It’s important to note that support for ArcMap is set to retire by March 2026, and Mature Support starts in March 2024. As many of you migrate to ArcGIS Pro, you may find there are options or functionality in ArcMap that you miss or need to perform your workflows efficiently. So, we are doing all we can to bridge the gap between the two applications as we encourage you to upgrade to ArcGIS Pro.

By popular demand, we have incorporated a few features new to ArcGIS Pro 3.2 that were available in ArcMap.

Calculate Field support for VB expressions

In ArcGIS Pro 3.2, the Calculate Field tool now supports expressions in VBScript. This feature is helpful for users migrating to ArcGIS Pro who do not want to update their existing field calculator expressions from ArcMap (which uses VBScript as the default expression language).

On the Calculate Field tool, you can find the VBScript option in the Expression Type parameter drop-down. Further, your ArcMap models and scripts that use VBScript expressions can now be run in ArcGIS Pro 3.2 as-is.

Even though VBScript is supported, we still encourage you to update your field calculations to Python, Arcade, or SQL expressions for improved performance, functionality, and cross-product support in ArcGIS.

Icons for custom script and model tools

In ArcMap, geoprocessing tools could be added as buttons to toolbar and menu locations, and you could even assign these buttons custom icons. Then a click of the button would open the tool.

In ArcGIS Pro, you can customize the Pro user interface with geoprocessing tools. New in ArcGIS Pro 3.2, you can assign custom icons to model and script tool properties, and these icons will display in the following locations:

1. Quick Access Toolbar
2. Analysis tool gallery
3. Ribbon

You can use custom icons if you want to add a finishing touch or branding to your custom tools. Or if you have multiple model and script tools that you want to distinguish easily. This makes it easier than ever to locate your custom tools around the Pro user interface.

How to assign icons to custom tools

In the Catalog pane or, new in ArcGIS Pro 3.2, at the top of the Geoprocessing pane’s Toolboxes tab you will find the custom toolboxes that have been added to your project. Complete the following steps to assign an icon to a tool in one of these toolboxes:

1. Right-Click the a model or tool that is saved to an ArcGIS toolbox (.atbx). NOTE: icons cannot be applied to tools in a legacy toolbox (.tbx) or Python toolbox (.pyt) file.
2. Select Properties to open the tool’s properties window.
3. Click on the default icon to change it.

Tip: If you are newly migrating from ArcMap to ArcGIS Pro, you can set a Geoprocessing option for ArcGIS Pro to automatically check your script or model tools for compatibility, or use the Analyze Tools for Pro tool to manually check for compatibility.

Improved Keyboard Navigation for Geoprocessing tools

If you prefer to use your keyboard rather than a mouse to navigate through applications, you’ll be pleased that the ArcGIS Pro 3.2 release had some major updates regarding working with keyboard shortcuts. In the geoprocessing framework, we also made our keyboard commands easier to use to speed up your workflows.

On geoprocessing tools, use the Tab key to sequentially navigate through focused parameters. When entering values for a parameter that accepts multiple inputs, you can now use the Enter key to commit the specified value and automatically add another entry ready for you to type in another value, without losing focus of the Geoprocessing pane.

Summary

We hope that these updates remove more barriers for users who want to migrate from ArcMap to ArcGIS Pro. Be sure to check out the documentation page For ArcMap users migrating to ArcGIS Pro to get started. If you are looking for geoprocessing tools or functionality in Pro that are available in ArcMap, you can make a request to the ArcGIS Pro Ideas Community using the Geoprocessing label.

This ArcGIS Solutions Roadmap gives you a sneak peek of the major capabilities we are focused on in 2024. Near-term will be available in Q1 2024 and mid-term in Q2 2024. Long-term capabilities are in the plan and slated for a Q4 2024 release but we will revise this roadmap mid-year to ensure it reflects our latest plans.

As with any roadmap, capabilities are tentative and may evolve, be delayed, or removed from the roadmap as priorities change. The continued development or release of a solution is at the sole discretion of Esri.

Please contact us if you are interested in partnering with the ArcGIS Solutions team on any of the capabilities listed above. We value those partnerships greatly and your contributions can help the entire GIS community grow. If you would like to see us develop a solution that is not currently in our portfolio or plans, please share your ideas on ArcGIS Ideas.

For more information on the latest ArcGIS Solutions release, see What’s New.

If you haven’t (or if it has been a while), give it a try!

It’s a powerful spatial analysis tool that helps us find statistically significant clusters in our data. These clusters help us confirm if the patterns we perceive when observing a map are worth our attention and resources.

Hot Spot Analysis is one of the foundational spatial analysis tools – it’s often the first tool we run to start uncovering spatial patterns in our data. But have you ever considered how the neighborhoods you choose in this tool can change the results?

When you run Hot Spot Analysis, you select a conceptualization of spatial relationships, and this defines the neighborhoods used in the analysis. Like with many other Spatial Statistics tools, a useful analysis depends on defining and thinking critically about what it means for a feature to be considered near another feature. For example, you might say that features sharing a boundary, or features within 150 kilometers of each other, are considered neighbors. A slight difference in the definition of a neighborhood can lead to important differences in the results, so this is a critical part of the analysis to understand, decide, and communicate with your results.

But it is often difficult to fully understand and select appropriate neighborhoods when doing analysis. Today, we select and decide on neighborhoods using dropdowns and parameter settings – hardly an inviting or interesting way to think about geography!

To help you understand and explore neighborhoods, ArcGIS Pro 3.2 now includes Neighborhood Explorer: an experience that will help you learn about and refine your spatial statistics analysis. Here’s the basics of how it works:https://mediaspace.esri.com/embed/secure/iframe/entryId/1_e41doodp/uiConfId/49806163

Beyond exploration, neighborhood definitions can be edited, saved, and shared. For example, a starting definition of neighborhoods leaves an island without neighbors. This may be perfectly reasonable, but if domain knowledge suggests that the island is closely related with coastal communities across a strait, you can manually edit and add neighbors to that feature to better reflect the spatial relationships in the data. The resulting neighborhood definition can be saved as a spatial weights matrix file, and used in Spatial Statistics tools or shared with colleagues for reproducibility.

Neighborhood Explorer shines when used alongside Spatial Statistics tools, but it can also help you explore connections in your data.

For example, the U.S. Census Bureau publishes commuting journey to work data and you can use this data to create a spatial weights matrix and visualize the connections using Neighborhood Explorer. Once a location is clicked, you can explore commute patterns: the clicked location displays where people reside, and the neighbors correspond to where people that live in that location are commuting to. These aren’t simple spatial relationships where we define a distance or use contiguity.

Neighborhood Explorer is a capability that helps you learn about spatial relationships and refine your analysis. We hope it also helps you communicate these concepts, and help propagate the importance of geography as we understand the world.

“Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.”

Waldo ToblerGeographer

1. Agriculture. Agriculture is one of the important tasks of human civilization. It is not only done for feeding the bellies but also to run the global business.
2. Urban and Town Planning. Developers, Builders, Architects, and Engineers are now using spatial data sets to plan on the futuristic township.
3. Oil Spill. Oil Spill can be intentional or accidental, depending on the conditions. …
4. Disaster Management. GIS is used to monitor disaster and natural calamity prone areas. The geospatial data sets and databases allow organizations to store data of all levels.
5. Mapping and Navigation. The best example of today’s world mapping and navigation is Google Maps. It is the most widely used service of Google by people.
6. Reservoir and Dam Site location. Geo-Spatial data is used to find the perfect location for constructing a reservoir and dam. …
7. Deforestation and Vegetation Management. Using GIS and geospatial data of forest lands allows organizations and governments to keep track of the rate of deforestation.
8. GIS for Business, Marketing, and Sales. Apart from all the above applications, GIS also has unusual usage in making business and marketing sales.

Maps

Maps are the geographic container for the data layers and analytics you want to work with. GIS maps are easily shared and embedded in apps, and accessible by virtually everyone, everywhere.

Data

GIS integrates many different kinds of data layers using spatial location. Most data has a geographic component. GIS data includes imagery, features, and basemaps linked to spreadsheets and tables.

Analysis

Spatial analysis lets you evaluate suitability and capability, estimate and predict, interpret and understand, and much more, lending new perspectives to your insight and decision-making.

GIS technology is a crucial part of spatial data infrastructure, which the White House defines as “the technology, policies, standards, human resources, and related activities necessary to acquire, process, distribute, use, maintain, and preserve spatial data.”

GIS can use any information that includes location. The location can be expressed in many different ways, such as latitude and longitude, address, or ZIP code.

Many different types of information can be compared and contrasted using GIS. The system can include data about people, such as population, income, or education level. It can include information about the landscape, such as the location of streams, different kinds of vegetation, and different kinds of soil. It can include information about the sites of factories, farms, and schools, or storm drains, roads, and electric power lines.

With GIS technology, people can compare the locations of different things in order to discover how they relate to each other. For example, using GIS, a single map could include sites that produce pollution, such as factories, and sites that are sensitive to pollution, such as wetlands and rivers. Such a map would help people determine where water supplies are most at risk.

Data Capture

Data Formats

GIS applications include both hardware and software systems. These applications may include cartographic data, photographic data, digital data, or data in spreadsheets.

Cartographic data are already in map form, and may include such information as the location of rivers, roads, hills, and valleys. Cartographic data may also include survey data and mapping information that can be directly entered into a GIS.

Photographic interpretation is a major part of GIS. Photo interpretation involves analyzing aerial photographs and assessing the features that appear.

Digital data can also be entered into GIS. An example of this kind of information is computer data collected by satellites that show land use—the location of farms, towns, and forests.

Remote sensing provides another tool that can be integrated into a GIS. Remote sensing includes imagery and other data collected from satellites, balloons, and drones.

Finally, GIS can also include data in table or spreadsheet form, such as population demographics. Demographics can range from age, income, and ethnicity to recent purchases and internet browsing preferences.

GIS technology allows all these different types of information, no matter their source or original format, to be overlaid on top of one another on a single map. GIS uses location as the key index variable to relate these seemingly unrelated data.

Putting information into GIS is called data capture. Data that are already in digital form, such as most tables and images taken by satellites, can simply be uploaded into GIS. Maps, however, must first be scanned, or converted to digital format.

The two major types of GIS file formats are raster and vector. Raster formats are grids of cells or pixels. Raster formats are useful for storing GIS data that vary, such as elevation or satellite imagery. Vector formats are polygons that use points (called nodes) and lines. Vector formats are useful for storing GIS data with firm borders, such as school districts or streets.

Spatial Relationships

GIS technology can be used to display spatial relationships and linear networks. Spatial relationships may display topography, such as agricultural fields and streams. They may also display land-use patterns, such as the location of parks and housing complexes.

Linear networks, sometimes called geometric networks, are often represented by roads, rivers, and public utility grids in a GIS. A line on a map may indicate a road or highway. With GIS layers, however, that road may indicate the boundary of a school district, public park, or other demographic or land-use area. Using diverse data capture, the linear network of a river may be mapped on a GIS to indicate the stream flow of different tributaries.

GIS must make the information from all the various maps and sources align, so they fit together on the same scale. A scale is the relationship between the distance on a map and the actual distance on Earth.

Often, GIS must manipulate data because different maps have different projections. A projection is the method of transferring information from Earth’s curved surface to a flat piece of paper or computer screen. Different types of projections accomplish this task in different ways, but all result in some distortion. To transfer a curved, three-dimensional shape onto a flat surface inevitably requires stretching some parts and squeezing others.

A world map can show either the correct sizes of countries or their correct shapes, but it can’t do both. GIS takes data from maps that were made using different projections and combines them so all the information can be displayed using one common projection.

GIS Maps

Once all the desired data have been entered into a GIS system, they can be combined to produce a wide variety of individual maps, depending on which data layers are included. One of the most common uses of GIS technology involves comparing natural features with human activity.

For instance, GIS maps can display what man-made features are near certain natural features, such as which homes and businesses are in areas prone to flooding.

GIS technology also allows users to “dig deep” in a specific area with many kinds of information. Maps of a single city or neighborhood can relate such information as average income, book sales, or voting patterns. Any GIS data layer can be added or subtracted to the same map.

GIS maps can be used to show information about numbers and density. For example, GIS can show how many doctors there are in a neighborhood compared with the area’s population.

With GIS technology, researchers can also look at change over time. They can use satellite data to study topics such as the advance and retreat of ice cover in polar regions, and how that coverage has changed through time. A police precinct might study changes in crime data to help determine where to assign officers.

One important use of time-based GIS technology involves creating time-lapse photography that shows processes occurring over large areas and long periods of time. For example, data showing the movement of fluid in ocean or air currents help scientists better understand how moisture and heat energy move around the globe.

GIS technology sometimes allows users to access further information about specific areas on a map. A person can point to a spot on a digital map to find other information stored in the GIS about that location. For example, a user might click on a school to find how many students are enrolled, how many students there are per teacher, or what sports facilities the school has.

GIS systems are often used to produce three-dimensional images. This is useful, for example, to geologists studying earthquake faults.

GIS technology makes updating maps much easier than updating maps created manually. Updated data can simply be added to the existing GIS program. A new map can then be printed or displayed on screen. This skips the traditional process of drawing a map, which can be time-consuming and expensive.

GIS Jobs

People working in many different fields use GIS technology. GIS technology can be used for scientific investigations, resource management, and development planning.

Many retail businesses use GIS to help them determine where to locate a new store. Marketing companies use GIS to decide to whom to market stores and restaurants, and where that marketing should be.

Scientists use GIS to compare population statistics to resources such as drinking water. Biologists use GIS to track animal-migration patterns.

City, state, or federal officials use GIS to help plan their response in the case of a natural disaster such as an earthquake or hurricane. GIS maps can show these officials what neighborhoods are most in danger, where to locate emergency shelters, and what routes people should take to reach safety.

Engineers use GIS technology to support the design, implementation, and management of communication networks for the phones we use, as well as the infrastructure necessary for internet connectivity. Other engineers may use GIS to develop road networks and transportation infrastructure.

There is no limit to the kind of information that can be analyzed using GIS technology