Follow these steps to download ArcGIS Pro from ArcGIS Online. Optionally, you can download a localized version.

ArcPro is the latest professional desktop GIS application from ESRI and we are currently working across campus with V3.1.3. The icon above shows a generic image that shows you can work with a series of ongoing projects, create new maps, databases etc. and also access different formatting templates. ArcPro offers multiple ways to access, view and create maps. The default map view is effectively your working map, where you work with geographic layers to symbolize, analyze, and compile GIS datasets. A table of contents interface helps you organize and control the drawing properties of the GIS data layers in your data frame. The data view is a window into any GIS datasets for a given area. When you want to prepare a finished map for printing, disseminating or loading/transferring online, you use a layout window containing other map elements, such as scale bars, legends, North arrows, and reference maps. ArcPro is used to compose maps on pages for printing and publishing.

GIS or Geographical Information Systems, are online mapping software that allow users to visualise, import and analyse, different layers of data, usually in cartographic form. For most users, its about creating a useful location map, or digitizing your own content onto a background map or mapping relevant data you hold. For other users, who have access to different types of geo-spatial data, it’s more about how to import that data into a GIS and then map it out. GIS has lots of sophisticated analytical tools as well and are also widely connected up to external databases and map services such that much contemporary GIS mapping is web-based. But this material is just an introduction to GIS as a basic mapping and data management tool.

In the first manual you worked with prepared data sets but for most users, they just want to be able to create their own map layers (features) and the simple databases (attributes) that lie behind the map Today’s exercise will show you how to create your own layers with a small amount of associated data.

As more and more GIS activity goes online, with both the serving out of open access map layers and the increased embedding of maps within apps, ESRI have also been moving towards standardizing around a web-based interface called ArcGIS Online, or AGOL for short. What AGOL does is open up access to mapping and map layers for both expert and non-expert users alike. For the expert, they can send out and share layers to non-expert users who would not otherwise have access to GIS software so they can view and partially explore it. When you have an AGOL account - ideally set up through the university - it opens up access to a cut-down version of ArcGIS Pro, where you can do basic mapping. But, as importantly, it becomes a sort of open repository where you can access other pre-prepared map layers and other data formats, that you can import and use. There is loads of potential, and again lots of basic guides online, but in this short exercise, we are going to introduce you to the look and feel of mapping online, using AGOL, and basing this on publicly available materials made available online from the US and built around hurricane risk mapping in Texas. The application/context is less important than seeing how the tools within AGOL work, but equally, being able to understand through a real world example, also aids understanding. The exercise is quite ‘point-and-clicky’, but don’t rush through it and it will make more sense that way. It will also reinforce some of the skills you learned in Manual 1, albeit using a slightly different GIS interface, while also showing you how to create a shareable webapp and map at the end. At the end of the exercise, there are some acknowledgements, but also some links to other tools that help people see how AGOL works with other subjects and applications and you can follow up on these in your own time.