Are You Ready For #SARGIS8?

The National Alliance for Public Safety GIS Foundation's Search & Rescue GIS Working Group is hosting the 8th Annual SARGIS Workshop and Meeting on November 14th-16th, 2016.

Cost - Free! **Space is limited** Training and workshop materials will be provided at no cost.

Location - USGS: 12201 Sunrise Valley Dr, Reston, VA 20192 

What is it about?
SARGIS8 will focus on the capabilities and best practices for Search & Rescue and geospatial technologies with 2 days of hands-on training. 

• Day 1: Monday - Plenary for SAR and GIS practitioners: Keynotes, presentations, & panel discussions (space is limited to 120 participants) 
• Day 2: Tuesday - Two tracks of technical GIS training (Basic/Web GIS & Advanced/Desktop GIS - space is limited to 60 participants)
• Day 3: Wednesday - Two tracks of technical GIS training, culminating in a joint table-top exercise (space is limited to 60 participants)

Who should attend?
Search and Rescue Personnel (paid and unpaid) who want to know more about GIS for SAR
GIS technical professionals & staff that currently support SAR missions and/or are interested in learning how they can help SAR teams
Other Public Safety Operators, Decision makers, & Policy makers

Why Participate?
Join leading local, state, and Federal public safety agencies that are charting new ground for how GIS can be applied to missing person incidents.

Go to this Registration Page for more details and to lock in your place at this event. 

SpatiaLABS for WiSAR Release

Four new SpatiaLABS are now available using Search and Rescue in Yosemite National Park as their topic. These are FREE and ideal for beginners to geographic information systems (GIS), search and rescue professionals, or even GIS Specialists who are new to ArcGIS Pro or ArcGIS Online. 

In the first of these four labs, you will use search and rescue incident locations to create an interactive web map and web mapping application in ArcGIS Online to explore the distribution of incidents in Yosemite National Park.  

Click here to try the web mapping application created in the exercise.

In the second lab, you will open a map project in ArcGIS Pro and create assignment maps for the emergency search operations.  

In the third lab, you will map where searchers have been deployed and what they have found.  

In the fourth lab, you will create a “clue log” that can be edited anywhere and with any device.

Click here to try the Clue Log application.

In order to try these tutorials you will need access to ArcGIS. First of all, if you work for a government agency or are a University Student, you most likely have access to ArcGIS so check with your IT or GIS Administrator. If not, here are some other options:

1. Start a free 60-day trial http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgisonline/evaluate
2. Join the nonprofit organization program (Most SAR Teams qualify) http://www.esri.com/nonprofit 
3. ArcGIS for Personal Use http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgis-for-personal-use 

For University instructors - SpatiaLABS are designed to freely modified to fit your needs. 

"You'll find instructional materials in Microsoft Word and other common formats. Go ahead, change or add self-assessment questions, tweak the context for the analysis, rework the lab to use local data. Customize SpatiaLABS to suit your non-commercial needs." 

Special thanks to the SpatiaLABS team and Joe Kerski for his post on these SpatiaLABS.