Module 5: Add XY Data Points and Geocoding

 Module 5: Add XY Data Points and Geocoding

This weeks lab was about taking other data that we have not worked with previously and project it onto a map. When getting a lot of data off the internet it is important to know the best way to consolidate the information. The best way to do that is by using Excel sheets! Excel has so many different functions that can help a person understand their data and consolidate it.

The first part of the lab was learning how to take longitude and latitude coordinates of decimal, minutes, and seconds into the Excel table. Knowing how to make formulas in excel to make your job easier when you have a lot of data and not enough time. If you had to do the math by hand it would take you so much longer and would be less accurate. It is important to note that when you are including the data in ArcGIS Pro changing the excel to comma separated values (csv) is the best file to save as. Also, when projected that data it is necessary to know what projection to use. Much of the data used would be in WGS 84, but there are times to need to change it to State Plane or UTM.

The second part of the lab was about geocoding a lot of data onto a map. Having the background of the first part of the lab was important because we had to take a lot of data and consolidate it into the Excel sheet. Being able to get the data into an area that can be read in ArcGIS Pro. We needed to learn how to filter and get the streets, counties, state, and zip codes separated without having to do it manually. Also, we took shapefiles from a website and learned how to get the shapefiles we needed for our project. When taking the data in ArcGIS Pro we took the shapefiles we got and separated for Manatee County. This was done by using the Project Tool which helped us take the attributes out we wanted and save as a shapefile layer for our map. This is important because sometimes we get data for the whole United States but only need it for one state or county, i.e. Manatee County, Florida. For the data we got we needed to geocode the street addresses of schools. This was done from the data of the table we created in excel. There was data that could not be projected on the map and that was either because of the address being a P.O. Box or outside Manatee County.

After doing everything we needed to create a Web Map that everyone could see and that is included here: https://arcg.is/1080Tz