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The best option for getting the full GIS project experience is to download data from online GIS data portals. You will also gain exposure to the best GIS data websites for the Houston region. For this exercise, we will be looking at rivers and wastewater outfalls in Houston's Super Neighborhoods.

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Source Data from GDC

Super Neighborhood Dataset

Click the following link to obtain the Super Neighborhood dataset: SuperNeighborhoods2010Census.zip

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Data from

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Source Websites

H-GAC GIS Dataset

The Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) is the 13-county Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Houston region. Federal legislation requires that an MPO be designated for each urbanized area with a population greater than 50,000 people (as established by the U.S. Census Bureau) in order to conduct long-range metropolitan transportation planning and be eligible for Federal funding for transportation projects. Their mission to carry out metropolitan transportation planning means that MPOs are a great source of data on topics such as demographics, employment, land use, transportation, and environmental conditions and most of these topics are well-suited towards GIS analysis.

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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: httphttps://www.gishub-h-gac.hub.arcgis.com/rds/gis-data/gis-datasets.aspx.
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2. Under the Dataset Categories section, click the Hydrologic button to filter the results by subject.
3. Under the Datasets section, click Major Rivers.
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4. Click Download Dataset.
5. Click the blue Download button.
6. Back on the H-GAC portal, close the Major Rivers window, and under the Dataset Categories section, click the Water Quality button.
7. Under the Datasets section, click Wastewater Outfalls.
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8. Click Download Dataset.
Click the blue Download button.
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10. In the "Search data" box, type in "Major Rivers" without pressing "Enter". 
    
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11. The option "HGAC Major Rivers" should pop up - click on this option.
    
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12. Now, we can see the rivers depicted on a map in the Houston-Galveston area. We want to access this data in the form of a shapefile. To do this, click the "Download" button on the left side of the screen, as shown below. 
    
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13. Scroll down on the left pane to the "Shapefile" tab. Click "Download Options" followed by "Download file previously generated on ...". A zip file titled "HGAC_Major_Rivers.zip" should be downloaded. 
    
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H-GAC GIS Dataset

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

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1. On the Desktop, click the File Explorer icon located on the Windows Taskbar on the bottom left corner of the screen. 
2. In the left column, click My Computer. In the right column, double-click C:/ > Users > gis.ADRICE > Downloads. Ensure that you see the following zipped folders in your Downloads folder.
   
   
   1. SuperNeighborhoods2010Census
   2. HGAC_Major_Rivers
   3. Wastewater_Outfalls
      
      
3. Select all three folders.
4. Right-click any of the selected folders and select 7-Zip > Extract Here. Your data is in a file folder in its decompressed format and ready to be brought into ArcGIS Pro.

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