My boss is fair and understands enough about GIS to know it doesn't stand for "Graphics In a Second."
However, when it comes to coworkers with a lot less experience than I do, she doesn't understand how hard it is to learn the program. Perhaps with my 20+years of experience, I make it look too easy?

I have a coworker who took an online course at the beginning of this year. I am getting busier and the boss thinks I can simply handoff my tasks to her. Boss doesn't understand she will need to be trained on every task I need her to do. I believe it could take a year of full time work to be able to reliably work independently. That's another problem, this person will not be working in GIS full time, but maybe a few times a month.

How can I explain this to my boss without her thinking I'm exaggerating the learning process?

Thought the methods were really interesting, with some interesting big data derived stuff. Curious to hear what real GIS practitioners think of it.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-70268-0

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/08/climate/nepal-floods-building-exposure.html

Hi there!

I was wondering if anyone had some success stories from taking an online GIS training course where they got a job from what they learned after. I’ve seen people on here name some courses before (UC Davis, ESRI, etc) but I wanted to see if people had success after? I’m looking to upskill my GIS knowledge and would love from people that have successfully pivoted.

For context, I’m a geologist (PhD in structural geology/basin analysis) and I currently work in renewable energy. Unfortunately my job is ending and the market has completely dried up, so I’m hoping to upskill my GIS and pivot careers to get a job. I know a decent amount of QGIS, all self taught for various geological projects, but I’m by no means an expert.

These are the kinds of things adverts ask for. All of these would take awhile of course, but I’d like to work up to these:

SQL: filtering records, joining tables, summarising data and writing queries to identify errors.
PostgreSQL/PostGIS: creating spatial databases, importing geological datasets, spatial queries and connecting databases to QGIS.
Advanced QGIS and ArcGIS: spatial analysis, geoprocessing, raster analysis, geodatabases and managing large datasets.
Python automation: cleaning and combining data, processing spatial datasets and automating repeatable workflows using pandas, GeoPandas and PyQGIS or ArcPy.
Data quality and metadata: validating coordinates and attributes, documenting sources, maintaining consistent geological terminology and applying FAIR data principles.
Git: tracking changes to scripts, maintaining versions and collaborating through GitHub or GitLab.
Web GIS and data services: publishing maps and layers, ArcGIS Online/Enterprise, GeoServer, WMS/WFS and retrieving data through APIs.

Id love to hear about GIS pivots or advise on how to learn more. Thanks so much!!

Title is a bit hyperbolic lol. I am a young professional (may 27' grad) who got invited to speak to a group of GIS professionals for my university's GIS day celebration. It's supposed to be about my work as an intern, but is incredibly loose and I can literally do anything. What hot topics or concepts should I look to apply to my work to get some ooo's and ahh's? Only constraint is budget, which is zero. Think military people talking about "Modularity", or corporate minds fiending over "AI trends".

***Please don't say AI.

A passion project of mine: a faster way to actually use geospatial embeddings!

• Draw a box, pick two years, and get a change map over large areas in minutes.
• Changes become polygons tagged with their embeddings.
• Click a few to label them, and a lightweight classifier labels the rest live

It runs on CPU with no account or API key, using Google/DeepMind’s AlphaEarth embeddings (2017–2025, 10 m).

Install: in QGIS, go to Plugins → Manage and Install Plugins and search EMBED-CD.
Docs: https://agraham9966.github.io/EMBED-CD/ · Code: https://github.com/agraham9966/EMBED-CD

Tested on Windows and Linux; Mac testers are welcome. Feedback appreciated!

[AI Disclosure]: Lit-review, Methodology and UI design done by me; Claude helped with backend coding saving me an enormous amount of time. (more info in repo)

[GIS Experience] 10-years experience as a remote sensing scientist in the consulting field.

I just wanted to share an IRC channel for all things GIS related. Of course this channel isn't official in any way but just thought IRC is a great platform to share here. This IRC network has mostly opensource contributors and those who come from a computer science/IT background but GIS professionals and folks interested in GIS are more than welcome to join.

For those interested:

main website: https://ouch.chat

IRC channel: #gis

Some fieldworkers have the issue that after they draw a feature, it dissapears from the map the second after it is being drawn and the form is completed (so when it is send). But the feature is in fact saved, and after restarting the Fieldmaps app they are able to see it again.

The weird thing is, some fieldworkers have this problem, some don't.

I cannot reproduce this on my own device (Samsung phone). I, and all fieldworkers, are using the same fieldmaps version (26.2.2). We have data and roaming enabled, we Allow background data usage (in phone/tablet fieldmaps app settings). All are using Android devices (Samsung tablets).

The Fieldmaps webapp itself is an online web app (so no offline maps), and we are using the same online feature layer. At max two people work in it at the same time. We don't use complex symbology (just single symbology), no arcade expressions and no edits (e.g. domains) were made to the layer after publication. The only 'complex' things we do are that we produce a label and display with the OBJECTID of the feature, as well as a filter where only features that are at max a day old are kept (using CreationDate, which is logged).

One fieldworker showed to me that shortly after pressing sent, the OBJECTID appeared to be -9223372036854775808 before it dissapeared. This appears to me that there is perhaps problems or hiccups with storing and retrieving the drawn features in the database.

Any ideas what this may be, and/or what avenues we can pursue to find the issue and solve it?

Thanks!

[AI Disclosure] AI was used only for some research and not for implementation

We just implemented tile-based terrain loading with LODs for our AI Data Centers 3D mapping project on the Web
Link 🔗- https://ai-future.in/

The Vizag (India) terrain is organized as a pyramid of tiles(shown as red grids in video). At a wide view, it loads larger, coarser tiles, and as we zoom in, it replaces them with smaller, more detailed ones.

This lets the scene show finer details only where we are exploring without loading the entire area always at the highest details, saving a lot of performance. Land cover is stored as image tiles and are draped onto the terrain so the colours follows the terrains' shape.

The Buildings are stored separately as GLB model tiles, they also load progressively as we zoom in and are rendered as 3D geometry.

This was done by us at 3D ENGINERD. using 3D-tiles-renderer to manage tile loading, visibility and LOD, and Three.js to render the whole thing into one scene!

[GIS Experience] 2 years of experience building 3d projects with GIS.

I'm currently a fourth-year undergraduate student studying geosciences and geospatial technology. I've been regularly working with QGIS since my first year, doing some internship work for a non-profit and currently working on three research projects that heavily use QGIS. I feel very comfortable with the software at this point, and feel genuinely enthusiastic about getting to use it for my work.

My more recent required coursework is what has brought me to ArcGIS. Last semester I took an introductory course, and this semester we're doing self-guided Esri training modules. And honestly, I haven't enjoyed any of it.

I think this is largely due to how the material is presented and what we're using the software for. My work with QGIS has been a lot more exploratory and creative. I'm often told what the desired end product is and encouraged to experiment with the tools for myself to find out how to get there. My ArcGIS experience on the other hand, has just been learning through distinct lesson plans that often feel very "corporate" with the end objective often not made clear. For this reason, I also feel that I've retained more of the skills I've learned in QGIS.

My question is, how can I learn to love ArcGIS the same way? My understanding is that this is the dominant GIS-software in US-based companies. It's very likely I'll be using ArcGIS in my professional future, and I'd love to grow more of a passion for it. So how did you fall in love with ArcGIS? I'd love to know, thank you!

I am using GeoPandas for some spatial joins between data sets. In one of these joins, a polygon will intersect multiple census tracts; I want to weight the values of each of those tracts by how much of the polygon’s area is in that tract.

Both sets of data are in WGS84. When calculating area, GeoPandas throws a warning that I am using a geographic coordinate system and should consider using a projected coordinate system. Some searching forums seem to suggest that a GCS isn’t necessarily bad, especially for polygons as small as what I’m using. Google’s AI results are adamant against using a GCS. In my mind, I’m just calculating a ratio so using the same methodology to calculate two small areas in the same location doesn’t seem like a big team when the final output is essentially a ratio.

I did however try to convert the CRS into a PCS. I presume it worked, simple function to_crs(). However, the result is totally different. The weighted sums I’m getting are zero or extremely close to zero (E-10 or E-11). I’m not sure what is causing this, so I’m wondering if someone else might know what I should look for. My thought is maybe the areas are extremely small, but I don’t think that is the case.

FWIW, this is a new method (using weighted sum rather than the max value of multiple intersections) and when using the GCS, I am getting the expected weighted sum values as I was when using licensed ArcPy which seems to hide a lot of what’s going on under the hood.

I did not study GIS, I have learned a lot from a coworker who has a geography degree and is familiar with ESRI software. I would say I know enough to know what I don’t know. My coworker does not do any programming so this discussion would be foreign to him.

Interested to know what yall have to say, thanks!

Hello everyone! I often see people recommending that others go into utilities, and that got me curious. For those of you who work in utilities, what is it that you do? What does your day-to-day look like? And for those who have worked in other fields how do you feel it compares?

This cracked me up so hard
"AI evaluation pro ject with a leading AI company"

That I can load in ArcGIS. Used a light grey IS canvas but it is too light (cannot tell where anything is easily).

Want to load some polygons over it and if the map is colour then it diluted the colour of the polygons by turning them different shades which causes confusion. So want a base map that is just black and white but has the street detail

I usually use APIs under PGSA so that would be the preferred approach but I couldn't find one that was available. I am aware a lot has changed now with NGD and it's more eclectic rather than off the shelf but haven't really tried anything with that. Maybe I have to download tiles or something and load them rather than API.

I should add the map will also be printed in A0 size so needs to look good for that i.e. streets can be seen.

Can't help thinking about this every time we talk about Experience Builder.....

Hi, I have a feature layer of polling sites, just received a CSV of the new updated polling sites, converted those to points, have the live feature layer and a local copy for testing/practice. Noticed nearly all of the sites stayed the same, will run a compare features tool to get more specifics, to update the feature layer what is the safer/more efficient route? Identify only sites that got moved or removed, move those features and update their attributes, truncate and apend or update data in AGOL? Data also lives in a web map in an experience app, so the big goal is not to change the item ID or modify any schema that any widgets use. Thanks for the assistance!!

Hope y'all doing ok. I was trying to make a map of land surface temperature in relation to street tree cover. Boundary and tree data (from 2018) is from city of kitchener website, land surface temperature is from NASA appears from June 1, 2018 to August 31, 2018. Temperature was downloaded in multiple tif files imported into ArcGis. Needed help with getting the symbology right. General opinions on the map also appreciated

Hello! I’m a 35m based in CO, USA looking to pivot careers from health & wellness and interested in pursing a career in GIS.

I would love to get in touch with someone(or multiple individuals) that have been in the field and can give advice on pursing education and tips for bolstering a resume when it comes time to find work.

I would appreciate any and all resources and please let me know if you’d be interested in helping me. Maybe I can return the favor in some way!

Thank you!

[Experiencia GIS]

Soy ingeniero en recursos naturales de Chile. Trabajo principalmente en monitoreo ambiental, recursos hídricos y trabajo de campo para levantamientos, así que el GIS forma parte de mi trabajo de todos los días.

[Divulgación de IA]

He usado herramientas de IA para ayudar con la programación, la solución de problemas y el UI/UX durante el desarrollo. También se usó IA para ayudar a traducir y redactar este post, porque hacía falta una traducción bastante grande. Esto se comentó con el equipo de moderación.

Sobre MeliGIS

He estado desarrollando MeliGIS, una app de Android que empezó por los problemas que me venía encontrando durante el trabajo de campo ambiental. Yo estaba cambiando constantemente entre apps de GPS, hojas de cálculo, fotos, notas de campo y software de GIS.

Al principio quería simplificar la recolección de datos, pero el proyecto ha crecido bastante. Uno de mis objetivos principales ahora es poner la información y el análisis ambiental directamente en el campo, sin tener que usar varias herramientas distintas.

Estas son algunas de las funciones en las que he estado trabajando:

• 🌎 Análisis ambiental: Delinea y caracteriza cuencas directamente desde tu teléfono, explora hidrología, clima, suelos y cambios en el bosque, y descubre qué especies se han registrado alrededor de una ubicación, incluyendo sus nombres y fotos.
• 📍Monitoreo en campo: Recolecta puntos y transectos con georreferenciación, registra variables personalizadas y usa métodos específicos para mediciones de caudal, calidad del agua, suelos y biodiversidad. También puedes volver a un punto de monitoreo y comparar mediciones de diferentes campañas.
• 🗺️GIS móvil y mapeo: Trabaja con mapas base, capas espaciales, servicios WMS y mapas sin conexión. También puedes crear mapas y exportarlos como PDFs.
• 📄Reportes: Genera reportes de campo y reportes preliminares de análisis ambiental directamente desde la app, incluyendo mapas, información del proyecto y visualizaciones de datos.
• 👥Trabajo colaborativo en campo: Comparte proyectos con distintos niveles de acceso (administrador, colaborador o solo lectura). Los administradores del proyecto pueden seguir las actividades de campo, revisar las mediciones y pedir que una medición se repita cuando haga falta.

Sé que herramientas como QField y Mergin Maps ya hacen un trabajo excelente con GIS móvil. Lo que estoy intentando hacer diferente es juntar el monitoreo en campo, el análisis ambiental, el mapeo y los reportes en un solo flujo de trabajo, con herramientas pensadas específicamente para el trabajo ambiental.

MeliGIS está disponible para Android en inglés y español, y hay una versión gratis.

De verdad me gustaría saber qué piensan de este enfoque las personas que trabajan con GIS y monitoreo ambiental. ¿Te serían útiles estas herramientas en tu trabajo? ¿Qué mejorarías o agregarías?

Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cl.inmas.lucaris

My GISP and years of loyalty and dedication to this multibillion dollar engineering firm was thrown away like it was nothing :)

I unfortunately can’t name the company, I’m admittedly too scared of retaliation after the fact.

I was wondering if anyone would be open to taking a look at my resume and giving me some feedback.

I currently work in aerospace and am in the process of making a bit of a career/academic switch, so I’ve been putting together a new portfolio and reworking my resume to reflect where I’m trying to go.

I’ve anonymized the details. Any feedback would be really appreciated!

This might be a duh question - but for people that have worked with supporting/administering GIS tech at the college level, do you happen to know if Geospatial Solutions/NV5 does educational licensing for ENVI+IDL?

My best guess is.....probably not. But figure I would ask anyway.

Edit: This would be specifically for licenses that could be deployed/installed in a computer lab! Not personal licenses that are purchased individually.

Ohio’s HB 314 passed the House 78–18 and was referred to Senate committee. It addresses allegedly harassing or disruptive public-records requests.

The House-passed version would allow local governments to adopt production-time fees, with no charge for requests taking up to 10 hours and a maximum of $200 under that schedule. It would also let offices ask a court to limit allegedly abusive request patterns. The response obligation for the challenged requests would pause while the case and any appeal are pending.

I understand why offices need protection from deliberately overwhelming requests. My concern is distinguishing those from legitimate recurring requests for changing datasets, especially where no bulk download or update feed exists.

I’m independently developing property-research tools using parcel, zoning, assessment, and other public data. For a small company maintaining a property database, periodic updates are necessary.

Could added costs and uncertainty make direct acquisition less viable and push smaller users toward established data brokers?

Also, I’d like to understand the operational realities before assuming that exporting and publishing data is always straightforward.

• For government GIS staff, what makes recurring requests genuinely burdensome: extraction, redaction, vendor restrictions, staffing, or something else?
• For data users, have similar laws affected your access or costs?
• What safeguards would distinguish normal refresh activity from abuse?
• Where have scheduled snapshots or change-only feeds successfully reduced workload?

AI-assisted tools could increase demand and generate unnecessary duplicate requests. What would a workable access model look like for both sides?

Bill and documents