We are in the process of slowly rolling out the latest version of the GIS Hub Explorer, which is a mapping application that allows one to view data that reside on the ND GIS Hub. Both of our loyal readers of this blog are some of the first to hear of this new version. In the very near future, the news of this new Hub Explorer will be posted on the ND GIS listserv and on the ND GIS website.
The Hub Explorer goes back almost a decade. The first version relied on Esri's ArcIMS for the map service and used a modified version of Esri's HTML Viewer for the interface. The second and current version relied on ArcIMS for the map service and Latitude Geographic's IMF for the interface.
As many of you know, ArcIMS is no longer provided by Esri and has been replaced by ArcGIS Server. This newest version of the Hub Explorer uses map services powered by ArcGIS Server and the interface uses a modified version of Esri's JavaScript API. Houston Engineering was selected from the state's IT Professional Services Contract Pool to customize the JavaScript API. North Dakota state agencies have the option of using the Hub Explorer as a template to develop their own mapping applications.
We deliberately chose to use the Esri JavaScript API over the other two APIs offered by Esri to better prepare for the future in which we see HTML5 becoming dominant. Although typically not a huge burden for most users, we also did not want users to have to download a browser plugin in order to use the Hub Explorer.
The new Hub Explorer has been tested on a number of browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and with limited testing on Opera and Safari. Please note that if you use Internet Explorer we highly recommend that you use version 9 as there are performance and other issues with versions prior to 9.
We plan to transition from the current version of the Hub Explorer to the new version over the next couple of months.
If you get a chance, please have a look at the new Hub Explorer !
Continuing a great tradition, a number of datasets have been updated on the GIS Hub by the North Dakota GIS Technical Committee data stewards. These include:
Locations
School Locations (updated)
Boundaries
School Districts (updated)
Hydrography
Watershed Boundary Dataset (updated)
WBD_SubbasinBoundary (new)
Watershed250k (gone, replaced by WBD_SubbasinBoundary)
Landuse/Landcover
National Landcover 2006 (new)
Communications
Antenna_Structures (updated)
Microwave (updated)
Paging (updated)
PhoneCellMarket (updated)
PhoneCellular (updated)
Radio_AM (updated)
Radio_FM (updated)
Radio_Mobile_Broadcast (updated)
Radio_Mobile_Commercial (updated)
Television-Digital (updated)
Television-NTSC (updated)
These datasets can be downloaded or delivered via data services. More information on these datasets can be found on the Hub Data Portal. You may find it convenient to simply browse to the data within the Categories section of the Hub Data Portal. After you've located the data of interest, click on the More Information button and then scroll down to the Transfer Options section. In that section, click the Download link to download the data or click the the 'Esri REST including WMS' link to obtain the data service information.
The North Dakota K-12 school location data is now available from the GIS Hub.
Similar to school districts, this dataset has become available through a partnership of the GIS Technical Committee (GISTC), the Department of Public Instruction (DPI), and Applied Data Consultants (ADC). The GISTC identified this as a dataset that needed to be on the GIS Hub and provided the funding. DPI supplied the source data and associated knowledge. ADC was selected from the Technical and Data Services category of the Information Technology Professional Services Contract Pool. ADC compiled various datasets from DPI and then using multiple methods improved the accuracy of the school locations.
This school location data is available for download and as web services. More information can be found in the data description. Links to the download and web services are found in in the Distribution Information section of the data description.
We've been doing some work to organize data from past-flood events and prepare for future events.First, we now have a "Flood" folder on the GIS Hub's REST page. The data in this folder can be used in ArcGIS Desktop. If you have a requirement to have these data available in other web service formats, please let us know. We plan to post past and new flood data here as it becomes available and/or is needed. Eventually, older datasets may be removed. Second, we've taken some of this data and created applications that allow side-by-side viewing of rivers impacted by flooding. The Missouri River flood application shows the Missouri River cooridor before, during, and after the 2011 flooding. The Mouse River flood application shows the Mouse (Souris) River corridor before and during the 2011 flooding. We plan to build similar applications for other areas as data become available.
