Pangborn-Herndon 1931 Flight - Misawa, Japan to Wenatchee, Washington

This story map is about the historic 1931 flight completed by Clyde Pangborn (a native of Bridgeport, about 50 miles northeast of Wenatchee) and Hugh Herndon Jr., the first non-stop flight across the Pacific Ocean from Misawa, Japan to Wenatchee, Washington, detailing the flight from the planning to the legacy that is forever etched into the Wenatchee Valley.

As part of the City of Wenatchee's GIS Internship program, interns are tasked with creating a Story Map in ArcGIS Story Maps of any topic that relates to the Wenatchee Valley. This final project is assigned early on in the internship, but interns have the entire internship period (six months) to complete it. I left the internship early to take a position in the Tri-Cities, but I was able to finish the story map before leaving.

After considering a number of topics including the Missoula Floods and the Columbia River Basalts, I developed a curiosity about the history behind the Pangborn Memorial Airport, the main airport serving the Wenatchee Valley. After researching the history behind the name, I became more fascinated due to my general interest in aviation, and I ultimately selected this as my topic.

South Columbia Basin Irrigation District Web Map

During the first few months of my position at Franklin County, I was tasked with assisting the South Columbia Basin Irrigation District (SCBID) with fixing their online web map. This public-facing web map is a joint effort between Franklin County (+ the Public Works Department) and SCBID with various irrigation-related spatial layers inteded to assist the District and its clients/stakeholders.

This map is highly interactive and has numerous moving parts that turn on/off depending on which scale the map is zoomed to. Early on in the development of this map, a 'zoom-click system' was put into place to ease communication between those involved, as well as with the later documentation I wrote for reference at a later time.

Primarily learning & using QGIS at CWU, this was my first real-world experience using both ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Enterprise. I encountered a number of different obstacles, and went through numerous failures along the way, but I was eventually able to overcome the obstacles to achieve completion. As a result, I was able to establish a strong grip on ArcGIS products which has opened doors to working on other GIS projects during my time at the County, as well as furthering my GIS career as a whole.

Culvert Inspection Field Map

Click here or scroll down to see a description of the final product.

Franklin County has more than 1,000 culverts under roadways throughout the county with the purpose of maintaining waterflow and preventing flooding which could cause damage to county roadways which would be costly to repair. Occasionally, the culverts need to be inspected and maintained to uphold proper functionality.

A few years before I started, a survey team went out with the maintenance crew to inspect each culvert. The survey team would capture the location of each culvert while the maintenance crew would measure the length, diameter and depth of each culvert and inspect the condition of the pipe. Their observations would be marked on a paper form that would be filled out for each culvert, then added into a culverts layer back at the office.

Early in my position at the County, I was tasked with coming up with a way to digitize the culvert inspection process, integrating the existing Culvert layer to avoid having to remeasure everything. I knew right away using ArcGIS Field Maps would be the best option, but before I could start on this project, I needed to learn how to use Field Maps and the department needed to obtain an iPad tablet.

About a year later, I obtained a tablet and began construction on the Field Maps app. After overcoming multiple obstacles, receiving assistance from the County Road Administration Board's GIS Team, and attending a Field Maps workshop at the 2023 NWGIS Conference, I was able to build a digitized version of the paper culvert inspection form in ArcGIS Field Maps using the new Smart Forms feature.

In December 2023, I went out with a couple of maintenance guys to teach them how to use Field Maps for culvert inspections and to note areas of improvement that could be made to the form. I did end up finding a number of areas of improvement, and used Fridays to make these changes when the road crew was off.

---

The Culvert Inspections Field Maps form consists of two feature services that were pulled from the original culverts layer, which contained the coordinates, pipe measurements and condition report of each culvert. The original culverts layer was split into a culvert point layer consisting of the coordinates and pipe measurements; and a inspection record table layer consisting of the inspection records - both layers linked using a common Culvert ID field. Culvert IDs consist of the road number and milepost of where the culvert is located (i.e. 10000-3.40 = Road #10000 milepost 3.4).

Screenshots of the Culvert Insepection Form are shown on the left, and are in numerical order with the process detailed below:

1. This screenshot shows the offline culvert inspection map while inspections were ongoing. The culvert points in green and yellow have been inspected, while the points in red have yet to be inspected. The culvert inspection crew was good about updating the Status field, so it was easy to keep track of which culverts needed to be inspected, and it helped them determine which the quickest routes.
2. This screenshots shows the filled out culvert point form. The 2023 Inspection Status field for keeping track of inspection status while the New Culvert? field was for keeping track of which culverts were not previously located. The bottom fields of the form contain information and measurements of the culvert pipe, and are already filled for existing culverts (New Culvert? value = "No").
3. This screenshot shows the form in edit mode, and with the New Culvert? field switched on (value: "Yes"). As you can see, it triggers the Culvert Information field group to allow users to fill in the information for new culverts. The Date field is already calculated thanks to Smart Forms, while the Culvert ID field should already be filled out for existing culverts. For new culverts, any unique value could be entered, which I would go back and assign later.
4. This screenshot shows the list of options for the 2023 Inspection Status field value, which updates the symbology of the map shown in the first screenshot. Culverts that haven't been inspected yet don't contain a value, and this are given a red triangle on the map. Green means the culvert is in good condition, yellow means the culvert needs following-up (will be detailed in the next screenshots), and the X symbols mean the culvert is either inaccessible or it doesn't exist (or is buried too deep). The black circle means the culvert is now in Pasco city limits and is no longer the County's responsibility.
5. This screenshot shows the list of inspection records associated with the culvert point. This particular point shows that the culvert has been inspected twice - once in 2019 and once in 2023 (which at the time was done a few moments ago). The inspection record list is accessible on the Culvert Point form at the very bottom (not shown on any of the screenshots).
6. This screenshot shows the Inspection Records form in edit mode. The Culvert ID value matches that of the culvert point and the Date/Time field is automatically calculated. The values of the Inspector, Condition of Pipe and Issues fields
are set via pre-selected options known as domains. The next several fields are for maintenance/follow-up if it's necessary, which can be collapsible for culverts in good condition. This form is also where pictures would be taken of the culvert and submitted along with the field information.

In summary, culvert inspections using ArcGIS Field Maps took just over a month to complete, and I would say it was a huge success. I did a presentation on this project at the Local GIS Network meeting in Kennewick in January 2024.

Gravel Road Maintenance Dashboard & ArcGIS Experience Builder

Gravel Road Dashboard

In the spring of 2023, I was tasked with creating a public-facing dashboard for gravel road maintenance including blading and Magnesium Chloride (MgCl) application, with the purpose of keeping track of which gravel roads have been bladed recently, which roads are scheduled to be bladed and which roads have been applied with MgCl. The original dashboard used in 2023 was built using ArcGIS Dashboards, with a screenshot shown below:

To the left were list panels containing columns for Scheduled, Upcoming (roads to be bladed but not imminently) and Completed gravel roads. On the right was a list panel containing the roads that were applied with MgCl, which are only bladed once per year, and a disclaimer at the bottom.

Every week during the course of the summer, my tasks would be to obtain a list from the two road crew supervisors of the roads to be bladed during the next week - this would fill the Scheduled column; then login into the department's internal WinCAMS system and generate a timecard report of the roads that were bladed the previous week - this would fill the Completed column. Anything that was scheduled but not completed would fill the Upcoming column. I would use these lists to update the Gravel Roads layer in ArcGIS Pro and republish the layer once I was finished.

As I was performing my weekly tasks, I started noticing that there were some roads (like Palouse Falls Road in the far-east part of the county) were being bladed repeatedly. I created an internal column that I would put previous completion dates, in order to keep track.

For the 2024 gravel road blading season, I decided that I would use ArcGIS Experience Builder to create a new and improved version and decommision the existing dashboard. Shown on the left, the layout of the Experience Builder app is more or less the same as that of the dashboard, but I made two major upgrades to the structure: First, the layers used would be a feature service instead of a map image. This would allow me to update the data directly in ArcPro instead of having to republish the layer to the Portal. Second, I created a related Blading Record table that would document everytime a specific stretch of road was bladed, which would allow users to click on a stretch of road to see a list of every blading that occurred on that stretch of road.

In summary, switching the Gravel Road Maintenance dashboard to Experience Builder was a huge upgrade overall, as I was able to add a more advanced search feature that allows users to search by stretches of road, and to click a road on either the map or the list panels to display the pop-up of the specific road.

Using ArcGIS Experience Builder opens up the opportunity for developers to add multiple pages to a single app - which I wanted to utilize to create a single one-stop app for Public Works. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get the greenlight from manegement to launch the other pages I had created for this Experience Builder before I left the County.

Solid Waste Recycling Sites

Despite that, I worked with the Solid Waste Coordinator to create an interactive map for the Solid Waste Division that depicts recycling sites throughout the county. It was one of the last things I completed before I left the County, and I got the greenlight from the Solid Waste Coordinator to add it to the Experience Builder page.

This map is pretty simple - the full-screen map has a panel on the left that lists the recycling sites in Pasco and another for rural Franklin County. Like with the gravel roads, when the user clicks on a recycling site either on the map or the list panel, the pop-up displays which contains the address and specific description for that site.