M3 Lab Visibility Analysis

This week’s lab offered an opportunity to work with ESRI modules. ESRI offers many options to learn more about GIS and enhance one’s GIS skillset. We were tasked with completing 4 Esri Exercises using ArcGIS Pro; Introduction to 3D Visualization, Performing Line of Sight Analysis, Performing Viewshed Analysis in ArcGIS Pro, and Sharing 3D Content Using Scene Layer Packages. Going through these exercises was not unlike a weekly UWF GIS module. It walked us through individual exercises step-by-step with examples of the results often enough to ensure we were on the right path in ArcGIS Pro.

Introduction to 3D Visualization

Before beginning 3D Analyst and Spatial Analyst licenses need to be turned on to complete these exercises or any GIS endeavor with 3D and spatial analysis. Working with 3D data opens up many opportunities to transform points, lines, polygons, point clouds, rasters, and more data types into 3D visualizations offering different perspectives of our environment. Conducting 3D analysis offers real-world insight into features and better understanding by being able to transform data beyond the 2D map.

Performing Line of Sight Analysis

Line of sight calculates the intervisibility between the observer(first vertex) and the target(last vertex) along a straight line. It determines the visibility of sight lines over obstructions consisting of a surface and an optional multipatch dataset. Geoprocessing tool Construct Sight Lines (3D Analyst) was used to calculate the lines of sight from two observer points. The output displays sight lines in green until it hits an obstacle, then it is shown in red from the other side because the view is obstructed. 

Performing Viewshed Analysis in ArcGIS Pro

The Viewshed Analysis tool determines surface locations that are visible to a set of observer features. After the determination of all the possible visible areas, the results are displayed in a 3D scene which can then be evaluated. 

Sharing 3D Content Using Scene Layer Package

ArcGIS Pro uses the ArcGIS sharing model giving a member of an organization, in this case, a student at UWF. For the member(student) to share content they must have the following:

ArcGIS Pro software, an organizational role with sharing privileges, and permissions to share with users who will access content. The content can be shared with your organization, the public(everyone), a group, or kept private. 

In the sharing 3D content workflow presenting the data must be decided about how to present it. The data is loaded, then one decides on using either a local scene or a global scene, so define an area of interest,  add surface information, then convert data from 2D to 3D. The final tool is Create Scene Layer Package which produces a slpk file having many features in it for the shared map display.