Book Image

ArcGIS Blueprints

By : Donald Eric Pimpler, Eric Pimpler
Book Image

ArcGIS Blueprints

By: Donald Eric Pimpler, Eric Pimpler

Overview of this book

This book is an immersive guide to take your ArcGIS Desktop application development skills to the next level It starts off by providing detailed description and examples of how to create ArcGIS Desktop Python toolboxes that will serve as containers for many of the applications that you will build. We provide several practical projects that involve building a local area/community map and extracting wildfire data. You will then learn how to build tools that can access data from ArcGIS Server using the ArcGIS REST API. Furthermore, we deal with the integration of additional open source Python libraries into your applications, which will help you chart and graph advanced GUI development; read and write JSON, CSV, and XML format data sources; write outputs to Google Earth Pro, and more. Along the way, you will be introduced to advanced ArcPy Mapping and ArcPy Data Access module techniques and use data-driven Pages to automate the creation of map books. Finally, you will learn advanced techniques to work with video and social media feeds. By the end of the book, you will have your own desktop application without having spent too much time learning sophisticated theory.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
ArcGIS Blueprints
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 8. Supporting Search and Rescue Operations with ArcPy, Python Add-Ins, and simplekml

Search and Rescue (SAR) operations are inherently geographic in nature and can benefit from GIS tools designed to support search efforts. The identification of the Last Known Position (LKP) is an essential first step in the process. Based on this LKP, additional tools can support SAR operations through the identification of potential search areas and the definition of search sectors for the assignment of search teams. The visualization of these datasets through a tool such as Google Earth is extremely helpful in order to understand how terrain can affect the likely movement patterns of lost individuals. For example, people are much more likely to follow well-defined trails and move toward areas of lower elevation as opposed to areas of higher elevation.

The application built in this chapter will support SAR operations through the inclusion of several custom tools in an ArcGIS Python Toolbox as well...