UGRC's blog keeps partners informed on important GIS announcements in Utah. Blog posts cover important data updates, GIS tools, geospatial tips and tricks, as well as coordination opportunities and events.

Blog posts are compiled into a monthly or bimonthly Utah GIS newsletters (view complete Newsletter Archive). Subscribe to the newsletter at the bottom of any page on gis.utah.gov.

Utah SGID Statewide Roads Data Layer Updates 03/08/2024

UGRC recently completed updates to the SGID Roads data layer. Please visit our Roads and Highway System data page where you will find information about the R...


Utah SGID Statewide Roads Data Layer Updates 02/09/2024

UGRC recently completed updates to the SGID Roads data layer. Please visit our Roads and Highway System data page where you will find information about the R...


The Geocoding Toolbox Is Being Deprecated

First, Some History


Utah SGID Statewide Roads Data Layer Updates 01/12/2024

UGRC recently completed updates to the SGID Roads data layer. Please visit our Roads and Highway System data page where you will find information about the R...


Municipal Boundaries, Final update for 2023

Finally, the end of 2023 is here—another year of growth. Utah County again led the way with 16 annexations, followed by Weber with 10, Box Elder with 8, and ...


Utah SGID Statewide Roads Data Layer Updates 12/15/2023

UGRC recently completed updates to the SGID Roads data layer. Please visit our Roads and Highway System data page where you will find information about the R...


SGID breaking changes from SITLA

If you depend on any of the geospatial services from The School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), you might have noticed that the service...


Utah SGID Statewide Roads Data Layer Updates 11/07/2023

UGRC recently completed updates to the SGID Roads data layer. Please visit our Roads and Highway System data page where you will find information about the R...


Municipal Boundaries, Third quarter update for 2023

It seems like 2023 is flying by; We’re already into October and fall is here. It has been a quiet summer for annexations, presumably most folks were dealing ...


Utah SGID Statewide Roads Data Layer Updates 10/06/2023

UGRC recently completed updates to the SGID Roads data layer. Please visit our Roads and Highway System data page where you will find information about the R...


Possible GPS Disruption from Sept. 13 - 29

The Utah Geospatial Resource Center (UGRC), along with the Utah Statewide Information and Analysis Center (SIAC), has been made aware of planned GPS testing ...


Utah SGID Statewide Roads Data Layer Updates 09/08/2023

UGRC recently completed updates to the SGID Roads data layer. Please visit our Roads and Highway System data page where you will find information about the R...


Making the best of change with Porter

In today’s fast-paced and interconnected world, GIS data are a key part of decision making and provide the backbone of innovation and progress. These roles d...


Utah SGID Statewide Roads Data Layer Updates 08/04/2023

UGRC recently completed updates to the SGID Roads data layer. Please visit our Roads and Highway System data page where you will find information about the R...


Utah SGID Statewide Roads Data Layer Updates 07/21/2023

UGRC recently completed updates to the SGID Roads data layer. Please visit our Roads and Highway System data page where you will find information about the R...


Introducing palletjack: Updating AGOL feature services from external sources

From the I Love Being Lazy department


Municipal Boundaries, Second quarter update for 2023

We are halfway through 2023 and the annexations are slowing down. Hopefully that is not related to the flooding or the threat of. This quarter we got the lat...


Results Update: Detecting Cooling Towers with Computer Vision Tools

If you were at the 2023 Utah Geographic Information Council (UGIC) Conference in May, you might remember that I presented on Generating Useful Data with Comp...


Utah SGID Statewide Roads Data Layer Updates 06/08/2023

UGRC recently completed updates to the SGID Roads feature class. Please visit our Roads and Highway System data page where you will find information about th...


Utah SGID Statewide Roads Data Layer Updates 04/06/2023

UGRC recently completed updates to the SGID Roads feature class. Please visit our Roads and Highway System data page where you will find information about th...


Municipal Boundaries, First quarter update for 2023

We begin 2023 with many cities jumping out to get a head start on the year with multiple annexation for them. Heber City led the way with four in three month...


Trailheads, a Collaborative Approach

At UGRC, we serve up datasets from a vast array of sources. Some, like municipal boundaries, are created in-house. Others are pulled from a single steward, l...


Utah Crushes Broadband Challenge through Collaboration

From the I Challenge You to a Duel department


Base maps: Out With the Old, In With the New

It has been almost a decade since UGRC has updated the look and feel of any of the base maps but changes are on the way! The current suite of base maps were ...


Utah SGID Statewide Roads Data Layer Updates 03/10/2023

UGRC recently completed updates to the SGID Roads feature class. Please visit our Roads and Highway System data page where you will find information about th...


Municipal Boundaries Final update for 2022

It is the end of another long year and, ready or not, 2023 is here. It was another year of growth for the state which has slowed down some. The top contribut...


Python Shorts: Loading an Open SGID Layer into pandas

There are a myriad of ways you can access data from the Open SGID. However, these all require some form of desktop client application. What if you want progr...


Introducing Masquerade

Masquerade is a new proxy service hosted by UGRC that makes our geocoding service and Open SGID datasets easily accessible in Esri products. It does this by ...


Is Your Home Close Enough to the Nearest Fire Station?

Living close to a fire station can be noisy, but on the other hand, not living close enough can result in delayed, or even worse, inadequate fire service. Th...


Python Shorts: The Benefits of Unit Testing

In the realm of programming, “unit testing” is an automated way of testing small, individual “units” of your code to ensure that when given a specific set of...


Python Shorts: Flattening Arrow Code

“Arrow Code” refers to a series of nested if statements that increase your indentation level at each statement, creating an arrow of whitespace when the ifs ...


Introducing the Official UGRC API Client

Assigning a geographic coordinate to an address, otherwise known as geocoding, is one of the simplest ways to enable data to be visualized on a map. This mak...


2020 Census Redistricting Data in Easy to Use GIS Formats

Good news, 2020 census redistricting data is now available for Utah in easy to use GIS formats!


Choosing the Right Transformation

From the I Hate Slivers department


Introducing UGRCodes

Are you tired of fighting with esoteric municipal FIPS codes? Have you even tried using them? It’s not easy and it’s certainly not intuitive. Five digit inte...


AGRC Name Change to Utah Geospatial Resource Center (UGRC)

During the 2021 General Session, the Utah Legislature agreed to change the name of AGRC to the Utah Geospatial Resource Center (UGRC), as passed in House Bil...


Taking a Closer Look at Election Results - Using GIS to Paint the Political Landscape

You’ve probably heard the saying, there are many ways to peel an orange. Similarly, you’ve likely noticed, there are many ways to display election results. I...


Utah's COVID-19 Testing Sites Map: The Importance of Relationships and Resources

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, whenever you create a webmap you’re anxiously hoping people will use it. I remember watching the stats for my first real ...


GIS - Thinking Beyond the Map

If you’re reading this post, you’re already aware that geospatial technology (a.k.a. GIS) has become an essential part of our daily lives. Its capabilities e...


The Role of GIS during a Pandemic: Why the “Where” Is So Important for the Coronavirus

Having worked with UGRC for the past three years, I’ve started to notice that GIS is involved in just about everything. That’s why I’ve found it so interesti...


A Brief Tutorial on Exploring the Open SGID with Open Source Python Tools

The accompanying Python Notebook for this blog post can be found here on Google Colab.


Introducing the Open SGID Database - A New Publicly Available Data Offering

It seems so long ago now, but it was less than a year ago when we first hinted at the possibility of a new SGID offering (then again last fall). We are final...


UGRC Purchase of Hexagon Imagery

UGRC recently purchased a license to Hexagon’s statewide high resolution aerial photography (6” and 12” pixels) on behalf of Utah state, regional, and local ...


Cognitive Maps - The Science Behind our Brain’s Internal Mapping and Navigation System

I bet you remember where you were on the morning of September 11th, 2001 when you heard the news. I’d venture to say that you also remember the city, state, ...


Automating Next-Generation 911 Law Enforcement Boundaries

UGRC has created a Python script for law enforcement boundaries that automatically builds jurisdiction polygons based on existing boundaries (primarily count...


SGID Product Relaunch Update

In a June 2019 post “SGID Then and Now,” we touched on where we thought the SGID is going. Based on the survey responses from that article, we have changed d...


2019 and 2020 Utah Aerial Lidar Acquisition - Updated

UGRC has awarded Aero-Graphics, Inc. and The Sanborn Map Company, Inc. to acquire 26,036 square miles of aerial lidar elevation data. The lidar will be a com...


Digital Maps - How Chance, Timing, and Heritage Shaped Modern GIS

When you dig into the history of mapping, it’s remarkable how certain things come about. If you zoom in far enough, you discover seemingly coincidental occur...


Using Jupyter Notebook for UGRC Collaboration

At UGRC we greatly value collaboration and sharing ideas. A terrific technology to support these values is the Jupyter Notebook project.


Meet Jake Adams - New UGRC Staff

UGRC would like to welcome Jake Adams to the team! Jake will be using his GIS experience working with Cache County and Taylorsville City, as well as his Mast...


The SGID - Then and Now

Access to high-quality GIS data is a privilege, and the fact that it’s open and free is nothing short of amazing. Yes, I’m talking about Utah’s SGID. From a ...


Thoughts from Teaching Google and Amazon New Skills

Developing software for digital assistants is fun and a refreshing change from typical GIS projects. Over the past few months, UGRC was lucky enough to spend...


GIS Wisdom - Exploring the Reverse Approach

Those of us working in GIS know that it’s really powerful and that it’s utilized in just about every industry. If you aren’t yet a true believer, you should ...


The Western Grid, Explained

Have you ever wondered why the patterns of development in the Western United States are so orthogonal (i.e., “right-angled”)?


Creating New State Plane Zone for 2022

In 2022 the NGS plans to publish a series of new horizontal reference frames that will replace the NAD83 and a vertical reference frame that will replace the...


The SGID, Moving Forward

In an effort to ultimately consolidate and organize as much State GIS data as possible, UGRC has been gathering information about SGID data layers managed by...


Meet Nathan Kota - New UGRC Staff

UGRC would like to welcome Nathan Kota, the new Information Technology Manager. Nathan is going to help build and manage the development team as well as take...


The Incredible Shrinking SGID

Over the past several months, UGRC has been reviewing the usage of the State Geographic Information Database (SGID) data layers in order to determine how to ...


Leveraging Git and GitHub to Manage the Lifecycle of Custom ArcGIS Tools

As GIS developers, we are often expected to provide the same custom tool for multiple versions of ArcGIS Desktop (or ArcGIS Pro). For example, some users are...


Don't Make Users Think about Updating Software

As software developers, we want the people who are using our software to enjoy not hate the experience. Developers strive to create a positive user experienc...


Cache-Breaking for Faster Web Application Updates

When Production Is Broken, It Needs to Be Fixed Now!


Success with Serverless

In this post, I’d like to share the success story of our recent testing of serverless computing. We’ve been having some issues with a print-proxy service, an...


SGID Data Lifecycle

Over the past several months, UGRC has been updating the State Geographic Information Database (SGID) data lifecycle process. The data lifecycle process star...


Transitioning to a New World, ArcPro

I have spent the last 4 months learning and using ArcPro while also learning a new job (see the end of this post). Like many of my fellow GIS users, I was he...


Dumbing Down Terrain with Contour Polygons

While technology advances towards products with greater resolution and accuracy, sometimes more data isn’t always better data. Sometimes, being able to see g...


The Evolution of a Python Script

Python is a very approachable programming language and scripting in python is quick and powerful - Create a file, type some code, and a repeatable script is ...


Utah Recognized in NSGIC Geospatial Excellence Awards

Through its Geospatial Excellence Awards, the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC) recognizes individuals and organizations that advance th...


UGRC System Status Page

Over the years, GIS is trending more and more towards being web-based. UGRC has tried to keep step with this trend with the addition of the discover, the Tur...


Rethinking Geocoders: Adding Local Vernacular into the Build Process

UGRC has been working on a project to enhance our approach to geocoding. This grew from the basic idea that humans often view addressing differently than a G...


Removing and Replacing the Esri Web Adaptor

The Esri web adaptor is a small load balancer/reverse proxy bundled into the ArcGIS Server install but do you know if you need it?


Printing Web Maps with Discover Services

Export Web Map Tool


Forced GitHub; A reflection on a new website using GitHub and Jekyll

The first commit to our version 6 website was one year and eight months ago on May 26, 2015. We went live with the v6.0 on March 25, 2016. Between that first...


Mapping Utah’s Wireless Emergency Call Routing System

UGRC recently assisted the Utah Communications Authority (UCA) on a project to map and analyze wireless 911 call delivery across Utah. The goal of the projec...


25 Years Ago: Laying the Foundation for Utah GIS Success

For those of us not in the GIS field at the time, 1991 was a significant year in Utah and beyond…


Why I Speak at Conferences and You Should Too

Recently, I tried to gather all of the presentations that I have participated in during my career up to this point (~10 years). I was able to find materials ...


Now You Know: About the gis.utah.gov v6.0 Refresh

Four years is a long time for anything, and that certainly applies to website releases. For a number of reasons, gis.utah.gov, has been overdue for a refresh.


The Earth is Not Round! Utah, NAD83 and Web Mercator Projections

GIS users working on statewide projects in Utah need to know the specifics of three primary coordinate systems: Geographic (latitude/longitude), UTM NAD83, a...


Big Happenings with Public Land Survey System GIS

Good things are happening in Utah regarding the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), also known as the township, range, and section grid, which forms the founda...


Mock your Dojo AMD modules with StubModule.js

When testing AMD modules it is sometimes necessary to verify how it interacts with it's dependencies. For example, you might be writing a module that makes X...


Boost Your Productivity With Vim

I was surprised to realize today that I have never written about one of my favorite tools that I use to write code. It's something that absolutely transf...


Statewide Lidar Plan for Utah

To aid the planning efforts for future Lidar acquisitions in Utah, UGRC and the Utah Department of Natural Resources have collaborate...


How To Use UGRC Base Maps in QGIS

Most people know about UGRC’s awesome base maps. They are very popular and provide high quality cartography using the latest and greatest data from the Utah ...


USGS GeoPDF Topographic Maps

Want an aerial photograph and a topographic map all packaged into one file, in a pdf format? Then the USGS GeoPDFs may be the answer. These GeoPDFs are simil...


Wireless Signals and LiDAR Derived Elevation Models

Specialized software allows the modeling of cellular, radio, or wireless internet signal propagation and coverage. Better, more accurate results for wireless...


Using UGRC's Geocoding and Map-based Web Services

The Department of Technology Services hosts a monthly scheduled Enterprise Developer Group (EDG) brown bag presentation series. The previous session recordin...


Quick JavaScript Tip: The Arguments Object

Recently, as I was slowly working my way through Rebecca Murphy's excellent js-assessment test suite, I ran into a problem that was quite vexing. I was creat...


Using Base Maps with Non-standard Coordinate Systems in LeafletJS

Since LeafletJS seems to be what all of the cool kids are using these days and it shows no signs of slowing down, I thought that it would be fun to figure ou...