Today is GIS DAY: Share your GeoSpatial Related Stories with the World.

Question

Today November 18 is GIS Day? #GISDay is more than a day, it's a global movement that celebrates the use of geospatial and location intelligence to solve critical problems, educate people, and serve communities! This is a great day to help others learn about geography and the real-world applications of Geospatial Information Systems and Location Intelligence, which are things our Alteryx community of users do every day. It's a chance for you to share your accomplishments and/or Alteryx GIS-related content, and inspire others to discover and use the insights contained in geospatial data.

We would love to hear your personal stories as well! Share a picture of your workflow, or of teaching your children about maps and @mention Alteryx and use the hashtag #GISDay

Deanna · Answer

Thank you, @ChrisS and @amacisaac for posting about GIS Day!  Happy (belated) GIS Day to our Alteryx Community; although to me, as a Geographer, every day is GIS day!

I have quite a few GIS stories, having been in GIS for over 20 years; I began using Alteryx in 2005, and way back then, it was a product called Allocate from a company named SRC (which became Alteryx).  Some of you may recognize the name Allocate, which is now the Demographic Analysis toolset in Alteryx!  These are spatial tools in their own right, utilizing the Business Insights data bundle and generating demographic, segmentation and other data within geographic boundaries of Census block groups, Census tracts, city boundaries, Metro/Micro CBSAs and much, much more.

Just as the toolset does today, I used it in '05 to generate cool demographic reports of custom trade areas for the Real Estate division I worked in.  Afterwards, I worked as a GIS Analyst in the IT department for a municipality, helping to manage an enterprise GIS with over 90 users.  A few years later, I became the GIS and Market Planning Manager of a large retail company, and used Alteryx for all of the spatial, demographic and segmentation analytics, including the extensive site selection processes involved in locating where new stores should be placed, as well as relocating existing stores to more optimal sites.  After 5 years in that role, I expanded my world into consulting, and have served as the GIS + Alteryx subject matter expert for various consulting organizations.  As you can tell, GIS is my world, and I live by "Everything Happens Somewhere"!  (Similar to Tobler's 1st Law of Geography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobler%27s_first_law_of_geography )

I have many favorite posts by fellow spatial Alteryx users, and some are:

This excellent post by

@madler_alteryx regarding optimizing Alteryx for the Spatial Match tool:  https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/Spatial-Matching-Best-Practices/ta-p/434375

An awesome post by @AndyC of "Spatial Analytics - The Final Frontier" gives a great overview of the spatial tools in Alteryx, plus information on the Location Insights bundle:  https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Engine-Works/Spatial-Analytics-the-final-frontier/ba-p/17703

For those GIS professionals who really want to get deep into how Alteryx REALLY works in spatial processes, this is one of my most favorite posts of all, again by @madler_alteryx :  https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/How-does-Alteryx-Designer-Handle-Spatial-Data/ta-p/415342

The follow up posts by fellow spatial aficionado (should I say, "aficionada"?) @SydneyF within Michael's post above gives fantastic insight into GDAL and coordinate transformations (thanks, Sydney!).

And if you ever wondered what that enigmatic Custom DE-9IM Relation is within the relationship options in the Spatial Match tool, well, it's the Dimensionally Extended 9-Intersection Model:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DE-9IM  A topological model, actually used by geographers, and Alteryx has it!

Some of the best items in the Alteryx Community regarding Spatial Analytics is actually the training, available in the Alteryx Academy at https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Interactive-Lessons/tkb-p/interactive-lessons/label-name/Spatial%20Analytics  .  Many of these lessons are only 5 minutes long, so they are easy to do in between meetings, during commercials, etc.!

Last year, I was honored to write an Alteryx + GIS E-book called (you guessed it) "Everything Happens Somewhere", and you can find it in the Alteryx Resources page at this link.

For those who are interested in learning more about GIS, there are many resources out there, and Wikipedia is a great start:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_information_system

You can also reach out to me any time if you have questions about GIS, spatial and demographic analytics in Alteryx, or Geography!  I am one of a group of amazing Spatial ACEs, which includes John Hollingsworth, Samantha Hughes, Charlie Squyers, Joe Serpis, Joe Lipski, Gary Gruccio, Ken Black (hydrogeologist), and more ACEs (plus, the ACE of ACEs, Mark Frisch, can do it all!).

Spatial analytics and GIS are applicable in so many aspects of data analytics, and can be utilized in almost every vertical:  Retail, real estate, CPG, finance, insurance, manufacturing, public sector/government, education, marketing, merchandising, entertainment, nonprofits, and even more importantly at this time, healthcare.  Give the spatial toolset a try in Alteryx, and you may find new ways of looking at your data, in a brand new dimension!

Happy GIS Day - every day - to our Alteryx Community!

@Deanna

ChrisS · Answer

@Deanna, I know you have tons of stories you could share... but, do you have a favorite? or a recent story you could share? 🙂

- @ChrisS