ESRI have just launched their ArcGIS for iPhone Application. I have tested it out and thought I would share a my first impressions. I conducted the test on my iPhone 3GS running software version 4.0.1 and with 1 to 3 bars of 3G signal.
Overall I found the app to be very impressive. You are greeted with a world map that you can instantly interact with by panning and zooming in the usual way.
The map tiles loaded surprisingly quickly- it took approx 5 seconds to zoom from the above view to building level with only 1 bar of signal.
Users can search for places of interest…
…but this provided the only disappointment with the map appearing to lack the required data.
Zooming out a little resolved this problem, but I am not sure how many people would think to do this. I suspect the problem is relatively easily addressed and may well be in future updates. Offering standard maps is not particularly innovative and not what the app sets out to achieve. The real innovation is the ability to view layers available from the ArcGIS.com website. You can, for example, use OpenStreetMap as the base map
or overlay additional information, in this case the Gulf Oil Spill Forecast:
Navigation to layers is straightforward:
I especially like the fact that users can add their own servers and also bookmark their favourite layers. On top of these features users can measure distances and calculate areas.
I found these tools to be extremely intuitive and I expect they will become an integral part to many field based introductory GIS courses. In a recent talk I attended, Jack Dangermond said that GIS software in the past was made to be complicated. With this application ESRI have demonstrated that GIS can be made to be easy. I think all who use this app both from within and beyond GIS with be genuinely impressed.
**I have just discovered a more in depth review worth reading from James Fee’s GIS blog.**
Over the last couple of days I have utilised some excellent free GIS resources. I have listed these and some others below.
Geospatial Analysis: This is the free online version of de Smith, Longley and Goodchild’s excellent book by the same title. It provides full coverage of current GIS methodologies. It also provides extensive information regarding the various GIS software available.
Analysing Spatial Point Patterns in R: 200 pages of workshop notes written by Adrian Baddeley. These provide extremely detailed and comprehensive overview of the spatstat in R.
GeoDa Center Tutorials: A range of tutorial material provided by creators of the GeoDa Software. I would focus on the R tutorials as the GeoDa tutorials are awaiting an update in line with the software’s latest release.
Spatial Stats. in ArcGIS: A preview chapter from the Springer’s Handbook of Applied Spatial Analysis.
CATMOGs: A hugely successful series of publications that cover the basics of spatial analysis, they have been written by many of the pioneers in the field. Topics include The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (Openshaw), Voronoi (Thiessen) Polygons (Boots), Spatial Autocorrelation (Goodchild).
CASA Working Papers: A shameless plug for my fellow researchers. The nice thing about these is you don’t need to be part of an academic institution to access academic research.
I am sure there are many others and I welcome your suggestions…
The UCL Geography Department has been officially awarded ESRI Development Centre (EDC) status. Paul Longley is the EDC Coordinator and as an ESRI (UK) sponsored PhD student I am the EDC GIS Specialist. This is great news as we were awarded the EDC status over a year ago (the first department in the UK to achieve this) but have not been able to benefit from the additional software licenses or award the “EDC Student of the Year” as logistical and legal problems have had to be overcome. These are all sorted and we can now crack on with cutting edge research using ESRI software. For those interested a report on our past year’s activities as an EDC can be downloaded here.
