommended that your data is reprojected into WGS84 or Web Mercator (Auxiliary Sphere) prior to using it in ArcGIS Online.

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Exercise 3: Customising your map


Up until now weve added lots of datasets, but our map requires some attention to m ake it more usable as well as making sure the cartography is appropriate. 1. Modifying Basemap ArcGIS Online has numerous basemaps which can be used within your applications. Choose an alternative basemap from the gallery in ArcGIS Explorer Online. You can find more help on ArcGIS.com about choosing a basemap.

For this tutorial a good option is the Ocean Basemap.

Be aware of the context of the map and what scales are likely to be used as not all of the provided basemaps will have detailed maps available when zoomed in.

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2. Controlling symbology There are a wide range of symbols and methods you can use to symbolise your data. To configure the symbology for a particular layer you first need to ensure the Contents tab is selected, click the layer you would like to symbolise and then click > Change Symbols.

From here, you can either use a single symbol for the whole layer or pick from symbols which are varying in style, colour or size depending on the feature attributes.

In terms of the look and feel of your data, click Change Symbol and from here you can either pick your symbol according to theme from the dropdown list (Click Basic)or use a URL of an image (using the Add an Image option).

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For this map we want to symbolize the map by the amount of power each windfarm creates. To create the symbology for this: Make the points proportional to the Capacity, select Size and choose the Capacity attribute from our data. Keep the default option of splitting our data into 5 equal groups but we could change this using the By and With No. Classes options Symbolise the data using the green circle symbol within the Shapes symbology set and click Apply

3. Control popups Pop-ups allow your users to click on the features to find out more information about them. The values contained within these pop-ups can include any values from the features in your map. There are lots of options to customise your pop-ups and these can all be accessed by clicking > Configure Pop-Ups on the layer of interest. The Configure Attributes button allows you to control which fields you would like to be visible and their field aliases and Format Fields allows you to change the format of your data. The Pop-up Media options allow you to add pictures and charting to your pop-ups. For this example, we are going to edit the Consented Wind farm layer and we are going to remove all the fields we dont want to display, edit the hover field, edit some of the field names to make them easier to interpret and reorder the list so the most important fields are at the top. To do this:

Edit hover text: when you hover over a feature a hoverbox appears displaying a snippet of information about it. To edit this, stay within the same tab and change the text within the Pop-up Title box, if you want to use an attribute in your data, click the plus icon on the right. In our case we are going to use the name attribute within our data.

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Remove unnecessary fields: go to Configure Attributes and un-tick the fields you dont need. Edit field aliases: saying in the Configure Attributes menu, we can change the field names by changing the text in the Field Alias column.

Reorder fields: Some of my fields would look better moved higher up the list and to do this you can use the arrow buttons on the right.

Now weve done those few modifications to the pop-ups you can see how this translates into a much easier to read way of displaying information.

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Pop-up before changes

Pop-up after changes

If you would like something a bit more exciting than list-style data for your pop-ups, you can create custom style pop-ups. If you dont want people to be able to edit your data and pop-ups, untick the box on the left-hand side. Also remember to bring in your data in the right format (text, number etc), otherwise you wont be able to adjust things like decimal places. You can really help your audience visualise the content of your web map by using images within your pop-ups. You can do this by including URLs of the images you want into a column of your CSV or Shapefile and then linking to it in pop-ups. You can also add charting into your pop-ups to really help display your data.

Pop-up with photo from URL and custom pop-up in ArcGIS Explorer Online. 4. Dashboard tools In ArcGIS Explorer Online there is the useful feature to have a dashboard within your web map. This allows you to create charting to help display, analyse and compare data within your web map. To create a dashboard and gadgets, click on the Dashboard button on the toolbar and then click Add Gadget. We arent using gadgets on our web map but heres an example so you can see what they look like:

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5. Presentation Mode Another way of introducing your web map or giving directions about how to use it is to use Presentation Mode in ArcGIS Explorer Online. You can create presentation by opening your map in ArcGIS Explorer Online and clicking on the Presentation tab at the top of the map. Once youve created it, it will save as part of the web map and by selecting Start in presentation mode when opened by others in the Share menu itll open it as soon as someone opens the web map. This tutorial will not cover how to create a presentation so refer to the ArcGIS Explorer Online help documentation for further information. Presentations must be created in ArcGIS Explorer Online but can be viewed in the ArcGIS.com map viewer.

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Exercise 4: Sharing your map


1. Documenting your web map When saving your map make sure you give appropriate tags as this makes it easy for people to search for your map and content. For example it should be best practice to tag your maps with a location: United Kingdom, UK, Great Britain, GB, GBR, (England, Scotland, Wales if appropriate) as well as relevant tags based on the subject of your web map. It is also a good idea to document your map, explain what it is showing and also make sure that youve credited any data sources. 2. Sharing your web map You can share your web map with groups allowing you to share your map with your friends and colleagues without providing access to the public. To do this, just create a group and then invite all your members via their Esri Global Account IDs and then share your content with this group. If your map is interesting and you are trying to reach out to specific audiences or the general public, you can use the share links for Facebook and Twitter to get the message out. Clicking on the Share button at the top of the map will bring up the sharing dialog box. Here we can set access constraints by sharing the map with particular user groups or the public. When embedding a map on a website you will always want to make the map visible to Everyone (public). 3. Embed you web map You can add your web map to your website using the sharing/embed tools. This is a great way of adding interactivity to your website while keeping full control of the map and map content in ArcGIS Online. There are many options when embedding maps including scale bars, basemap galleries and layer visibility controls.

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4. Develop your web map Your map can be used as a basis to add further functionality. If you wish to add more features and functionality to your application, you can use the web map configuration and content as a base application before developing more capabilities. This allows developers to focus on setting up the added functionality while leaving the map content under the control of the map author.

Post Tutorial Step


Upon completion of the tutorial it is suggested that you clear up any test datasets or maps. Also if you have shared items with Everyone (public) then it is recommended that you clear any public shares on your data. Doing so will keep ArcGIS Online free of duplicate content. To alter the sharing options on your content:
Goto My Content Select your items

Click Share Ensure that Everyone (public) is unchecked.

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Best Practise Guidance


There are a number of best practices which should be considered when designing and building web map applications. This section discusses some of the more general best practices relating to content and design. 1. Content control Make sure you have proper control of all information included in and associated with your web map. Own your content Ensure you own the web maps and the content inside them with a designated ArcGIS Online account. Separate out logical groups of content into different accounts if necessary. For example a free account account can consume content from your own ArcGIS Online Subscription account assuming it has the correct privileges to do so. Within your account, store web maps used for different purposes in different folders to help you better manage the content. Be aware of updated content If you load data into your map via a CSV and then edit it in the web map, your original CSV file will then be out of date. Ensure that you are aware of this and you continue to maintain up-to-date content in the web map and your original files. Alternatively, keep your data maintained on internal IT systems (e.g. Microsoft SharePoint) which can help you maintain, share and export content. Maintain working links and images Ensure all of the links and images in your web map work as expected. Broken links and missing images have a big impact on a users experience. Keep a copy of your data It is always good practice to retain a local copy of the data contained within the web map. Having a backup of online content can help you if your web map becomes inaccessible or you accidentally lose administrative permissions on the web map. Try to automate processes where applicable The ArcGIS software has numerous tools for automating workflows, including processing Shapefiles, CSV files, databases & more prior to uploading them to ArcGIS Online. Consider using such ArcGIS tools to extract data from your systems at scheduled times and automatically load the data into web maps

2. Content design It should always be remembered that the map is there to communicate a message in a clear, efficient and effective manner. This can be achieved by ensuring your map is clear and legible, has good contrast, has good visual balance as well as serving a function. Consider the following elements when designing the visual content of your map: 17 May 2012
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Try to select an unobtrusive basemap Basemaps with too much detail or contrasting cluttered features can detract from the data that you have overlain on the map. Maps can sometimes have too much local detail when zoomed in and can detract from marker points on top of the map. Make the map easier to read / interpret by reducing the background noise. Another option is to reduce the transparency of the basemap (possible in the ArcGIS.com map viewer). Check basemaps at relevant scales Be aware of the context of the map and what scales are likely to be used as not all of the provided basemaps will have detailed maps available when zoomed in. Make key content prominent Adding the key map layers last will result in them being at the top of the map on top of any other layers. Make sure the symbology stands out over other content. ArcGIS Online can organise the order of the map layers. Make a relevant default map extent When saving the map, make sure you are zoomed to an extent that you would like all users to see when they open the map. It is very easy to make changes to a map, pan around and then save the map without realizing that the last extent you end up on will then be the first extent seen by all consumers of the map.

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Further Resources
Applications ArcGIS Online: http://www.arcgis.com ArcGIS Explorer Online: http://www.arcgis.com/explorer/

Help ArcGIS Online Help: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisonline/help/ ArcGIS Explorer Online Help: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisexplorer/help/

Blogs ArcGIS Online Blog: http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/category/arcgis-online/ Esri UK GeoXchange Blog: http://geoxchange.esriuk.com/

Product Pages ArcGIS Online Product Pages: http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgisonline/index.html

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