Meeting 5/24/23: Esri | Government Content Syndication - Pilot Community

[TracyLinder]

ESRI Pilot Demo Meeting & Internal Debrief on 5/24/23

• Mtg recording for ESRI demo is here

Original CTM email 3/29/23

Esri has been developing a new content syndication strategy that would advance our current Community Maps program and position aggregated government content managed in ArcGIS as a source for consumer mapping platforms. The goal is to help our government customers syndicate their near real-time content (ex. road closures, emergency notices, etc.) to consumer mapping applications so residents in their community have access to this information on the devices they typically use.

This spring, we are assembling a small group of ArcGIS users to pilot this new initiative and I was hoping the City of Austin might be interested in participating. If so, I’d be glad to schedule a short call to brief you further and discuss what the pilot will entail.

Marna said 4/27/23

Scott Oppmann at Esri reached out to Jacquie/myself a couple weeks ago asking if the City of Austin would like to be a part of a pilot with “consumer mapping platforms” and local data from cities. The example Esri used was – What if our street closure data was able to be consumed by Waze or Google Maps and presented nearly real-time.

Since Scott used street closures specifically, I wanted to reach out to ATD to see if y’all would be interested in participating or at least having a meeting with Scott to go over his ask. Let me know!

• Diana emailed to DTS folks 4/27 and 5/3

Tracy said 5/3

Howdy, this has a bit of crossover with RC3DP so I'm definitely interested and want to be included in the initial discussions.

Andrew said 5/3

Yeah this sounds interesting and I would definitely like to learn more about it.

[TracyLinder]

Tracy's Notes

• Residents want easier access to authoritative data in the apps their already using like apple/google maps (consumer mapping platforms)
• Think 'Community Maps'
• Conceptually a single destination for authoritative content for our consumers
• their initial focus is road closures
• ESRI has a ROW Permitting solution

Ask from Esri: Would we be interested in contributing to the pilot for the road closure focus/project.

• There are a few municipalities already participating, and ESRI is engaging multiple others.

• Q: Andrew asked questions about integrating our existing data. What does it entail?

  • A: A matter of loading it... y'all have so many events and those are the ones that are so difficult for navigation providers to access & display.

• Do we have emergency road data --- not really.

• Andrew: We have event data that we maintain and is available.

• Q: In terms of 'authoritative data' is there a concern with that being accurate?

  • A: They have various sources of data they're using. They want this to be the primary source of truth but it would be used in context with the other sources.

• Q: What about when there are conflicts - who gets the final decision in what gets published?

  • A: The platform owner will make that decision. ESRI will do things to ensure data quality.
    • Q: Google routing for bikes. We have a bike network. Will this change the bike routing? If this is able to feed preferred bike routes and can it be ingested by the platforms? Or suggest safer routes based on city authority/feedback?
  • A: Not in the initial scope. It is on the roadmap.

Tracy brought up data equity and publishing.

• The solution is to help us to curate the content into a specific structure.
• The data will be published on the ODP
• Then everyone has access to it.

Risk/Opportunity: Overlaps with RC3DP

[dianamartin]

5/24

Diana's Notes

Scott O. - CTM (Government Services) Road Closure Capital Projects Emergency Incidents Evacuation Notice

Time sensitive

• Voting Centers/Ballot drop off

Consumer mapping <>public datasets

Personas

• Government Contributors
• Residents
• Consumer Mapping Platforms (ex. Waze, Google, AppleMaps)

Pilot Community

• reduce expectations
• Proof of concept

Other cities participating

• Raleigh, NC
• Bend, OR
• Pinellas County, FL

Parallel Data Platform Acquisition

RC3DP

• ROW Closure Data
• Giving the public
  • ability, when they are in the ROW and out of the ROW

ROW Permitting - ArcGIS app

Time Commitment

• Depends on how we're managing road closure
• Deploy solution, AMANDA permits
  • require: GIS tech/analyst

[ChristinaTremel]

Presentation - Conceptual Design Slide

[andrewshensky]

Requires use of a Solution to curate content Initially focused on road closures Could be Capital projects, Emergency incidents Raleigh, Bend, Charleston, Aspen is contributing Austin would be one of 6 to work with Esri on this Most do not collaborate outside their organization Built on Road Closure Solution Event closures could be taken from and loaded into Road Closures Solution Primarily focused on road closures This is solely a pilot to test out Piloting throughout summer into fall Production release next year user conference Department would be owners of the data to provide for Pilot Once we decide if we want to participate then we can figure out what needs to be done

[TracyLinder]

Debrief Notes

• Meeting recording is here

Do we want to participate in this pilot?

TL;DR - Yes

Key Takeaways:

• We want to participate insofar as we have existing data that can be manipulated for this pilot.

  • Currently we have event data that would be useful for this pilot. Andrew is the SPOC and will work with ESRI.

• We don't currently have useful road closure data sets. We will in the future when RC3DP is implemented.

  • Include ESRI in the data schema discussions for RC3DP. They may have great input other than the scope of this pilot.

• Approach this as a project?

  • No. We can't prioritize their pilot as a TPW-DTS project priority.

• Who in DTS will be assigned to manage/lead?

  • Andrew would be SPOC for event data.

• Who will/should comprise the pilot team?

  • The data SPOC for the data sets we're open to publishing for the pilot.

Thoughts/Discussion:

JH:

• Pro: Getting more data published
• Pro: Lots of flexibility w/ ESRI solutions and tools. She used them to produce/maintain special events data when she was with ATD/OSE.
• Pro: We have licensing at the city. It's already possible to create web tools? You need people to maintain that platform.
• This could be exciting and if it works it would be amazing. There's no guarantee this effort will produce results.
• We can go to ESRI's website to download the schema and assess it for compatibility with our current event data.

AA:

• Current python scripts pulls AMANDA event data, pulled in / updated weekly.
• The event geometry is a polygon that's also a line. Want to convert all to lines to be ingested by map providers. Current geometry is funky. Currently based off street segment data.
• Take data we already have, grab the intersecting segments, then apply the extra fields for the pilot. That shouldn't be too difficult.
  • possibly low effort 👆🏼
• JJ: Data model is this street from here to here. AA: Yes for maps created for specific events.
• Showed special events map. 💡Maybe the data ESRI ingests could be the data layer feeding this map. This data is refined with closure times and partial-vs-full closures.
  • JJ & AA discussed & reviewed this data set as a deliverable for the pilot. @andrewshensky would have to go into more detail; it went over my head.
• AA thinks we have a couple of current sources we could provide for the pilot.
• The big lift is getting data to AGOL. Push data to ... rather than ... ? Crazy formatting could require more effort, but unlikely to be that crazy.

DD

• Don't stress ourselves out by creating a new project. So use what we have, then review the scalability to the other data sets.
• Only use DTS resources for data sets that would provide additional value to TPW/COA.

CT

• Likes idea of offering our event data. We are confident in it's integrity and is being actively maintained.
• Want to be able to notify Waze users when lights are malfunctioning. Doesn't think ESRI is the solution right now, but wondering if this effort would be useful for the ESRI project.
  • D said involve them in the conversation b/c they're probably aware of solutions or mapping experiences.

KL

TL

• We don't have event type data for other ROW closures. Do we want to use our resources to build data sets with the closure data we have for this pilot?
  • AA: Definitely start w/ events.
  • AA: What MOPED data could be used? @ChristinaTremel can provide input on this data as a resource. There are more & more MOPED use cases being published, so publishing it on ARCGISOL would be cool.
• Is the ROWPACT data a candidate?
  • JH: It's probably too generalized to be used for this.
  • AA: We should use the maps Zach is making.

AR

• You can deploy solutions using AGOL. He can show this to AA.
  • Both Andrews discussed this; see recording towards the end.

[TracyLinder]

Email to Scott (ESRI) & Closing

Hi Scott,

Our teams met internally to discuss participating in the pilot. TPW would like to participate insomuch as we have existing data sets that would be good candidates for the pilot. Currently we have street event data that Andrew S. thinks is a great candidate. He will be your SPOC for the event data moving forward.

We discussed road closure data and determined we don't have any qualifying data to provide at this time. As mentioned we have an active project to purchase and implement a road closure data platform. This project will produce public closure data that would be useful for the content syndication. I'd like to get your feedback on the data schema when we get to that part of the project and I'll followup with you separately about that.

Please send us all the followup information we discussed; we're looking forward to it.

All the Best,

Tracy Linder, Product Manager