Map property information
The railway company owns two properties that are up for sale. To market these rail-adjacent properties to prospective buyers, the real estate manager has prepared a spreadsheet containing information and important characteristics of the properties. In this section, you will import this spreadsheet and plot the properties on the map in ArcGIS Business Analyst. Once the properties and their characteristics are on the map, the real estate manager can use Business Analyst to generate marketing materials.
Create a project
Projects are the way Business Analyst organizes and groups together relevant content. For this project, you'll use site data prepared beforehand by the real estate manager. This data will be added to your project and stored in the project pane.
- Go to ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App and sign in with your ArcGIS Online account.
Note:
If you don't have an organizational account, see options for software access.
- If necessary, on the ribbon, click the Home tab. Click New project.
Note:
If this is your first time using ArcGIS Business Analyst, you'll see a Welcome screen. Click Skip this step. Then, click Create project.
The Create project window appears.
- In the Create project window, for Project name, type Rail Industry Property Development and click Create.
The process of setting up a project may take a minute or more as each of the project layers and data directories are created. When the project is created, a confirmation window appears.
- Click OK.
Your new project opens. A pop-up may appear, offering a guided tour of the user interface.
Note:
If this is your first time using ArcGIS Business Analyst, on the ribbon, click the Maps tab.
- If necessary, click Clear map to remove any existing data layers that may be in the map display.
This will ensure that your project only contains the data, sites, and maps relevant to the work in this tutorial.
Add data
Next, you'll add data to your new project. You will add property information using a spreadsheet containing the properties’ characteristics, which you'll upload to Business Analyst.
- Download the Rail Owned Properties.zip file.
- Unzip the data to a location of your choosing, such as your Documents folder.
The Rail Owned Properties folder contains three items: a Microsoft Excel file with information about the properties and two images.
- On the ribbon, click Add data and choose Import file.
The Import file pane appears.
- For Select a file to import, click Browse. In the Rail Owned Properties folder, select the Rail Owned Properties.xlsx file.
- Click Import.
Once the data loads, you're prompted to choose the type of data being imported: point locations or geographic boundaries. The properties are point locations.
- For Select the type of data being imported, choose Point locations and click Next.
Next, you'll select the fields in the CSV file that match the property locations on the map.
- Under And / or, make sure that the Latitude and Longitude fields match the Latitude and Longitude columns.
- Click View data table.
The table pane opens to show the two points you're importing. The table shows information for two sites named Beaumont Hub and Santa Ana Depot and includes qualitative description, zoning information, utilities providers, and nearby features such as interstates.
- On the Import file pane, click Hide data table. Click Next.
The table is hidden and the map zooms to Southern California. Points corresponding to the property locations are added to the map. In the Import file pane, you can choose how the points are styled. For now, you’ll use the default style.
- Click Next.
- For Style the points, click Next.
- Under Save and name the new layer, select Create and save sites for all points.
The buffer options are enabled. For these buffers, you want to calculate possible drive times from the sites so that later you can see who and what is within certain drive times of your sites.
- Click Drive time and for Time, type 10, 20, and 30 minutes.
Each of these buffers will be created as a site.
- For New layer name, type California Rail Owned Properties. Check the box for Open all labels for imported data.
- Click Save.
The two properties are saved as sites with buffer drive times around them.
On the map, red indicates a 10-minute drive time, green a 20-minute drive time, and blue a 30-minute drive time.
- On the map, close the property location pop-ups.
- In the Import file pane, click I’m done.
You have mapped information about two properties up for sale by the railway company. You also created sites with 10-, 20-, and 30-minute drive times around them to focus our future analyses. Next, you'll use infographics to create a polished property flyer and develop marketing materials for each site.
Create Infographics
With infographics, you can create ready-to-use marketing materials for each site. This can include property flyers for the sites, as well as demographic and labor force information for use in marketing the properties to specific industries.
Create property flyers
Now that the properties for sale are on the map in Business Analyst, you can take advantage of the extra information the spreadsheet included (as well as demographic details included with Business Analyst) to make property flyers.
- On the map, click the Santa Ana Depot site (the westernmost site) to open its site menu. On the menu, click Add photo.
The site details pane appears. This pane shows information about the site, including name, address, and other attributes that you uploaded in the file.
- In the site details pane, click Add photo.
- Browse to and select the Santa Ana Depot image file from the Rail Owned Properties folder. Click Open.
Once the file has uploaded, the photo will be visible in the site details pane.
- Click Close.
- Close the Santa Ana Depot pop-up.
- Use what you have learned to add a photo to the Beaumont Hub site, browsing to and uploading the Beaumont Hub image file from the Rail Owned Properties folder.
Now that both of your sites have photos associated with them, you can create a property flyer for each.
- On the site menu for the Beaumont Hub, click Infographics.
When you click Infographics, your default infographic runs for the site. Depending on your organizational settings and if you've used Business Analyst before, your result may vary.
On the ribbon, the name of the current infographic template is displayed. You'll ensure that the default template is set to Property Details.
- For Infographic, click the drop-down menu, expand Standard infographics and find Property Details. Click Options and click Make default.
The Property Details template is now your default infographic and is automatically generated.
The infographic opens, populated by your site information (including photo and information from the data table) and key demographic information about the area. This infographic shows statistics for the 10-minute drive time you calculated.
- Explore the interactive elements of the infographic.
You can zoom and pan the map by moving the pointer over the map panel, page through and filter site details, and point to the Key Demographic Facts and Annual Spending per Household for more information.
- Close the Property Details infographic for Beaumont Hub.
Run comparison infographics
You can use infographics to create more granular analyses and compare sites. This can be useful when marketing the qualities of two properties against each other, or when pitching a property to a particular industry. In this section, you will first run a basic comparison between the two properties. Then you will run a few more comparison infographics to look at specific features of the properties.
- On the map, click the Santa Ana Depot site to open its site menu. On the menu, click Infographics.
Your default infographic, Property Details, runs for the buffer area 10 minutes around the Santa Ana site.
- On the ribbon, click 10 minutes and click Add sites to compare.
The Select Site window appears.
- In the Select Site window, click the Currently on map tab and choose the Beaumont Hub site.
- Click Apply.
The Beaumont Hub site is added to the infographic menu.
- On the ribbon, click 10 minutes to view the drop-down menu.
The two sites with their three buffers now appear on the menu.
- In the drop-down menu, turn on the Side by side comparison toggle button.
Note:
When you turn on the Side by side comparison toggle button, you will be taken directly to your side-by-side comparison infographics. You will not actually see the toggle button move.
A side-by-side comparison infographic appears, showing site details for each of the buffers for both sites. The sites are arranged in six columns, displaying information and demographics for the 10-, 20-, and 30-minute buffer drive times for both sites.
The infographic summarizes some key information that will be useful to potential buyers and site users. Creating a benchmark allows you to compare differences in key variables.
- For the Santa Ana Depot site, next to the 10 minutes header, click the Options button and click Make benchmark.
The site user will need a skilled workforce and large labor pool to draw from. Workers prefer short commutes to work, creating competition for jobs, so well-paid, new job opportunities close to where they reside will be attractive. Median household income provides a way to compare markets, calculate per-hour wages, and income expectations. Note the similarity in residential and daytime populations between the two sites within the 10-minute drive time, but the significant differences at 20 minutes and beyond.
- Close the infographic.
You'll now create another comparison infographic to examine the labor profile of the regions surrounding each property. Examining which job sectors are most popular in the area can help the real estate manager, and the potential buyer, understand which industries might want to develop this property. You will run gallery infographics and must enable them from the application preferences.
- On the ribbon, click the Preferences button.
- In the Preferences window, click the Reports tab, click Infographics, click Run infographics and check on Gallery infographics.
- In the Preferences window, click Save and close.
Now you are ready to run the infographic for a site.
- On the ribbon, click Maps. Click the Rail Industry Property Development project tab.
- Under Point locations, verify that the California Rail Owned Properties layer is turned on.
- On the map, if necessary, click one of your sites to open the site menu and click Infographics.
- For Infographic, click the Select infographic drop-down menu. Scroll to the bottom of the Gallery infographics section and click Civilian Labor Force Profile (Esri 2023).
The Civilian Labor Force Profile infographic runs for your site.
- Use what you have learned to add the other site to your infographic and turn on Side by side comparison.
Tip:
On the infographic ribbon, click 10 minutes, click Add sites to compare and add the other site. Click 10 minutes and turn on Side by side comparison.
The civilian labor force participation shows significant differences between the two sites. Within the 20-minute drive time trade areas, Beaumont’s blue-collar jobs represent 27 percent of all occupation employment compared to 34 percent for Santa Ana. Service industry employment rates are similar. Labor force participation is also about 7 percent lower for Beaumont at a 20-minute drive, suggesting that there may be a pool of workers not in the labor force, which is confirmed by the unemployment rate differences.
Exploring the occupations in more detail using the job types charts, transportation workers are the sixth-largest segment in Beaumont compared to Santa Ana, while manufacturing is fourth in both markets. This identifies differences in worker experience, supply, and demand, which may also lead to differences in hourly wage expectations and worker availability between the two sites if the potential use is as a transportation hub or manufacturing site.
This tutorial showed how you can use Business Analyst to create boardroom-ready reports and infographics using site information from spreadsheets, tables, or web sites. Using comparison analysis and benchmarks, you can explore and examine multiple possible use cases for the rail site, understand the pros and cons of each location, and gain more contextual knowledge about the labor pools and market characteristics that support the sites.
You can find more tutorials in the tutorial gallery.
