Abstract

Best Practices and Tips and Tricks for GIS in Environmental
Track: Environmental Management
Authors: Kristin Hart

An Environmental Engineering Consulting Company handles a number of tasks across many disciplines in order to bring a conceptual development project through permitting and into existence. These processes require spatial analysis to help planners, archaeologists, biologists, and other specialist understand a proposed project area as well as figures to communicate this information in reports and presentations. Often times with complex projects, these processes are iterative and many sets of similar figures must be produced. Leveraging built-in GIS capabilities such as templates, dynamic text, and data driven pages greatly improves the ease and efficiently of creating, updating, and managing figures. Geo-processing and analysis tools along with existing GIS datasets, are a mechanism for quickly and efficiently getting a handle on a site before visiting and beginning detailed studies and consequently acts as a mechanism for focusing efforts and connecting relevant pieces of data through overlays.