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Hurricanes from the Atlantic Ocean pose an enormous threat to populations in the southeastern United States. Scientists continue to study hurricane patterns in an attempt to learn more about the environmental factors that influence their paths. This guidebook will show you how ArcGIS Tracking Analyst can be used to analyze the movement of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean. The data used in this guidebook was collected for hurricane positions in the Atlantic Ocean in 2000. Download data from Here.
1- Click the Add Temporal Data button on the Tracking Analyst toolbar to open the Add Temporal Data Wizard dialog box.
2- Leave the Storage policy drop-down menu set to the default value. Also, leave the next button set to the default option of A feature class or shapefile containing temporal data. This indicates that the data you want to load is simple tracking data and is contained in a single feature class or shapefile. Selecting the second button would indicate that you want to load complex tracking data contained in two separate tables.
3- Click the Open button nd browse to the feature class called atlantic_hurricanes_2000 in a geodatabase.
4- Click the Choose the field containing the date/time drop-down arrow and click the field called Date_Time to select it. This tells Tracking Analyst to look in this field to find information about when each event happened. A label of [Date] appears next to the drop-down menu, indicating that the field has a data type of Date. Tracking Analyst automatically knows how to extract the date and time information from fields of this type. It is also possible to select a text or numeric field containing the date and time information. In those cases, some additional steps would need to be followed to tell Tracking Analyst how to parse the date and time from the values contained in the text field.
5- Leave the time zone set to the default of Greenwich Mean Time in the drop-down menu containing time zones. Uncheck the Values are adjusted for daylight savings check box. These settings indicate to Tracking Analyst that this data was collected in Greenwich Mean Time without any daylight savings adjustment.
6- Click the arrow on the next drop-down menu and click the field called EVENTID. This tells Tracking Analyst how to organize the data into tracks. In this case, the EVENTID field contains the hurricane name for each event. Each individual hurricane's path will become a track in Tracking Analyst.
7- Leave the rest of the Add Temporal Data Wizard dialog box set to the default settings. Confirm that your dialog box looks like the one below and click Next.
8- The next step in the Add Temporal Data Wizard dialog box gives you the ability to import only a subset of the data contained in a feature class by clicking the Query Builder button. In this case, you want to import the entire feature class, so click Finish and add the data to your map.
9- A new tracking layer called atlantic_hurricanes_2000 now appears in the table of contents with a default symbol. Right-click the layer and click Zoom to Layer to make your map zoom to the extent of the new tracking layer. Your map should now look like the image below.
10- Right-click the atlantic_hurricanes_2000 layer in the table of contents and click Properties. The Layer Properties dialog box appears. Click the Symbology tab.
11- On the Show panel, scroll down and check the check box next to Tracks.
12- Leave all other settings on the dialog box set to their default values and click OK.
13- Click Tracking Analyst on the Tracking Analyst toolbar to expand it. Point to Data Clock on the drop-down menu to expand the pull-right menu. Click Create Data Clock to bring up the Create Data Clock Wizard dialog box.
14- Leave the rest of the wizard set to the default values. Six legend classes will be used, and a default color ramp will be used to select colors for the legend. Click the Finish button to complete the wizard and create the data clock.
15- Right-click the atlantic_hurricanes_2000 layer in the table of contents and click Properties to bring up the Layer Properties dialog box. Click the Symbology tab.
16 - On the Show panel, check the check box next to Time Window.
17- On the Drawn As panel, click Color. This means that the symbology of the hurricane data will change colors within the time window.
18- Click in the Period text box and enter 14.
19- Click the Units drop-down arrow and click Days. This means that your time window will only display hurricane positions within a 14-day period.
20- Click the Color Ramp drop-down arrow and choose a color ramp that will show contrast when replaying the data.
21- Click the Classes drop-down arrow and click 7. This means that the 14-day time window will be split into seven different classes, each with its own color from the selected color ramp. Events that happened within the past two days will be assigned one color, events happening between two and four days ago will be assigned a different color, and so on.
22- If you followed the steps in the previous section of this guidebook, the check box next to Tracks on the Show panel should be checked. This indicates that track lines will be symbolized in addition to the time window you set up. Leave the check box checked, but click the Tracks text next to the check box to access the properties for the track lines.
23- Click the large button containing a line symbol to bring up theSymbol Selector dialog box. This dialog box allows you to change the symbology of your track lines.
24- Click the Color button and click a light gray color to select it. In this case, a light gray color is better than the default black color because it will allow you to see the track lines without taking too much attention away from the event symbols on the map.
25- lick OK on the Symbol Selector dialog box and click Apply on the Layer Properties dialog box to apply the changes.
26- Click the Labels tab of the Layer Properties dialog box.
27- Check the Label most current features in this layer check box to turn on labeling. This type of labeling will label the most current event in each hurricane track with an attribute of your choice.
28- Click the Label Field drop-down arrow and click EVENTID. As you saw earlier, the EVENTID field contains the hurricane names. Labeling each hurricane on the map with its name will make it easy for you to quickly identify each hurricane when you are visualizing the data in the next section of this guidebook.
29- eave the rest of the label properties set to the default values and click OK on the Layer Properties dialog box to close it and apply the changes.
30- Click the Playback Manager button on the Tracking Analyst toolbar to open the Playback Manager dialog box.
31- Click the Options button on the Playback Manager dialog box to see a full view of it. Click the title bar of the dialog box to drag it into a convenient location on your screen.
32- Click the Set playback window to temporal extent of drop-down arrow and click atlantic_hurricanes_2000, which is the tracking layer you just added.
33- Click the Set the playback rate drop-down arrow and click Days. This sets the playback rate to one day per second.
34- You are now ready to play back the hurricane data. Before clicking the Play button, make sure that the red time indicator is located at the left edge of the playback window, as shown above. By default, Playback Manager initially sets the time to the beginning of the playback window. In this case, the beginning time is initially set to 6:00 PM on 8/3/2000. As soon as you click Play, the time will advance one day per second.
35- Right-click the atlantic_hurricanes_2000 tracking layer in the table of contents and click Properties.
36- Click the Actions tab on the Layer Properties dialog box.
37- Click the New Action button to open the New Action dialog box.
38- Type Excessive Wind Speed in the Name the Action text box and click Highlight/Suppression in the Type of Action to Create list box. It is useful to give your actions meaningful names so you can remember what they are doing.
39- Click OK on the New Action dialog box to open the Highlight/Suppression Action Parameters dialog box.
40- Leave the Type drop-down list set to the default value of Highlight. You want to highlight hurricane events with excessive wind speeds on the map. The Suppression option has the opposite effect. It is used to hide, or suppress, events on the map rather than highlight them.
41- Click the Highlight Symbol button to change the symbol that will be used to highlight events. Click the Color button on the Symbol Selector dialog box and choose a bright color that will show up more prominently on the map than the default black highlight. Click inside the Size text box to place your cursor in it. Enter 18.0 for the symbol size. A larger symbol will show up more prominently on the map.
42- Under the How the action will be triggered label, click the Attribute Query button so you can trigger the action using an attribute query. The Query Builder button becomes enabled.
43- Click the Query Builder button to open the Query Builder dialog box.
44- Scroll down through the Fields list box and double-click "WINDSPEED". This will add "WINDSPEED" to the query expression in the text box at the bottom of the dialog box.
45- Click the Greater Than Or Equal To (> =) button to add the > = operator to the query expression. Click in the query expression text box to place a cursor at the end of the query expression. Type 75 to complete the query expression.
46- Click OK to close the Highlight/Suppression Action Parameters dialog box.
47- Now click the Playback Manager button to open Playback Manager. Play back the hurricane data using any of the methods you learned earlier in this guidebook. Some hurricane events are highlighted on the map. This indicates that the wind speed for these observations was equal to or greater than 75 miles per hour.
48- Right-click the atlantic_hurricanes_2000 tracking layer in the Table of Contents and click Properties.
49- Click the Actions tab on the Layer Properties dialog box.
50- Double-click the text for the existing action, called Excessive Wind Speed. This opens the Highlight/Suppression Action Parameters dialog box so that you can modify the properties of the existing action.
51- Under the How the action will be triggered label, click the Attribute AND Location Query button. Notice that your existing attribute query expression remains in the Attribute Query text box. The drop-down lists on the Location Query panel at the bottom of the dialog box are enabled so that you can add a location query to the trigger.
52- For this action, you'll want to show excessive wind speeds over land. Therefore, you are interested in hurricanes that intersect the Land Areas feature class. Click the Layer drop-down arrow and click Land Areas to select it.
53- Click the Trigger When drop-down arrow and click Intersects to select it.
54- Click OK on the Layer Properties dialog box to close it.
55- Now click the Playback Manager button to open Playback Manager. Play back the hurricane data using any of the methods you learned earlier in this guidebook. Only two events in your tracking layer satisfy the trigger criteria and are highlighted. One occurrence of excessive wind speeds over land belongs to Hurricane Keith in Mexico.