An Excalibur project is a dynamic way to organize and reference resources that are required to complete an image or video-based task in a single location. The way in which projects are organized helps to modernize a collection of resources from a local repository of information to those that can extend across an organization, using shared services and resources as part of the web GIS.
Excalibur projects are created, viewed, and used in ArcGIS Excalibur. Excalibur projects contain information to give an understanding of what the project is about, such as a name, description, date created, project creator, and project instructions. Once the project is created, a web map is create with the project and is set as the project web map. Excalibur projects can be edited to add and remove capabilities at any time. The type of capabilities that can be added to a project determines which tools are available in the Tool Panel to help streamline the imagery-based or video-based task.
The sections below describe a few of these items.
Resources
The basis of all Excalibur projects is an image, set of images, a video, or a URL to a service that you need to complete an image or video-based task. Project instructions help guide you through your task by describing what needs to be accomplished. Additionally, projects can include geospatial reference layers to provide context for the task, as well as a set of tools to streamline workflows. An Excalibur project can contain the following resources:
Sharing
Excalibur projects can be personal projects that are available and private to only you as the project creator. You can share a project publicly, with your organization, or with specific groups you are a member of or own to allow multiple members to work on it. You can decide whether you want to share a project when you create it or edit these details after creation.
Add observation layers
Adding observation layers to a project provides a workflow for collecting observations from imagery or video, including resources for accomplishing observations, editing, and creating derived information products from these activities. These layers provide observation tools in the Tools Panel when you open an Excalibur project. An observation layer can be a feature layer or an ArcGIS Knowledge graph entity layer. Feature layers in your project web map or feature layers added through the Add Layer menu are automatically added as observation layers in your project.
License:
ArcGIS Knowledge graph layers are only supported in ArcGIS Enterprise.
Note:
ArcGIS Knowledge graph layers must be spatial entities. Nonspatial entities and relationships are not supported. Additional capabilities not supported for knowledge graph spatial entity layers include the following:
- Collecting observations in the Focus panel
- Integration with the Time Slider and Feature Table
Layers that do not have the ArcGIS Excalibur system-managed fields can be added and used in an Excalibur project. Observations collected with these layers are added to the project, but they will not contain any previous observations in the layer if they are not time enabled.
Create an observation collection layer
Creating a project containing observations requires at least one observation collection layer. In ArcGIS Excalibur, the observation collection layer can be created within a project that you own, or through the Publish hosted imagery layers workflow. With each workflow, the following settings are enabled on the layer:
Manage system fields and settings
If your observation layer was not created in ArcGIS Excalibur and does not have the system-managed fields, you can follow a guided workflow to add them. This allows the layer to automatically populate information from the image when an observation is collected. Additionally, the layer will be time enabled if it is not already. The following fields will be added:
- ics_xy_excalibur
- image_classification_excalibur
- image_dtg_local_excalibur
- image_dtg_utc_excalibur
- imageid_excalibur
- mapscale_excalibur
- observation_dtg_local_excalibur
- observation_latlon_excalibur
- predicted_niirs_excalibur
- projectid_excalibur
- raster_id_excalibur
- service_url_excalibur
Add GeoEnrichment definitions to an Excalibur project
Adding a GeoEnrichment definition to a project can enhance your observations with information from a related layer during observation collection. You can choose which fields are automatically populated in a point or polygon observation layer by matching them to fields in one or more related polygon context layers.
To create a GeoEnrichment definition in an Excalibur project, the following criteria must be met:
- You must be the project owner or an administrator.
- You must have a point or polygon observation layer in your Excalibur project.
- You must have a polygon context layer in a web map that has been added to your project.
Follow the guided workflow to add, view, or remove GeoEnrichment definitions to an Excalibur project.