Hello, I'd like to hear from others working in this space. What has been the most challenging part of building footprint extraction for you, and have you found an approach, model or workflow that improved the experience?

This is my experience:

The theory is simple: take high-resolution imagery, run a segmentation model, and extract polygons. The reality is a long chain of things that go wrong.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 Off-nadir angles shift rooftops away from their true footprint, shadows and tree cover hide building edges, and reference labels are frequently misaligned or outdated. A model that performs well in one city often struggles in the next.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗱 Many off-the-shelf detection tools and pretrained models fail before they detect a single building. They expect 8-bit, 3-band RGB, so 4-band imagery has to be reduced to an RGB composite and the near-infrared information is discarded. 16-bit data has to be rescaled. Resolution has to fall within the range the model was trained on, and the software, deep learning framework and GPU drivers all have to be compatible. When something doesn't match, the error messages rarely explain why.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗽𝘂𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 A segmentation mask is not a map-ready footprint. Adjacent buildings merge, edges are irregular, and tiles leave seams and duplicates. Turning results into clean, valid polygons usually takes significant post-processing and manual review.

I know that the post feels like soulless generic, but I dont know how to put it better. I work from home, and my networking right now is basically non-existent. I just want to grow in my career, but I really have no direction. Back them people told me that Power Bi is a good skill, but is that relevant to GIS? Does all the AI changed anything for learning paths?

Im open to any talk if you have any questions or want more details.

• I'm in Canada
• Besides ESRI, my biggest strengths are Python, FME and VertGIS.
• Looking for skills relevant open my horizons for new jobs

Generative AI with MCP is moving incredibly fast, and it's becoming much easier to build software and new workflows. QGIS already has MCP integrations, while Esri appears to be a bit behind.

My view is that everything ultimately ties back to location. Because of that, GIS could be one of the industries that will benefit the most from AI. I'm also seeing new MCP GIS tools such as RustGIS.

Where do you think Esri will stand in the near future? Do you think their dominance in the GIS space will be challenged, or will they continue to hold the throne?

Just want to know what everyone else prefers.

Hello,

Im a undergrad student taking a principals of gis class and was wondering why I can't select a certain feature to modify it in ArcGIS pro. I am able to select it out of the modify tab, but when I go to the modify tab it doesn't select. It is a line feature. I am confused by this and my professor was as well. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Those so much discourse on best laptops for GIS from Mac (with a windows VM) to legacy HP laptops. All i know is i need 32gB of RAM and a whole lot of GPU because pro is huge! It’s just get expensive to have so much compute locally but hey its part of the cost to play. Curious to know what others prefer and why?

It's due this Friday but I've been swamped at work and I also need to check with the client. How likely is the deadline going to get extended?

Hey r/gis ,

The City of Glendale, Arizona is currently looking for a Senior GIS Analyst to join our team.

If you're looking for a solid municipal role with great stability, competitive pay, and strong municipal scale projects in the Phoenix metro area, this is worth a look.

The Details:

• Position: Sr. GIS Analyst
• Location: Glendale, AZ (On-site / Local)
• Salary: $93,240 – $139,860 / year
• Platform: GovernmentJobs.com (Search for the City of Glendale listings)
• Strong background in GIS analysis, architecture, and maintaining spatial data/databases.
• Experience working with ESRI software suite and enterprise applications.
• Familiarity with application documentation, workflows, and infrastructure integration (ETL or API experience is a plus).
• Someone comfortable collaborating with city leadership, internal departments, and technical teams.

If you fit the bill or know someone in the Valley looking to step into a senior public sector GIS role, check out the full job description and apply over on GovernmentJobs.com by searching for the City of Glendale.

Drop a comment or DM if you have questions about the area, but definitely apply through the official portal to make sure your application gets in!

Hi everyone. I am very excited to share standard-atlas.com, which I've been working on for a while.

The premise behind this project:

Approximately 67% of the Earth is covered by clouds at any given time. Waiting for a clear satellite image can take days or even weeks, especially if you’re using open-source methods. That’s why I built standard-atlas.com.

Standard-Atlas uses Sentinel-1 radar and Sentinel-2 optical imagery combined with a state of the art AI model to reconstruct cloudy satellite images, giving you a clearer view of an area when cloud cover gets in the way.

Simply draw an area on the map, select a date, and download a georeferenced GeoTIFF, usually within minutes of processing. The output retains all Sentinel-2 spectral bands, allowing you to carry out further analysis in QGIS, ArcGIS or your existing remote sensing workflow. You can also upload your own radar and optical imagery.

Where can it be useful?

• Disaster response: assess floods, wildfires and storm damage.
• GIS and remote sensing: fill gaps in cloudy satellite imagery for ongoing projects.
• Agriculture and environmental monitoring: supports vegetation monitoring, field or forest boundaries, and calculate indices such as NDVI from the reconstructed bands.
• Insurance: get a clearer view of affected areas following severe weather events.

Affordable pricing

Similar imagery tools can cost around $0.10 to $0.20 per km². Standard-Atlas costs:

• A 10 × 10 km area costs $1 (approximately $0.01/km²), compared with $10 to $20.
• A 25 × 25 km area costs $2 (approximately $0.003/km²), compared with $62.50 to $125.

Creating an account is free, and you can use the results directly in QGIS or ArcGIS. 

One thing to note: Standard-Atlas produces reconstructed imagery, not ground truth. Results may not be completely accurate, so they should be checked against other sources before making important decisions. It can support disaster analysis, including rapidly changing situations, as long as suitable Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 imagery exists for the area and date you need.

I built Standard-Atlas to make satellite imagery more accessible, affordable and useful when it matters. For example, during the recent Nepal floods I was deeply moved by the impact of the disaster, and decided to see if Standard-Atlas could provide some insight into the extent of the devastation. The images attached show the results, as well as a general use case.

Give it a try at standard-atlas.com.

[GIS Experience] 2 years in the industry, 4 of study and programming projects
[AI Disclosure] Used AI for debugging etc., everything else was coded by me from scratch.

Would this help to get? Trying to transition from in field water/sewer utility work to GIS. Input is greatly appreciated. https://community.esri.com/en/discussion/1655039/eadf-2026-eig

I've got two layers with about 50ish attribute fields each, that I'm trying to compare and trim in preparation for merging them into a single layer. Since there's so many fields between them, it's kinda challenging to work through them just looking at their respective tables; so I'd really like to generate them as lists, which would allow me to alphabetize them for an easy side by side comparison.

[GIS Experience] I have 4 years of experience working on GIS-related projects in the agricultural sector, including geospatial software development and spatial data processing.

[AI Disclosure] I used OpenAI Codex as a coding assistant during the development of GeoLint.

Hi everyone!

I've been working on a side project called GeoLint, a free browser-based tool for checking GIS data quality.

I worked as a GIS developer on agricultural projects for four years. We regularly received geographic data collected from farmland surveys, but some of the data had issues, such as duplicate points, unclosed polygons, incorrect units, and so on. Before importing the data into our database, we had to check it first. If the data passed validation, we imported it. Otherwise, we generated a report and sent it back for correction.

The validation process requires a geometry engine, but installing and setting up ArcGIS or QGIS can be quite time-consuming, especially for colleagues responsible for correcting the data. I thought it would be much easier if they could simply drop a data file onto a website and get the validation results. They wouldn't need to install any additional software, and I could maintain a single set of validation rules for everyone.

Of course, developing a new geometry engine from scratch wasn't realistic for me, so I decided to use GEOS, which is also used by QGIS. To make it work in a web browser, I compiled GEOS to WebAssembly. This allows the validation to run entirely in the browser without uploading datasets to a server, which is particularly useful when working with sensitive geospatial data.

Current features

- Supports Shapefile and GeoJSON.

- Previews both geometries and attribute data.

- Validates individual GIS layers.

- Generates validation reports in json or csv format.

- Runs locally in the browser, without uploading datasets to a server.

Limitations and roadmap

- Currently supports single-layer validation only.

- Multi-layer topology validation, including spatial relationships between different layers, is planned.

- Support for additional GIS file formats is planned.

- Attribute validation is also planned.

Here is a screenshot of the validation results:

If you have a Shapefile or GeoJSON dataset to test, I'd be interested in your feedback on a few things:

- Are the existing validation rules sufficient for checking your dataset? Are there any important rules missing?

- Are the reported errors clear enough to understand what went wrong and where to fix it?

- Is the validation report detailed enough to help someone correct the data and resubmit it?

- Did you encounter any incorrect results, confusing messages, or problems loading your dataset?

- Is the UI easy to use? Are there any parts that you found confusing or difficult to work with?

I'm especially interested in specific issues you encounter while trying the tool, rather than general feature ideas.

Try GeoLint: https://geolint.app

The project is still in its early stages, so any feedback or criticism would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

I created these 3D models for a teaching unit on Earthquakes and Volcanoes. Basically, I wanted to remove extraneous information so I could concentrate on a few key learning points, whilst allowing the children to get a sense of the actual relief of the area.

The QR code links to a 3D viewer where they can select layers to see some information about how the land is used surrounding the volcanoes. Etna, Vesuvius.

I built the Volcanoes using TINITALY 10m DEM and a 2M Arctic DEM for Thingvellir. I styled the relief using hillshade and a colour ramp laid over each other using multiply on the hillshade layer. The virtual models have layers to show land use from the CORINE dataset.

I use DEMto3D to get the relief model onto my printer, then I fiddle about with printed paper and PVA glue to stick down the styling....that's honestly the hardest part of all this!

The Thingvellir model is 1.75x exaggerated, I just wanted the kids to have something that can sort of show how the land looks when two plates are slowly pulling away from each other. Thingvellir.

The last time I posted something like this some people asked if I could put the STLs somewhere for download. They are all online with a breakdown of the workflow, I hope it all works, but I'm very much an amateur and not a professional website builder!

[GIS Experience] Learnt to use it whilst working in forestry, now use it for education (using QGIS off and on since 2019)
[AI Disclosure] I used AI when finishing the interactive models - I gave it an exported version of my 3js webmap and got it to make it look more primary friendly to avoid the standard 3js UI.

Just wanted to share this bunch of free tools with y'all. Hopefully someone will find them useful. We are going to add more in the near future. If you have any ideas for small useful tools we should add, then please share.

What should I expect in a GIS technical interview for an internship?

11 years ago I wrote a guide to creating bivariate choropleth maps. It took Photoshop, SQL, and an eyedropper.

Now it takes minutes.

This article revisits that topic, focused on what changed, what still holds up, and how to design better colors in Phosphor.

Nearly 400 workers carved Mount Rushmore from 4 October 1927 to 31 October 1941, about 90% of it with dynamite, and not one of them died. This is the summit in the USGS 3DEP 1 m bare-earth DEM, collected 2023, shaded and tinted by elevation. The granite is the bright, cracked block in the upper middle. The road curves down the left side and the stepped seating shows up lower right. If you want contours from it, it's one tool in QGIS, Raster > Extraction > Contour (GDAL contour underneath). The interval is in the DEM's units, so 2 on a meter DEM gives 2 m contours.

1. Mount Rushmore's carved granite summit in bare-earth lidar
2. Same view as plain hillshade with elevation tint
3. Air photo of the same area, July 2022

Numbered pins on picture 1:
Pin 1: Dark joint cracking bare granite
Pin 2: The road curving down the side

Lidar: USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP), public domain.
Imagery: USGS The National Map (NAIP Imagery service), 2022, Public domain.

Hello everyone, I recently saw a job listing where the company states that they do their GIS work for mapping their infrastructure using Geomedia/Intergraph. I pretty much don't know anything about these but I did some research and found out it was a main GIS software used a couple of decades ago, but it seems that its relevance has now diminished. I am rather sceptical about the fact that the company uses this exact software and hasn't migrated to other more modern GIS tools. So does anyone here still work with Geomedia and what do you think of it? What is Geomedia's reputation nowadays?

I graduated in August with my bachelors in GIS. I’m regretting my degree at this point because I can’t land a job. Every listing is looking for people with 3+ yrs experience in something I don’t have experience in yet. I still apply to them on the off chance I get an interview.

A little background on me, I was a geospatial intelligence analyst in the Army for 6 years. When I got out I pursued my degree in GIS. I liked the mapping and analyzing of my job in the Army, but I wanted to apply those skills to improve infrastructure or track environmental concerns, etc.. Problem is I don’t have direct experience in analyzing those passions outside of school. So my “experience” is not considered real experience to hiring staff. I’ve been told that at the end of two separate interviews.

I’ve thought about going back into intel for the ease of it but that’s not really possible where I am either. All the intel positions are senior positions. And I can’t move because my spouse is still active duty military. I’ve even applied to remote jobs, as expected I haven’t heard back from any of those.

I’m lost on what to do. I feel stuck!

Hi everyone,

[AI Disclosure] I do not use any AI, nor am I interested in doing so.

[GIS Experience] I have been working as a GIS analyst for a municipality for about 6 months now. This is my first job out of college, so I am very new to the field still.

I am looking for some advice or project ideas from other people who have worked with or for municipalities. I want to be able to do some cool projects that would benefit the town and get people more interested in the GIS we have! Any ideas, advice, conversations, etc. would be greatly appreciated!

For some context: The town I work for has about 20k people and is pretty wealthy and residential. We have a lot of forests and water bodies.

I have been using QGIS for over 10 years, and there are several features that could improve the work workflow.

Hello everyone!

I have a requirement for Experience Builder that I’m not sure is feasible. I have a web map with several layers, one of which is a polygon layer where each polygon contains data such as population, number of households, number of workers, and other information. I’ve set up an Experience Builder project that allows users to draw polygons in a separate, empty layer; these drawn polygons then select the features from the first layer (the one containing the population data), and the corresponding information is displayed in text panels on the side. That covers half of what I need.

Is there a way to export the map view—showing the selected areas along with the chosen data—to a PDF, without having that information appear in the side panels? In other words, can I draw a polygon, use it to select the features contained within it, and then export a PDF report? Is this possible in Experience Builder?

Thanks!

[GIS Experience] 7 years

[AI Disclosure] AI was not used in this project

我做了一個一個地圖，但是我用QGIS圖像化時卻做不到把它用最精細的方式圖像化，有人能幫助我嗎?