ESRI's Community Analyst Subscription Service

I attended a live training webinar titled "Introduction to Esri Community Analyst" today, and would like to see who, if anyone, in the Iberia Parish GIS Intergovernmental Agreement would be interested in this product. The live webinar that I viewed was recorded, and will be available in a few days on the Esri training website.

Esri is offering a free 14-day trial of the product. I think we should try it, but I'd like the participation by some of you in the trial for specific examples of reports that would be helpful in your work. Since it works in an Internet browser, anyone can sign up for the trial, which includes up to 7 reports and/or maps. The link to sign up for the trial subscription is here.

Community Analyst is similar in many ways to the SCOUT for Local Government product by Buxton. Community Analyst is a web based subscription product that produces pre-formatted reports based on the variables chosen by the user. It is aimed at professionals in government, economic development, and related fields, but it does not require a GIS background to effectively use it.

Community Analyst subscriptions also include an add-in product for ArcGIS Desktop. Local data in shapefile format can also be uploaded to the cloud Community Analyst product for sharing among users on the same subscription. Community Analyst can be purchased in three levels of functionality.  The subscription options and preformatted reports included with each level are listed in a PDF document here. These are the list prices. I don't know if this product is included in the state's contract with Esri yet. Esri products on the state contract are usually priced about 10% below list.

Some uses that I can think of for this product would be:

• Disaster damage planning
• Community Analyst can show income levels by census block, allowing planners to focus aid
• Disaster damage assessment
• The user can draw a polygon around a damaged area, then produce a report showing numbers of households, real estate values, as well as other information
• Disaster damage recovery
• Using the damaged area polygon, resources for recovery can be mapped, and drive times computed.
• Economic development
• Buying patterns, income levels, existing businesses can be analyzed and reports generated similar to the SCOUT product.
• Grant applications
• Quickly create reports with demographic data to justify grant applications.

So, if you are interested in viewing the webinar or discussing the product further, I'd be happy to meet with you. At this time, the GIS department is not budgeting for this application since we don't know how much we would use it. Feedback from you, the IGA participants, will tell us whether we need it or not.

GIS Committee Proceedings

The GIS Committee met on Wednesday, August 10, 2011 in council chambers. Herff Jones was elected Chair and Pres Marshall was elected Vice-Chair.

The committee decided to hold regular quarterly meetings. The next meeting will be in early November.

A short report was given on the progress of the GIS function according to the Implementation Plan. The Chair asked for a presentation detailing the progress according to the plan phases for the next meeting.

After the meeting, Vince Palumbo forwarded a slide presentation on state laws pertaining to public records by Ryan Seidemann, Assistant Attorney General. This presentation was originally delivered in 2008, but the material covered still holds true for GIS data.