Welcome to the 2026 GIS in Action Annual Conference hosted by the Oregon & SW Washington Chapter of the Geospatial Professional Network & Cascadia ASPRS.
As the GIS community transitions to Experience Builder, we have a unique opportunity to rethink how we present information to our users. Rather than relying on complex and static geoprocessing, one can use Esri’s Arcade language to transform data directly within the web map. This session explores how a county GIS department uses Arcade to deliver high-functioning tools while maintaining a lean, simple database.
We will walk through three levels of practical implementation, in increasing complexity. First, we will demonstrate basic data cleansing. We use Arcade scripts to standardize “messy” legacy data, such as fixing title casing and formatting soil classes for historical reporting. Second, we look at Arcade’s dynamic capabilities, with features such as buttons that dynamically generate URLs and text that displays feature attributes from multiple layers. Finally, we explore spatial relationships and calculations, making use of `FeatureSetByName` and `Intersects` to perform on-the-fly queries, and rudimentary sliver checks to catch topology errors. Attendees will see how these techniques reduce the need for intermediate "clipped" layers and redundant data maintenance. We will conclude with a practical discussion on the trade-offs of this approach, specifically regarding client-side performance and the balance between browser-side logic and server-side preparation.
