Webmap case study in SAS Visual Analytics

[#1]

Additional authors of this article include Mary Hall, Reddy Valisekkagari, and Beena Mathew (SAS) as well as Anita Nash (FDEP).

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) ensures the safety and preservation of the state’s rivers, lakes, and coastlines, which they organize into geographic regions called “waterbodies,” also referred to as “WBIDs” (or waterbody IDs). FDEP invests heavily in Esri services, making much of their data on waterbodies publicly available through Esri webmaps and feature service layers.

Since May 2017, FDEP has been using SAS Visual Analytics (VA) to help identify and prioritize waterbodies that have bacterial impairments and that are most exposed to the public.  With SAS Visual Analytics 7.4, it can search, filter, and navigate through the affected regions, displaying them in VA maps. But the Department was unable to fully leverage its existing investment in Esri feature services.

Recently, SAS explored upgrading the FDEP VA dashboard from version 7.4 to 8.3, utilizing the SAS open-source Geowebmap to bring FDEP’s webmaps and feature service layers directly into its VA reports.

Using Esri’s webmap builder, SAS composed collections of dense, toggleable layers of data provided by FDEP ranging from cattle herds to boat ramps.

An FDEP webmap in the ArcGIS map builder with 6,666 waterbodies and thousands of points of interest across a selection of layers.

By adding a data-driven content control to a VA 8.3 report, SAS joined FDEP’s waterbody data to Esri webmaps using the following steps.

1. Drop the data-driven content control in the VA 8.3 report.
2. Set the value of its “Web Content” URL option to point to an instance of their hosted Geowebmap.
3. Append the following arguments to that url:

URL Argument	Example Value	Description
visualizationType	choropleth
geoId	WBID	The name of the VA report’s column containing the waterbody IDs.
portalItemId	[…]	The Esri ID of the Department’s multi-layered webmap obtained from the ArcGIS webmap builder.
featureServiceUrl	https://ca.dep.state.fl.us/arcgis/rest/services [...]	The URL to the Department’s feature service for waterbody shapes.
featureServiceGeoId	WBID	The name of their feature service’s column containing the waterbody IDs.
featuresMax	1	The number of waterbody shapes to be requested at a time.

The result is a VA 8.3 report with FDEP’s Esri features and layers driven by SAS VA 8.3 selection, filtering, and interactions.

Navigating waterbodies and points of interest using Geowebmap in VA 8.3

At the same time, it enables detailed manipulation of their existing feature service layers.

Exploring feature layers and backgrounds for waterbodies using Geowebmap in VA 8.3

Using the open-source Geowebmap as data-driven content, SAS Visual Analytics users can take control of Esri features in their webmaps and layers.

As SAS continues to investigate ESRI’s growing feature set, we would be grateful for your feedback, and, of course, we welcome collaboration on GitHub.

Additional resources:

• Geowebmap on GitHub
• SAS Cloud
• Esri webmaps
• Community article: Data-Driven Content: leveraging third-party visualizations in SAS Visual Analytics (part 1 of 2) by SAS' Renato Luppi.