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This course will teach you how to download, evaluate, and prepare GIS data from public online sources and set up a project in ArcGIS Pro.

Obtaining Tutorial Data

There are three ways of obtaining the tutorial data. The best option for getting the full GIS project experience is to follow Option 1 and learn how to download data from online GIS data portals. You will also gain exposure to the best GIS data websites for the Houston region. If you have limited time or if any of the data provider websites are not functional, you may get a download an identical version directly from the computers in the GIS/Data Center or online from this wiki. Follow the applicable set of instructions below depending on the particular computer you are using.

OPTION 1: Obtaining tutorial data from source websites

If you choose to download the tutorial data from the source websites and practice finding and obtaining data from online sources, follow these instructions:

COHGIS Open Data Portal

The COHGIS (City of Houston GIS) Open Data Portal website provides over 100 data sets including administrative boundaries, amenity locations, transportation routes, crime, and flooding. For this tutorial, we will download population and housing data from the 2010 census, which has been aggregated to super neighborhood boundaries.

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1. Using a web browser, search for "h-gac gis" and select the result as shown below or go directly to: http://www.h-gac.com/rds/gis-data/gis-datasets.aspx.
   
   
   
   
2. Under the Dataset Categories section, click the Transportation button to filter the results by subject.
3. Under the Datasets section, click Major Roads.
4. Click Download Dataset.
5. Click the blue Download button.

Houston METRO Downloads

The Houston METRO website provides GIS data for the public transit system in Houston provided by METRO. For this tutorial, you will need the bus stops and bus routes data, which is included in the downloadable zip-file containing all of the GIS data available on the site. To obtain this data:

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There are two links in this section that look promising: METRO GIS Data Layers and METRO GIS Data. From the perspective of a GIS user, there is nothing about those particular link names that is helpful in deducing which link to download. After testing both downloads, we determined that the Metro GIS Data download contains only the METRO service boundary, while the METRO GIS Data Layers download contains 

1. Click METRO GIS Data Layers to download.

HCAD

Though it is not used in this course, the Harris County Appraisal District (HCAD) Public Data is another great online source that provides similar data such as highways, utilities, and water districts and is available at: http://pdata.hcad.org/GIS/index.html

OPTION 2: Accessing tutorial data from Fondren Library using the gistrain profile

If you are completing this tutorial from a computer in Fondren Library and are logged in using the gistrain profile, follow the instructions below:

1. From the Start menu, click Computer > gisdata (\\file-rnas.rice.edu) (R:) > Short_Courses > Introduction_to_GIS_Data_Management.
2. To create a personal copy of the tutorial data, drag the IntroTutorialData folder onto the Desktop.
3. Close all windows.

OPTION 3: Accessing tutorial data online using a personal computer

If you are completing this tutorial from a personal computer, you will need to download the tutorial data online by following the instructions below:

1. Using a web browser, go to the Introduction to GIS short course webpage at: http://library.rice.edu/gis-intro
2. At the bottom of the webpage, under the Resources section, click the Introduction to GIS – Tutorial Data link to download the tutorial data.
3. Unzip the IntroTutorialData folder.
4. Copy the unzipped IntroTutorialData folder to your Desktop or another location of your choice. Ensure that you note the file path of the location you have selected.

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Preparing the Downloaded Data for ArcGIS Pro

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