King County aims to address equity issues through its Equity and Social Justice Plan. To measure its success, it has identified 15 conditions and uses StoryMaps, Dashboards, and Instant Apps to present the data. The Determinants of Equity data tool has been successful, leading to the development of training sessions for users.
Climate change is a growing concern due to extreme weather events and infrastructure damage. Trees play a crucial role in mitigating this by absorbing CO2 and producing oxygen. High-resolution LiDAR data is used to create tree canopy models to track changes in tree cover, vital for environmental and economic well-being. An estimate of over 101 million trees in King County underscores the importance of accurate inventory and conservation efforts.
Today, we are excited to announce the availability of our new Districts and Development Conditions Report. We’re proud to deliver a good experience on phones and tablets in addition to the modern look-and-feel that you’ve come to expect from the new kingcounty.gov.
The King County GIS Center is featuring 19 women in GIS from several agencies, highlighting the broad applications of GIS. These women express their passion for GIS and how it has shaped their careers and perspectives. GIS professionals in various fields highlight the power and versatility of GIS and its potential to influence decision-making and create meaningful visualizations for communities. They underline the importance of staying updated with GIS technology and collaborating with colleagues and GIS communities. These women are paving the way for GIS enthusiasts and emphasize the broad range of opportunities in the GIS field across different industries.
The King County GIS Center embarked on a modernization project for its public reporting application, facing challenges in identifying its user base and their needs. Leveraging Microsoft’s Clarity, the team discovered key insights about user behavior, leading to significant UX improvements. The new Districts and Developments report aims to address user needs more effectively.
Understanding GIS software usage at King County, WA Given that ESRI is ending support for ArcGIS Desktop in 2026, the King County GIS Center needed to understand the migration of users from ArcGIS Desktop to ArcGIS Pro. Specifically, we wanted to know who is using ArcGIS Pro and how often they’re using it. Today we…
In March of 2019, King County Emergency Management submitted a request to KCGIS Center Spatial Services for a tabletop 3D model of the county to be used for community outreach and education on the variety of physical topography throughout King County and its challenges for emergency management.
As the most-used GIS packages, ArcGIS and QGIS are amazing and powerful for analytical applications. Despite their analytical strengths, they sometimes don’t quite achieve the quality needed for high-level graphics. It’s common for cartographers to prepare maps or layers of maps in ArcGIS, then export them for use in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator where more sophisticated graphic techniques can be applied to create finished map products. The King County GIS Center recently came across another need to go beyond the graphic capabilities of ArcGIS.
GIS & You readers know that I have written several articles in the past about using GIS for issues related to Equity and Social Justice (ESJ). A new article in Directions Magazine Insights on Location by Chris Wayne provides an excellent overview of Communities Using Maps to Enact Environmental Justice. Chris Wayne’s article touches many…
When I used to work as GIS Mapping Supervisor for the East Bay Municipal Utility District in California, I would be surprised when a homeowner would pay thousands of dollars to have a fire hydrant installed close to their property. What they were doing was to ensure that their home could be better protected against…
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