Encapsulating geography in decision making

Every day, all of us use location intelligence simply by making our way to work.  Location intelligence is not a new capability of functionality or even a technology, but rather a term that encapsulates the use of a geographical context in decision making.

Location intelligence (LI) offers a huge opportunity for all of us to get our work used everyday as mainstream decision making tools.

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Converting ECW files into Raster files

ECW files are a standalone raster data format.  They are supported in ArcGIS however are read only.  To be able to edit the ECW (read/write) they need to be converted to a supported Raster file format.  The raster data can be standalone or held in a Geodatabase (GDB).  When converting to another format it is necessary to be aware of the limits of the file format. For example standalone files in a TIFF format are limited to 4g file size.  ECWs can also be converted to Raster datasets within either Personal, File or ArcSDE GDB.  Each of these formats has a storage capacity, with Personal GDBs having a limit of 2g file size whereas file GDB have a file size limit 1 Terabyte.  The ArcSDE GDB file size is limited by the DBMS eg Oracle or SQL Server limits.  Tools are available to make the conversion using geoprocessing tools.

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As more and more detailed data is available, how can you use this data in the most effective manner? Data is a cost, but it is critical to organisations looking to understand their business, their clients and their processes. Issues with compression, data clipping, usability and data transfer all contribute to these datasets being used ineffectively. 

This course is a proposed 2 days course, with half a day dedicated to working with your own datasets.This course will teach you how to implement best practice for using these datasets in their workplace, including:

• Optimal data storage - SDE vs File Geodatabase
• Working with raster catalogs and raster datasets within the geodatabase, including discussion on the different uses of raster data, and the most appropriate data types for these situations.
• Preparation of raster imagery for ArcPad and mobile applications
• Storage of Lidar datasets
• Best practice for display and editing of large vector datasets
• Best practice for geo-processing large datasets
• Optimising your operating system to work with large datasets

The course will also investigate the "terminology" required when writing tender documents to data vendors to ensure that the appropriate data formats are delivered for your specific purposes.

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