1 reply to this topic

[JBeallSchwab]

Hi all!

I work for an environmental consulting firm as a GIS Analyst. We often perform analyses using ArcMap geoprocessing tools, and then we summarize our findings in excel so those numbers can go in reports.

We are trying to better our QAQC practices and I was wondering if anyone has any helpful ideas or standard practices they use when running analyses.

One of our issues is we often get new project data, and then have to re-run an analysis. We are trying to figure out a way to keep our work consistent and organized, and also to make sure that when we get new data, we update each table we made to reflect the new data.

One of our ideas was to use naming conventions that must include the date that the new data was created, so that our data file names match the excel file names.

Any ideas, tips, suggestions are appreciated!

Thanks

Jenna

Edited by JBeallSchwab, 28 December 2012 - 02:57 PM.

[greg585]

Ji Jenna,

I'm also an analyst at an environmental consultancy and we are also currently reviewing, improving and implementing QAQC practices.

Some of the practices implemented so far:

Data management - this has mainly been done so far by creating logical and consistent folder structure allows for the efficient discoverability of data and supports good data management practices.

As we only really use shapefiles (so they can be used across different GIS programs) we have implemented the above by breaking our projects into phases and then within the phases using a source, processing and final folder.

Naming conventions - currently the shapefiles are named dependent on what they are called on the legend of the map. But you could implement a project number, data source, dataset name, date sourced/created and revision number into the shapefile name. (most of our projects are quite small so they dont warrant this)

We also use a document register for all figures that had date created, created byt, title, QA by, QA date etc.

All figures are then checked and approved (by too different people) before they can be released to clients.

We also have documents listing available spatial data and spatial data that the company currently holds, with date of last update etc present.


There is probably heaps more you would find interesting and plenty we could exchange about various practices

Greg