2025 Big Sky GeoCon - Mapping the Future: Innovations in Geospatial Technology

Description:
Intended Audience: This course is intended for students who have some knowledge of ArcGIS Online and are looking to expand on their understanding of how to create interactive, online applications. Though it is recommended that students have some experience in developing online map applications, it is not necessary. No scripting skills necessary.

Software and Licenses: Students need to have their own computer hardware and an ArcGIS Online Creator user-type or higher with a valid login.
Course Modules:

• Module 1: Introduction to Experience Builder and a comparison with Web AppBuilder
• Module 2: Experience-Builder Basics and Creating an Experience from a Template
• Module 3: Exploring Style and Content Settings for Customizing Widgets
• Module 4: Configuring Dynamic Widget Interactions, Triggers, and Actions
• Module 5: Mobile Optimization for Varied Screen Sizes
• Module 6: Manage Your Experience and Create a Template

Summary:
This full-day course focuses on Experience Builder, highlighting how it is different from Web AppBuilder and detailing its advanced capabilities. You will explore the extensive list of well-refined templates that can be used out-of-the-box or reshaped and customized to fit the needs of your project. The course will dive into style and content settings for dynamic widgets, how to build an Experience from a template or a blank canvas and how to add widget actions and triggers to create an even more dynamic application for your target audience. You will learn how to optimize your Experience for mobile screen viewing so that users can access your application from a single, intelligent URL. Finally, you will learn a few tips for managing your Experiences and templates.
Course exercises will give you the hands-on experience you need to get familiar with the layout, customization capabilities and functionality that will have you quickly building your own Experiences beyond the classroom.
Pair this course with our Intermediate Experience Builder course to build an even stronger foundation in your Experience-Builder expertise and skillset.

Description: 
Intended Audience: This course is intended for students who have some knowledge of ArcGIS Online and have already taken Introduction to Experience Builder or have been working in the application builder a little and want to take their skills to the next level. No scripting skills necessary.
Software and Licenses: Students need to have their own computer hardware and an ArcGIS Online Creator user-type with a Role of Publisher or higher.
Course Modules:

• Module 1: Review Experience Builder Interface Navigation Tips and Tricks
• Module 2: Managing Data Connections and Data Views
• Module 3: Using Sections and Views
• Module 4: Configure Dynamic Content, Related Tables, and Actions
• Module 5: Using the 3D Toolbox and Elevation Profile

Summary:
This full-day course takes you through the process of building a highly dynamic application utilizing sections and views, related tables, dynamic content, 3D toolboxes, and more. Our introductory course was created to help instill muscle memory for navigating the Experience Builder interface, which is quite different from any of ESRI’s other application builders. With this new course, we take you through the steps necessary to build a high-level application that will impress your managers, users, and clients.
Course exercises will give you the hands-on experience you need to create interactive and dynamic functionality that provides flexibility for your users and information-rich applications.

Vital Ground Foundation retained River Design Group to assess the ecological restoration potential of two properties within the Cabinet-Yaak Grizzly Bear Recovery Zone in Northwest Montana, to improve native riparian, wetland, and forest habitat. A GIS-based assessment was completed which provided a framework for identification of restoration approaches. Spatial analysis included historical aerial photo analysis and quantification of landscape-level changes since the 1940’s, and LiDAR data analysis which identified relict habitat features. Restoration actions were recommended, and preferred alternatives were clarified through cartography. Two river and wetland restoration projects were constructed in Fall 2024 utilizing GPS-enabled heavy equipment in construction. 

The Geospatial Skills Camp for Rural Montana Youth, hosted by MSU, is an immersive, hands-on program aimed at introducing youth from rural Montana to geospatial technologies and communities. This project brings curriculum covering STEM and GIS technologies to commutes that don’t always have access or educators to instruct the topics. The curriculum includes seven labs that are particularly relevant to Montana’s rural communities and gives students the tools to then explore their own spatial questions during the camp, and in the future. The camps pilot program was successfully launched in 2024, helping to refine the curriculum for this year’s camps. Here is the link to the story map: https://arcg.is/1faOzX1 

Accurate, high-resolution elevation data for both exposed and submerged features in alluvial systems improves hydrologic and morphodynamic modeling. However, while most LiDAR and drone-based photogrammetry excel at capturing surface topography, they provide limited information about channel bed elevations below the water surface. We demonstrate a workflow to generate and stitch together high-resolution elevation data for both exposed and submerged features. This method integrates drone-based Structure from Motion DEMs with easily obtained field measurements and optical bathymetry tools to generate a single high-resolution, high accuracy topographic and bathymetric DEM raster. 

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have significantly transformed spatial data collection and analysis. This presentation will delve into the utilization of OpenDroneMap, an open-source software toolkit designed for processing UAV imagery. Attendees will learn about the capabilities of OpenDroneMap in generating high-resolution orthophotos, 3D models, and point clouds, with real-world case studies presented by Montana State University's Geospatial Core Facility.
Join us to explore how OpenDroneMap can transform your GIS projects, providing a practical and scalable solution for advanced geospatial data management and analysis. 

With many users across the continental US, the Terracon Data Solutions team provides tailored GIS
solutions for its many offices. A constant struggle is to maintain data standards when there is so much data being collected at any given time. Once it came time to discuss our next version upgrade, the team discussed ways to better efficiencies to speed up the process. We stumbled upon the idea that one needs to 'clean up' before moving from one house to the other. Taking inspiration from a past presentation, the Data Solutions Team and the Solutions Architecture team developed an Esri Dashboard that used Content scoring to demonstrate to users what data is worth keeping and what is not. This assisted the team in reducing content by nearly 50% in a brief period because users could see their aggregate scores and knew what needed improvement and what could be eliminated. We will discuss the creation of the dashboards, the user reception of the concept, and the lessons learned. 

Learn how you can use the ArcGIS JavaScript SDK's map and widgets wrapped as web components to kickstart your journey in building web mapping applications. 

Montana State University in Bozeman, MT is a 130 year old institution. In the spring of 2024, University Facilities Management launched their drone program. Combining high tech georeferenced drone mapping with past surveys, stories, drawings, As-Builts, it became clear that the old divisions of getting it right, i.e. GIS vs professional surveying could be used together to make a robust experience for contractors, engineers, planners, etc in getting it right. What is "here" is actually "here". Utility industry veteran, Adam Hallberg, Utility Coordinator describes this in detail. 

Imagery, big data, analytics, and the always expanding capabilities of the Enterprise stack make migrating from on-premise to a GIS Managed Cloud Services solution an ideal choice. During this session, we will review the top questions and concerns our clients have around making this move, how they prepared to migrate, and the benefits they have realized since. 

Wildfire’s destruction of homes is an increasingly serious global problem. Characterizing home hardening and defensible space at the individual structure level may reduce loss through enriched understanding of structure susceptibility. However, improved data and methods are required to accurately characterize parcel-level features at scale. Here, we present a remote sensing and statistical learning approach to representing single-structure susceptibility in Ouray County, Colorado. Using LiDAR and property records, we characterize fuel attributes in the built environment. This method uses open-source data and may be used by communities to develop policies and mitigation programs. 

As Butte looks to the future, the community is working to build a new reputation as a hub for outdoor recreation. Through this work, the need was identified for an interactive online map that residents and visitors could use to locate outdoor recreation opportunities. Recreation opportunities are managed by many different entities and there was no centralized location to find maps and information. This presentation will share how the Basecamp Butte map was developed to address this challenge. The map will launch in Spring 2025 and provides a comprehensive view of outdoor recreation opportunities in the Butte area. 

Paris Gibson envisioned parks as essential to Great Falls’ urban identity. This presentation showcases how ESRI's Community Maps Editor has been leveraged to update city park layers in ESRI's Base maps, creating detailed and accurate information for both residents and visitors. Inspired by efforts to update the City Parks webpage, this project merges historical appreciation with GIS tools, ensuring that green spaces remain central to city planning. Attendees will explore the technical process of basemap editing, navigate the challenges of data integration and decision making, and discover how these updates honor Gibson's vision. 

Montana is the fourth largest state by area with nearly half of its population living in rural areas. These residents often face challenges in accessing childcare services and a recent survey revealed that this drawback impacts their workforce participation.

Using data from public datasets and geostatistical techniques, we assessed the relationship between population density, land use, and authorized licensed childcare in Montana. This methodology identified areas with service deficiencies and provided a comprehensive understanding of the spatial distribution of these parameters. This finding is critical for optimizing the allocation of services and overcoming these childcare capacity deficiencies impacting rural populations. 

The number of school districts in Carbon County has shrunk from 70 to 7 over the last 50 years. Years of abandonments, consolidations, annexations and transfers have significantly re-configured the boundaries of these commonly referenced districts. Is it important to track these changes? Considering that several other special improvement districts including fire, ambulance and cemetery districts referenced school district boundaries during their formation, the answer may be yes. This presentation describes the way in which GIS was used to track school district transactions over time and explores the challenges that were encountered while attempting to modernize school district boundaries. 

Montana is modernizing their stream and waterbody mapping data, which relies on the current National Hydrography Dataset (NHD). NHD is outdated and lacks detail for local features like canals and small drainages. With statewide lidar acquisition nearing completion, the next evolution of water course mapping will adopt the USGS 3D Hydrography Program (3DHP). 3DHP provides a new data model, more accurate and consistent data, and connections to water reporting systems. 3DHP will enable hydrographic analysis and visualization for a broad range of applications. Get involved to help improve Montana’s water data. 

This presentation explores how drone technology and GeoAI revolutionize geospatial data workflows, from acquisition to actionable insights. High-resolution imagery collected by drones is processed into orthomosaics, 3D models, and other refined datasets. Advanced AI models analyze this data to identify patterns, detect anomalies, and inform decisions for applications like infrastructure monitoring. Emphasizing automated, scalable methods, this end-to-end process highlights efficiency, accuracy, and transformative potential, empowering organizations to address spatial challenges with precision. 

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the ArcGIS Arcade expression language, specifically designed for use within the ArcGIS Pro environment. Designed for GIS professionals, analysts, and developers, this class teaches you how to harness the power of Arcade to create dynamic labeling, symbology, and pop-ups based on data from ArcGIS Pro. Throughout the course, you’ll learn how to write and apply Arcade expressions to enhance your GIS workflows, allowing for on-the-fly calculations, custom visualizations, and the dynamic display of map elements.

Intended Audience: 
This course is designed for existing ArcGIS Pro users who are looking to expand their skill set with ArcGIS Arcade. It is ideal for GIS professionals, analysts, and developers who already have a foundational knowledge of ArcGIS Pro and are looking to take their capabilities to the next level.
Course Modules:

• Module 1: Introduction to ArcGIS Arcade
• Module 2: The Arcade Language
• Module 3: Categories of Functions in Arcade
• Module 4: Symbology with Arcade
• Module 5: Labeling with Arcade
• Module 6: Pop-ups and Interactive Content
• Module 7: Data Calculations and Field Updates

Summary:
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the ArcGIS Arcade expression language, specifically designed for use within the ArcGIS Pro environment. Designed for GIS professionals, analysts, and developers, this class teaches you how to harness the power of Arcade to create dynamic labeling, symbology, and pop-ups based on data from ArcGIS Pro. Throughout the course, you’ll learn how to write and apply Arcade expressions to enhance your GIS workflows, allowing for on-the-fly calculations, custom visualizations, and the dynamic display of map elements.
Whether you’re working with feature data, symbology, or generating pop-up content, this course will enable you to take full advantage of the versatility Arcade offers for tailoring your maps and layers. Practical, hands-on exercises will reinforce key concepts and ensure that you leave the class equipped to confidently apply Arcade within ArcGIS Pro to solve real-world GIS challenges.