Our Work

Blue Raster helps you tell your story through interactive
mapping technology. Make your message clear, exciting,
and user-friendly for both mobile and web platforms.

3D

Exploring Commercial Real Estate from a New Perspective: Blue Raster Partners with AerialSphere

Selecting the right location for a commercial real estate project can be daunting, given the numerous factors that need to be taken into consideration. Often, this is done utilizing an overhead view of properties. Use of an Oriented Imagery Catalog (OIC) from AerialSphere and the Oriented Imagery widget now available from ESRI affords the opportunity to explore properties in an immersive 3D environment.

In this Commercial Real Estate application, Blue Raster:

  • Utilized Open Street Map data from ESRI Living Atlas
  • Configured multiple filters based on commercial real estate needs - submarket, available square footage, parking cost, and year built
  • Built Dashboard and 3D Scene elements to dynamically reflect filters applied
  • Integrated imagery from AerialSphere to show a point of view from a specific location or floor
  • Generated dynamic viewsheds to illustrate what can be seen from that location
  • Calculated travel time analysis polygons for multiple modes of transportation (both walking and driving)
OIC Oriented Imagery Catalog

Blue Raster configured an ArcGIS Experience Builder application to aid in the exploration of relevant commercial real estate data in a 3D scene.  Utilizing this application, real estate investors can hone in on the properties that meet their needs with specific parameters, and easily traverse the map to further explore the properties.  The integration of 360 degree imagery from AerialSphere provides a more immersive experience, and allows the user the ability to pan, zoom in, zoom out, and explore viewsheds from a given vantage point.  This can make all the difference in understanding the suitability of a site.

While this solution was originally developed to aid in the exploration of commercial real estate properties, this technology can be implemented for a number of other industries. Contact us today to see how we can use this technology in your organization!

Thanks to Kat Clifton and the team at AerialSphere for their collaboration on this case study.

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A Look at the Ohio River: Past, Present, and Future

Ohio River

Image is courtesy of the NASA Earth Observatory, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. The satellite image captured March 2018 flooding at the confluence of the Ohio and Wabash rivers.

Blue Raster partnered with The National Geographic Society, Lenfest Institute, and seven nonprofit newsrooms on a project entitled, Good River: Stories of the Ohio. The Ohio River runs 981 miles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cairo, Illinois, where it joins the Mississippi. It provides drinking water for five million people, and is also a thoroughfare of business, supporting jobs and communities. But it is also commonly cited as the most polluted river in the United States. For this project, PublicSource and six other participating newsrooms are producing a series of stories about the environment, economy and culture of the Ohio River watershed.

Good River Newsroom Partners

Ohio River StoryMap

To give readers a sense of how big the Ohio River watershed is, Blue Raster created a series of map graphics for the site’s landing page. The maps touch-upon topics including population concentration and impaired waterways. To create the maps, our team used data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and leveraged ArcGIS Pro to style the map graphics.

In the series, journalists share the beauty of the Ohio River and threats facing the region. To take readers on an interactive tour of the Ohio River, Blue Raster produced a StoryMap called Highlights of the Ohio for the project launch. The StoryMap features points of interest along the river and the watershed region.

The Good River News Partners will be publishing multiple stories from November 2019 through January 2020. To follow along with the project and share stories or questions, text OHIO to 412-528-6575. Additionally, you can follow #OhioRiverStories on social media.

Good River: Stories of the Ohio is a series about the environment, economy, and culture of the Ohio River watershed, produced by seven nonprofit newsrooms. To see more, please visit ohiowatershed.org.

 

To learn more about StoryMaps, you can start here.

ArcGIS Urban: Take City Development Further

Blue Raster Project Manager Megan Gottfried took her ArcGIS Urban skills to the next level at Esri’s "Deploying ArcGIS Urban" training. The training, held in San Diego just before Esri’s annual User Conference, included other Esri business partners, distributors, and advanced level users from around the world.

ArcGIS Urban is gaining significant attention in the GIS and City Planning & Development industries. The platform is a complete solution allowing municipal planning departments and development-focused NGOs to improve urban planning practices and decision-making on a city-wide scale. Users can use ArcGIS Urban to create 3D renderings of city landscapes, proposed buildings, and compare proposed site projects across key stakeholders.

ArcGIS Urban case study

Megan Gottfried used San Francisco as a study area for development and used ArcGIS Urban technology to assist the city’s urban planners with the growing issue of overcrowding. Key program features such as theoretical population and employment projections helped officials to understand the regional severity of the problem and work to find innovative solutions, while 3D building renderings with zoning and building setback details gave realistic building city scapes for user exploration.

San Francisco City
"Today's advanced GIS software can now model cities in 3D and integrate the full planning workflow, thereby dramatically enhancing efficiency and effectiveness."

- Scott Edmondson, Senior Strategic Sustainability Planner for the City of San Francisco

Other highlights of the training session included a product demo and an overview of the ArcGIS Urban system. in addition, Megan Gottfried was able to learn both the back-end and front-end ArcGIS Urban platform and provide clients with tips and best practices for deployment. Megan tested the many features of the ArcGIS Urban program and created sample projects & planning files for the San Francisco area. The event concluded with a Q&A session where Megan and her colleagues were able to ask questions about the program and troubleshoot some of their problems.

ArcGIS Urban Site Project

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Blue Raster is excited to begin offering ArcGIS Urban solutions for our clients. Are you interested in harnessing the power of informed planning for your business or municipality? Contact us today!

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Using Drones to Advance Turfgrass Science at Green-Wood Cemetery

Last month, Blue Raster’s drone capabilities took flight. In a new initiative with Green-Wood Cemetery, Cornell University, and a group of turfgrass experts from across the United States, Blue Raster is using drones to help advance the science for confronting climate change in an urban landscape.

The issue at hand is the rapid spread of warm-season invasive grass species that impacts the aesthetics of the cemetery. This results in adaptive preventative maintenance practices and high costs to keep the cemetery looking beautiful. The group is studying alternatives and strategies that put Green-Wood on the cutting edge of urban climate change mitigation. This research is also applicable to any urban parks, public gardens, cemeteries and golf courses.

"Turf Guy" Dr. Frank Rossi of the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University and Christopher Gabris from Blue Raster looking at high resolution drone imagery captured the day before

“Turf Guy” Dr. Frank Rossi of the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University and Christopher Gabris from Blue Raster looking at high resolution drone imagery captured the day before

To study the spread of invasive grass throughout the year, Blue Raster flew a series of drone missions over the sprawling 478 acre cemetery. When additional missions fly for comparison, the data capture will provide high quality imagery that will identify invasive grass for measurement and monitoring throughout the year. Visit our Facebook album for more of the amazing aerial pictures.

Green-wood drone pictures

Using Esri’s Drone2Map and ArcGIS Online Web Scenes, Blue Raster was also able to deliver some 3D products, including the iconic gateway entrance and some large mausoleums.

Drone 3D imagery of iconic entrance

Stay tuned for updates on the project, the analysis, and the results of this very exciting turfgrass study!

Explore the Indoors with ArcGIS

In July 2018, Esri announced a new product called ArcGIS Indoors. Expected to be available for widespread use this year, ArcGIS Indoors provides 3D maps, data, and location information for indoor spaces. With indoor maps, building operators can more efficiently coordinate resources with their facilities and explore their data to operate more competitively.

How does it work?

ArcGIS Indoors places people and objects inside buildings such as corporate facilities, event venues, education campuses, and more. The indoor mapping system uses a building’s floor plans, indoor sensor networks, and other data streams to build a comprehensive map of any indoor space. It is designed to work seamlessly with other parts of the ArcGIS platform, Powered by ArcGIS Enterprise and Portal, ArcGIS Indoors can be accessed and used for visualization and analysis with other Esri applications.

Examples of ArcGIS Indoors

Indoor Map of Campus

Workshop to Explore the Indoors

Project Manager Christina Phang and GIS Analyst Danny Cassiday had the opportunity to work with ArcGIS Indoors at a hands-on workshop by Esri in Redlands, CA. They learned about converting BIM and CAD into ArcGIS Indoors Information Models and extracting site plans from Aerial imagery to create complete site scale maps. In addition, they completed a technical deep dive into creating and generating routable indoor networks, as well as publishing web and mobile apps. The rest of the team are excited to see what Christina and Danny have learned!

Redlands collage

Get Started Today!

Let us help you deploy ArcGIS Indoors. Our team can assist with curating and preparing data for ArcGIS Indoors, authoring maps and scenes for ArcGIS Indoors Web and Mobile Apps, and configuration and deployment of Indoors Apps. We also provide custom solutions to extend ArcGIS Indoors, integrate it with third party systems, and customize the UI/UX (branding, colors, icons, images).

Learn more about how ArcGIS Indoors services and solutions can work for you.

 

 


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