TABLE OF CONTENTS

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 download an identical version directly from the computers in the GIS/Data Center (Option 2) or online from this wiki (Option 3). 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 to practice finding and obtaining data from online sources, follow the instructions below.

H-GAC GIS Census Data

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.

Most of the data provided on the H-GAC portal is not originally created by the H-GAC. Instead, the data is either aggregated from multiple municipalities up to the 13-country region, or clipped from the entire country or state down to the 13-county region. For this tutorial, we will download population and housing data from the 2010 census, which has been aggregated to census tract boundaries.

1. Using a web browser, search for "hgac census" and select the result as shown below or or go directly to: https://www.h-gac.com/census-data.
   
   
   
   
2. Under the '2010 Decennial Census Data' section, in the 'Ethnicity' column, click Download Boundary files.
   
   
   
   
3. Click the blue Download button.
   
   
   
   
4. At the bottom of your browser window, you should see the Census2010_Redistricting_Data_Shapefiles.zip compressed folder being downloaded.
   
   

H-GAC GIS Datasets

1. Using a web browser, search for "hgac gis" and select the result as shown below or go directly to: https://gishub-h-gac.hub.arcgis.com/.
   
   
   
   
2. In order to see all of the data available in the catalog, click in the 'Search data' box and, without typing anything, press Enter.
   
   
   
   

Feel free to browse through the available data and filter by categories on the left. When you are finished exploring, you will download major roads data.

1. At the top of the website, in the 'Search" box, type "roads" and click the HGAC Major Roads result directly beneath the search box.
   
   
   
   
2. Click Download > Full Dataset Shapefile.
   
   
   
   
3. At the bottom of your browser window, you should see the HGAC_Major_Roads-shp.zip compressed folder downloaded.
   
   

Houston METRO Downloads

The Houston METRO website provides GIS data for the public transit system in Houston provided by METRO. While the same data is also available on the H-GAC Regional Data Hub, it is often 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:

1. Using a web browser, search for "houston metro gis" and select the result as shown below or go directly to: https://www.ridemetro.org/Pages/DigitalAssets.aspx.
   
   
   
   
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the webpage and select Get Started.
   
   
   
   
3. From the left "Featured collections" dropdown select Transit Data Files.
   
   
   
   
4. Select Shape files.
5. Click Bus Routes - shape file (do not check the box) and click the blue Download button.
6. Click outside of the download pop-up window to close it.
7. Click Bus Stops - shape file (do not check the box) and click the blue Download button.
8. At the bottom of your browser window, you should see both the RS2688_Bus Stops - shape file.zip and RS2689_Bus Routes - shape file.zip compressed folders downloaded.
   
   

COHGIS

Though it is not used in this course, the COHGIS (City of Houston GIS) Data Hub provides over 200 data sets including administrative boundaries, amenity locations, transportation routes, crime, and flooding and is available at: https://cohgis-mycity.opendata.arcgis.com/. (Whenever you see a URL that ends in opendata.arcgis.com, you will know that you are visiting a standard ArcGIS Hub, which are commonly used by government entities for sharing GIS data.)

The Harris County Appraisal District (HCAD) Public Data website is another great source of Houston data related to land parcels and other boundaries and is available at: https://hcad.org/hcad-online-services/pdata/. 

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 the Documents button.
   
   
   
   
   
2.  In the Navigation pane on the left side of File Explorer, double-click GISData (\\smb.rdf.rice.edu\research\FondrenGDC) (O:) > GDCTraining > 1_Short_Courses > Introduction_to_GIS_Data_Management > Downloads.
3. To create a personal copy of the tutorial data, select all four zip folders and drag them into the Downloads folder IntroTutorialData folder onto the Desktop.
   
   
   
   
4. 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.

Any time throughout the tutorial that you see reference to the file path C:\Users\gistrain\Desktop\IntroTutorialData, you will need to substitute it with the file path you have just selected.

The following step-by-step instructions and screenshots are based on the Windows 10 operating system with ArcGIS Pro for Desktop 2.5.0 software with an Advanced license. If your personal system configuration varies, you may experience minor differences from the instructions and screenshots.

Preparing the Downloaded Data for ArcGIS Pro

Once you have downloaded the Bus Stops and Bus Routes data from Houston METRO and the Census and Major Roads data from HGAC, you should be able to find the data files in your Downloads folder. You will see that all the files are zipped, meaning they contain compressed files of data within them (you can tell a file is zipped when the file type column reads “Compressed (zipped) Folder”). You will need to unzip the folders to be able to see the data inside them. To do that:

1. Open the Downloads folder.
2. Ensure that you see the following zipped folders in your Downloads folder.

   1. Census2010_Redistricting_Data_Shapefiles

   2. HGAC_Major_Roads-shp

   3. RS2688_Bus Stops - shape file

   4. RS2689_Bus Routes - shape file

3. Select all four folders.
4. Right-click any of the selected folders and select 7-Zip > Extract here. If you do not have 7-Zip, you will need to right-click each file individually and select Extract all, then click Extract.

Your data should now be in a file folder in its decompressed format and ready to be brought into ArcGIS Pro.

Creating a New Project in ArcGIS Pro

1. From the Start menu, launch ArcGIS Pro.
2. When ArcGIS Pro opens, under the New section, click the Map project template.
3. In the 'Create a New Project' window, for Name, type "Intro".
4. For Location, click the Browse... button to the right.
5. In the 'Select a folder to store the project.' window, click Computer in the left column and click Desktop in the right column and click OK.
   
   
   
   
6. In the 'Create a New Project' Window, click OK.
7. Maximize the ArcGIS Pro application window

Managing GIS Data

1. In the Catalog pane, under the Folders section, click the arrow to expand Folders > Intro > Intro.gdb. You will notice there is no data in the geodatabase. Over the next few steps, we will import the data we downloaded online from the Downloads folder to our Project Geodatabase.

Connecting to a folder

1. In the Catalog pane, right-click Folders and select Add Folder Connection.
2. In the left column, click Computer. In the right column, single click on Downloads. Click OK.
3. In the Catalog pane, expand Downloads.
4. Fully expand all folders and geodatabases in the Downloads folder.
5. Your 'Folders' directory should look like the below.
   

Importing and Exporting Data in the Project Geodatabase

For this tutorial, we are working with vector data which is a spatial data format that uses points, lines, and polygons to represent real features on the Earth's surface. Vector data is ideal for discrete themes with definite boundaries. A Feature Class is a vector storage format that represents a homogeneous collection of common features. There are two types of Feature Classes: a Shapefile feature class and a Geodatabase feature class. A Shapefile feature class is an open source format. Its file extension is .shp and its icon is green. A Geodatabase feature class is an Esri proprietary format. A Geodatabase feature class must be stored inside a Geodatabase (.gdb) and its icon is white. To better organize our project, we will import data into our Project Geodatabase.

1. HGAC_Major_Roads, HGAC_tracts, METRO_BusRoutes, and METRO_BusStops are Shapefile feature classes, so these Shapefiles require a specific method to be imported into the Project Geodatabase. In the Catalog pane, right-click on HGAC_tracts.shp and select Export > Feature class(es) to geodatabase.
   
   
   
   
2. In the Geoprocessing pane, click the Folder button to the right of the blank input features drop-down.
3. In the 'Input Features' window, click Project > Folders > Downloads in the right column and click Open.
4. Find and select HGAC_Major_Roads.shp and click OK. 
5. Repeat steps 2-4 for METRO_BusRoutes.shp and METRO_BusStops.shp.
6. In the Geoprocessing pane, accept default settings as shown below and click Run. 
   
   
   
   
7. Navigate back to the Catalog pane by selecting the Catalog tab at the bottom of the Geoprocessing pane.
8. In the Catalog pane, right-click on Intro.gdb and select Refresh. 
9. Expand Intro.gdb. Your Project Geodatabase should now contain four Geodatabase feature classes: HGAC_Major_Roads, HGAC_tracts, METRO_BusRoutes, and METRO_BusStops.
   
   
   
   
10. In the Catalog pane, in the Folders section, right-click on Downloads and select Remove.