Participatory Mapping with Google Forms, Google Sheets, and ArcGIS Online

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07-21-2017 06:03 AM
JosephKerski
Esri Notable Contributor
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I have been receiving questions from schools that have become "Google Schools" as well as universities and individual researchers who want to use Google Sheets in ArcGIS Online.  What are the advantages of using Google Sheets (spreadsheets, really, is what they are) over using an Excel spreadsheet on your own computer? Google Sheets live in the cloud, just like ArcGIS Online, so they can be edited from any device, anywhere, and the author of the Sheet can invite others to add data to it, so they can accept input from multiple collaborators, students, and faculty. Some educators want to map data that they have input into Google Sheets.  Others want to go to the next level, where multiple students or researchers edit Google Sheets in a participatory mapping or citizen science environment, and the resulting data is mapped and automatically refreshes as the data continues to be added.

Both of these scenarios are possible with ArcGIS Online.  To illustrate, I created a form where students are asked, "What country have you visited?", shown below.

Google Form - Country

After students fill out the form, I go to the "responses" zone in Google Forms, and access the spreadsheet that is created from the data.  Now that my data is in my Google Sheet, I access > File > Publish to the Web > and change "Web Page" to "Comma Separated Values (.csv)" file > Publish.  

Saving Google Sheets

Then, I copy the resulting URL:

Publishing to the web

Then, I access my ArcGIS Online account, open a new or existing map > Add > Add Layer from Web - CSV file > paste your URL for my Google Sheet here.  

Adding layer from the Web

Next, I > Add Layer > I indicate which fields contain my location information (address, latitude-longitude, city/state/country combination).  

That's really all there is to it! 

My results are in this map linked here, and shown below:

Map from Google Form and Sheet

Note that I used one of the fun new basemaps in ArcGIS Online that I wrote about here.

In another example, this time using cities instead of countries, see this map of the 10 most polluted and 10 least polluted large cities of the world.  Students examine spatial patterns and reasons for the pollution (or lack of it) in each city using the map and the metadata here.  I created this map by populating this Google Sheet, below.  My students could add 10 or 20 more to this sheet and their changes would be reflected in my ArcGIS Online map.

Google Sheet of the 10 most polluted cities

Here is the map from the data, below.  For those explanatory labels, I used this custom label expression:  
$feature.City + " is the #" + " " + $feature.Rank + " " + $feature.Variable and set the text color to match the point symbol color for clarity.  For more about expressions, see my blog post here.

Polluted and Clean Cities Map

In another example, my colleague created this google sheet of some schools in India by latitude-longitude. Then she added the published content from Google to her map

Let's explore a bit deeper.  Let's say that I wanted to visualize the most commonly visited countries among my students.  I can certainly examine the statistics from my Google form, as seen below:

Google Form statistics

However, my goal is really to see this data on a map.  With the analysis tools in ArcGIS Online, this too is quickly done. The Aggregate Points tool will summarize points in polygons.  For my polygons, I added a generalized world countries map layer, and then used Aggregate Points to summarize my point data within those countries.  The result is shown below and is visible as a layer in the map I referenced above. 

Map showing the frequency of countries visited by students from Google Form and Sheet

Another point worth noting is that you can adjust the settings of how your map interacts with your Google Sheet.  Go to the layer's metadata page, and under “Published content & settings”, select "Automatically republish when changes are made." You can set the refresh interval to, for example, 1 minute, but the actual refresh on your map may take somewhat longer because Google’s “Auto re-publish” isn’t quite "real-time".  Then do the following for the layer:

Refresh Layer

Note that if you are geocoding by address (such as city/country, as I did above, or street address), the automatic refresh option is not available:

Google Sheets by Address note

To get around this challenge, I manually added the latitude-longitude values to my cities spreadsheet.  Thanks to the Measure tool in ArcGIS Online, this took less than 1 minute per city.  I simply typed in the city name in ArcGIS Online, and used the Location button under the Measure tools, clicked on the map where the city was located, and entered the resulting coordinates into my spreadsheet.

For more information, see this blog essay.  

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About the Author
I believe that spatial thinking can transform education and society through the application of Geographic Information Systems for instruction, research, administration, and policy. I hold 3 degrees in Geography, have served at NOAA, the US Census Bureau, and USGS as a cartographer and geographer, and teach a variety of F2F (Face to Face) (including T3G) and online courses. I have authored a variety of books and textbooks about the environment, STEM, GIS, and education. These include "Interpreting Our World", "Essentials of the Environment", "Tribal GIS", "The GIS Guide to Public Domain Data", "International Perspectives on Teaching and Learning with GIS In Secondary Education", "Spatial Mathematics" and others. I write for 2 blogs, 2 monthly podcasts, and a variety of journals, and have created over 5,000 videos on the Our Earth YouTube channel. Yet, as time passes, the more I realize my own limitations and that this is a lifelong learning endeavor and thus I actively seek mentors and collaborators.