GIS in Action 2026

Effective management of utility asset data, including routine inspections and maintenance, is essential for the City of Salem. To address this need, the City utilizes Cityworks as its asset management platform. Specifically for Stormwater management, compliance with the City’s MS4 permit mandates that Stormwater field staff conduct inspections and clean a designated number of catch basins annually. This process, originally facilitated through Survey123, has been successfully migrated to Cityworks to enhance accuracy in tracking and reporting.
By integrating Survey123 webhooks, SafeFME software, and the Cityworks API, we have streamlined the workflow from initial data collection in Survey123 to final inspections and the creation of necessary work orders in Cityworks. Additionally, any changes identified in the field are promptly reflected in the GIS data, ensuring that our asset information remains current and reliable.
In this presentation, we will detail the entire process, emphasizing the role of FME and the Cityworks API documentation in achieving a seamless integration. Join us to explore how these tools enhance our asset management capabilities and support the City’s commitment to effective Stormwater management.

Replacing the Get Home Safe Winter Weather Center map application from StoryMap Classic to a new Esri app format sound like a simple process. Or does it??

Listen to the thrilling tale of how my efforts to migrate this app (all the while making it more accessible) were thwarted right and left (bugs, errors, issues - oh my!). Don't worry though, using my GIS community, my wits, and a little bit of luck, I emerged triumphant and now have an app that works!

In 2025, The Gartrell Group was contacted by BerryDunn, a national accounting and consulting firm. BerryDunn had a well-established and trusted analytical framework for assessing the quality, accessibility, and level of service offered by public parks. However, this methodology relied on legacy technologies, Microsoft Access and ArcMap, creating challenges related to manual project setup, fragile data relationships, and tools that were quickly approaching deprecation. As legacy platforms became difficult to maintain, they sought a modernization approach.
The Gartrell Group partnered with BerryDunn to modernize to an ArcGIS Pro environment. Development followed an iterative, sprint-based process with quality assurance embedded throughout. A dedicated QA team worked alongside developers to validate workflows, test scoring logic, and confirm analytical outputs against real use cases at each stage. The effort addressed core challenges identified by the team, simplifying complex workflows, enforcing data integrity across related datasets, supporting smooth transitions between office and field workflows, and enabling consistent, repeatable analysis and reporting. Processes were synthesized into one well-documented toolbox, eliminating the need for any additional software or tools. Through close collaboration between teams, the project successfully migrated a proven methodology into ArcGIS Pro, maintaining institutional knowledge while creating a future ready GIS foundation.

The City of Gresham’s GIS Department and Asset Management team partnered with the Parks Department to modernize park asset management by transitioning from limited asset visibility to a comprehensive, data-driven program. Through the development of a mobile GIS-based data collection application, staff are systematically inventorying park assets, capturing condition assessments, and integrating this information directly into the City’s enterprise asset management (EAM) system. This approach establishes a centralized, reliable dataset that supports lifecycle planning, deferred maintenance analysis, and investment prioritization. By leveraging mobile technology and system integration, the City is creating a scalable framework to improve operational efficiency, enhance data quality, and maximize the return on limited maintenance budgets. Ultimately, this initiative strengthens long-term stewardship of park infrastructure and ensures resources are strategically allocated to better serve the Gresham community.

ArcGIS Instant Apps provide a fast, intuitive way to create focused, intuitive web applications that connect people with meaningful geographic information. In this session, we will explore several Instant Apps designed to support community engagement and storytelling, including Attachment Viewer, Reporter, Sidebar, and Atlas. Through live demonstrations, attendees will see how these apps can be configured to share multimedia content, collect public feedback, and provide spatial context.
We will also go over key capabilities that enhance user interaction and accessibility—such as the language switcher for multilingual audiences, attribute filtering and feature search for streamlined data exploration, and configuration options that support inclusive and accessible design. Attendees will leave with practical guidance on selecting and customizing the right Instant App for their needs, helping them build engaging, user-friendly experiences that empower their communities.

Kittelson & Associates, Inc. worked with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) Systems Forecasting & Trends Office to develop an ArcGIS Experience Builder site visualizing comparative statewide transportation performance measures and trends. The site houses several StoryMaps, including a highlight on FDOT’s America 250 initiative visualizing historically significant transportation milestones in Florida.
This presentation focuses on how simple tools (Google Earth, ArcGIS Vector Tile Editor, StoryMaps, and WebMaps) were used to translate historical research into custom stylized spatial features. The presenter will discuss decisions around representing “lost” routes, developing clear visual hierarchy, and creating a cohesive, 508-compliant narrative.
While the technical workflow behind the America 250 page was straightforward, the interpretive and design decisions were not. Team member JP Weesner, an urban planner hand-traced historic Florida transportation routes in Google Earth based on historical research, and these routes were then refined by and incorporated into WebMaps and StoryMaps designed for public engagement.
Attendees will gain practical insight into how collaboration between planning and graphic design shaped the final product, and how thoughtful cartography and layout can elevate even the simplest GIS workflows into meaningful storytelling tools.

The Student Atlas of Oregon by the Center for Geography Education in Oregon has provided materials for teachers across the state to use in their classes for middle school aged students’ geographic education since 2009. In preparing updated pages for the upcoming third edition, a range of considerations arose such as the appropriate level of complexity for the audience, what kinds of datasets are newly available or now unavailable, and what generalization protocols are necessary when cartographically arranging data that was originally produced to be used at different scales. This presentation will cover some of the challenges in producing age-appropriate maps and some of the techniques utilized to convey these complicated real-world topics in a way that is conducive to students drawing their own connections about the world through these cartographic designs.

Indoor GIS is rapidly becoming foundational for space management, safety, operations, and user experience across campuses, hospitals, airports, and state and local government facilities. Yet many organizations struggle to move from pilot maps to an operational, trusted system that stays current. This presentation focuses on a practical, step-by-step approach to implementing and sustaining an Indoor GIS program. From defining business outcomes and governance to deploying data models, workflows, and integrations that keep indoor information accurate over time. We will focus on how to establish an authoritative indoor data foundation (floor plans, spaces, assets, routes, points of interest), select and standardize schemas, and integration with business systems such as enterprise asset management (EAM) and integrated workplace management systems (IWMS).

GIS provides a powerful framework for integrating spatial asset data with operational data streams such as SCADA systems, IoT sensors, and field inspection data. When combined, these systems allow utilities to move beyond static asset maps toward dynamic operational intelligence.
Until recently, Clark Regional Wastewater District had no integration between GIS and SCADA or field sensors. Accessing operational data was challenging due to SCADA security requirements and multiple sensor platforms with varying levels of vendor support. To address these challenges, District staff undertook a project to improve data accessibility and integrate operational information with GIS to support the District’s Odor Control Program.
Hydrogen sulfide readings from the SCADA system, which indicate the potential for odor generation, were linked to their respective monitoring locations and published as a GIS feature service. Customer odor complaint locations and chemical dosing rates from Lucity, the District’s Enterprise Asset Management system, were also integrated and published as feature services. These datasets, along with weather information, were brought together in an ArcGIS Dashboard to provide Maintenance staff with a spatial view of current conditions and trends.

How do we come to know a place? Often, it is through the view from a road. Highways and familiar routes shape how we see the world, offering glimpses that gradually form our sense of what a place looks like. Traveling familiar routes over and over again can create the feeling that we know the places we pass through. Yet those views are constrained, and much of the surrounding landscape remains unseen.
(in)visible Oregon explores this tension between familiarity and partial knowledge. Through viewshed analyses along Oregon’s major highways, the project maps what can—and cannot—be seen from the roads that structure our experience of the state. The resulting map reveals how small the visible world can be compared to the much larger landscapes that remain hidden just beyond the edge of the road.
The map invites viewers to reconsider how movement and infrastructure shape our mental maps of place. Some areas appear again and again from many vantage points, while others remain largely invisible despite lying close to heavily traveled routes.
This talk will share the ideas behind the project, the process of transforming visibility analysis into a map, and the tools to generate similar analyses elsewhere. By sharing this workflow, the project encourages others to explore what is visible—and invisible—in the landscapes they think they know.