Basic Mapping With ArcGIS Online

The dominant company in geographic information systems is ESRI, which was one of the pioneers of GIS in the late 1960s. If you do GIS professionally, you will probably be working with ESRI software.

ESRI's cloud-based service is called ArcGIS online, which is available by subscription, and which can be used to create online geospatial apps and maps.

The ArcGIS Online Map Viewer web app makes web map creation comparatively easy by providing online access to a flexible visualization and analysis tool, as well as easy access to both public and proprietary data.

Figure
The ArcGIS Online Map Viewer

This tutorial will cover the creation of basic maps in ArcGIS Online.

Getting ArcGIS Online

You can get an ArcGIS Online account in one of three ways.

Enterprise Account

If your school or employer has an ESRI site license, you can get an account from your instructor or IT staff. The video below shows how to log in to ArcGIS Online using an enterprise account such as that used at The University of Illinois.

Enterprise Account Login

ArcGIS For Personal Use

If you do not have access to an enterprise account, you can purchase an annual license from ESRI for personal use (as opposed to commercial use) for $100 that includes not only authorization for their desktop products (ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro) but also ArcGIS Online. The ArcGIS Online subscription comes with a limited number of credits, although you can purchase more as needed for a significant cost.

Figure
ArcGIS For Personal Use

Free Public Accounts

ESRI provides free public accounts that provide basic capabilities to give you a feel for what ArcGIS Online can do. Public accounts include no proprietary data or analysis tools, which limits users to creating simple maps.

Figure
ArcGIS Online Public Accounts

Single Symbol Point Maps

Creating a CSV File In Excel

To create a map, you need geospatial data.

Geospatial data is what is where. Geospatial data indicates what things or characteristics (what) are at specific locations on the surface of the earth (where).

Comma-separated variable (CSV) files are spreadsheet files that can be saved from any desktop spreadsheet program (like Excel) or from Google Sheets. CSV files that contain addresses or latitudes / longitudes can be imported as layers in ArcMap.

Latitudes and longitudes are numeric coordinates that can be used to uniquely identify locations on the surface of the earth. Latitude is the angular distance of a point north or south of the equator, and longitude is the angular distance of a point east or west of the prime meridian in England.

This video shows the creation of a CSV file in Excel of historic houses of worship near the U of I campus in Urbana-Champaign, IL.

  1. Create a new Blank Workbook in your spreadsheet program.
  2. Add the headers to each column that represent the attributes you want to map for each location. Add columns titled Latitude and Longitude where you will provide the coordinates for the locations
  3. Right click on locations in Google Maps to find the latitudes and longitudes of locations that you can add to your spreadsheet.
  4. When you are done, Save As the file as a CSV (Comma delimited) file under a meaningful name.
Creating a CSV file in Excel

Creating a Feature Service

Creating a web map from your own data in ArcGIS Online involves two steps:

Feature services are streams of vector data (points, lines, and polygons) that can be accessed by GIS software directly through application programmer interfaces (APIs).

Figure
Architecture of a web map in ArcGIS Online

To create a new feature service and web map from the CSV file you created above:

  1. From your ArcGIS Online home page, select Content and click New Item.
  2. Click Your device and select the CSV file you created above (2021-chambana-worship.csv).
  3. Click ...create a hosted feature layer and add it to the map (Next)
  4. Under Fields, check to make sure your fields have come in with appropriate types. Numeric values (like latitude and longitude) should be Double (double precision floating point) (Next).
  5. Under Location settings, check to make sure your latitude and longitude fields are selected. If you misspelled one of these, they may not appear by default and you will need to change them (Next).
  6. Modify the Title of the new feature layer to something meaningful (Minn 2023 Chambana Worship) Note that some characters like dashes cannot be used in layer titles.
  7. Save to create the feature service.
Creating a feature service from a CSV file with lat/long in ArcGIS Online

Mapping the Points

  1. From your ArcGIS Online Content page, select the feature layer you want to map and select Open in Map Viewer.
  2. Change the styling for the points.
  3. Label the points.
  4. You may want to try different Basemap to something unobtrusive if the base map conflicts visually with the points (Light Gray Canvas).
  5. Save the map under a meaningful name. This can (and probably should) be the same as your hosted feature layer (Minn 2023 Chambana Worship).
  6. Click Share map and share the map with Everyone (public) (3:28).
  7. Copy the URL from the location bar to get a shared link that you can e-mail or submit for an assignment.
Creating a single symbol point map from point feature service in ArcGIS Online

Thematic Point Maps

A thematic map is a map "used to display the spatial pattern of a theme or attribute" (Slocum et al. 2009, 1).

With point maps, the types of symbols (styling) used for points can be used to convey additional information about the locations represented by the points.

Variables

An advantage of GIS is the ability to change the styling of points based on fields (variables) in the data used to create the map. There are two broad types of fields (variables):

The video below demonstrates adding fields to the spreadsheet created above and then uploading the CSV file to ArcGIS Online to create a hosted layer.

Adding categorical and quantitative variables to the CSV file

Categorical Pictogram Maps

A categorical variable can be used in ArcGIS Online to specify the types of pictograms used at each point.

Pictograms are small images that have literal or metaphorical relationships to the locations being mapped.

  1. From your ArcGIS Online Content page, select the feature layer you want to map and select Open in Map Viewer.
  2. Style the layer features by the categorical variable.
  3. Check the Legend to make sure it displays the desired labels.
  4. Label the points.
  5. You may want to try different Basemap to something unobtrusive if the base map conflicts visually with the points (Light Gray Canvas).
  6. Save the map under a meaningful name (Minn 2023 Chambana Worship Tradition).
  7. Click Share map and share the map with Everyone (public).
  8. Copy the URL from the location bar to get a shared link that you can e-mail or submit for an assignment.
Mapping a categorical variable from a CSV file

Quantitative Bubble Maps

For quantitative variables, ArcGIS Online can be used to create graduated symbol (bubble) maps.

  1. From your ArcGIS Online Content page, select the feature layer you want to map and select Open in Map Viewer.
  2. Change the styling to a bubble map.
  3. Label the points.
  4. You may want to try different Basemap to something unobtrusive if the base map conflicts visually with the points (Light Gray Canvas).
  5. Save the map under a meaningful name (Minn 2023 Chambana Worship Capacity).
  6. Click Share map and share the map with Everyone (public).
  7. Copy the URL from the location bar to get a shared link that you can e-mail or submit for an assignment.
Mapping a quantitative variable from a CSV file

Mapping Shapefiles

Many organizations, including federal, state and local governments, make data available to the public as zipped shapefiles, which use an old file format developed by ESRI in the 1990s that is still commonly used for sharing data. A shapefile is actually multiple files, but shapefiles are often packaged as single .zip files for easier distribution.

For this example, we use a shapefile of neighborhood boundaries from the Chicago Open Data portal.

  1. Download the zipped shapefile to your local storage drive (Boundaries - Neighborhoods).
  2. From your ArcGIS Online home page, select Content and click New Item.
  3. Style the layer.
  4. Add labels, if desired.
  5. Change the Basemap and remove the place names (reference) if desired.
  6. Save the map under a meaningful name.
  7. Share the map and copy the URL from the location bar to share.
Mapping a shapefile

Living Atlas Layers

ESRI's Living Atlas of the World is a collection of open and proprietary data that is made available in ArcGIS Online. Living Atlas layers cover a wide variety of topics.

One disadvantage to Living Atlas layers is that many are are tile layers where the styling is predefined and cannot be changed.

Also, note that Living Atlas layers are often configured to be scale dependent and the types of areas shown depend on how zoomed in you are on the map. This can be useful when exploring data, but is less useful if your map is supposed to communicate information about specific sizes of areas (like counties or states).

This video demonstrates how to create a map with a Living Atlas layer of median household income.

  1. Select Map from your ArcGIS Online home page
  2. Under Add Layer, Browse Layers in Living Atlas and Search for the desired data.
  3. View the legend to see what the colors or symbols mean
  4. If mapping areas, change the Properties, Blending Mode to Multiply so you can see the base map under the features.
  5. With many layers, you can click on a region to display a pop-up displaying information about that region
  6. Save the map under a meaningful name (Minn 2023 Chicago Income).
  7. Share the map as needed. Note that access to some Living Atlas layers is limited to users with ArcGIS Online licenses.
Creating a map with a Living Atlas layer

Reopening a Map

Maps that you save are listed on your Content page in ArcGIS Online. To reopen the map for modification or revision, select the link on your content list and then Open in Map Viewer.

Reopening a map