ArcGIS Pro Spatial Planning for Local Government Services Training Course

Course overview

Local authorities must decide where to place services, target inspections, prioritise capital works and respond to changing community needs using evidence that can withstand scrutiny. ArcGIS Pro enables planners and service teams to combine demographic, asset, land-use, accessibility and deprivation data into defensible spatial analyses. This course addresses the practical challenge of turning disconnected council datasets into mapped service intelligence for decisions on facilities, waste routes, housing support, public realm investment, emergency planning and equitable access to services.

Participants learn a structured ArcGIS Pro workflow for local government spatial planning: preparing authoritative datasets, managing coordinate systems, joining service records to geography, analysing travel times, modelling catchments, identifying gaps in provision and ranking priority areas. They use geoprocessing tools, Network Analyst workflows, suitability models, spatial joins, overlay analysis and map layouts to answer operational planning questions. The course also covers data quality, metadata, privacy-aware handling of resident and service-demand data, and communicating findings through clear maps, charts and web-ready outputs.

Teaching is built around a realistic local authority planning scenario in which participants assess the distribution and accessibility of community services across a district. Instructor demonstrations are followed by guided ArcGIS Pro labs, peer review of assumptions and short decision briefings. By the final day, each participant produces a service-accessibility planning pack: a documented geodatabase, repeatable analysis model, prioritised intervention map and management-ready layout explaining the evidence, limitations and recommended actions.

The course is designed for GIS professionals, planners, analysts and service managers who already work with geographic data and need to apply ArcGIS Pro directly to public-service planning decisions.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Prepare a project geodatabase and standardise local authority datasets using coordinate systems, domains and metadata
• Join service-demand, demographic and asset records to small-area geography using ArcGIS Pro attribute and spatial joins
• Build service catchments and travel-time accessibility areas with ArcGIS Network Analyst workflows
• Identify underserved communities through overlay analysis of population need, deprivation indicators and existing provision
• Create a weighted suitability model to rank candidate sites for a local government facility or intervention
• Automate repeatable planning workflows with ModelBuilder and documented geoprocessing parameters
• Design decision-ready maps and layouts that communicate service gaps, priorities, assumptions and limitations
• Produce a spatial planning evidence pack containing a prioritised intervention map, analysis model and recommendation summary

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• GIS Analysts — who prepare spatial evidence for service planning, asset management and policy decisions
• Spatial and Development Planners — who assess site options, infrastructure needs and equitable access to local services
• Local Government Data Analysts — who need to connect administrative records with geography for targeted interventions
• Public Health and Community Planning Officers — who identify neighbourhoods with unmet needs and barriers to access
• Asset and Estates Managers — who evaluate the location, coverage and utilisation of public facilities
• Emergency Planning and Resilience Officers — who map vulnerable populations, response assets and access constraints

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should be comfortable navigating ArcGIS Pro, adding layers, inspecting attribute tables, symbolising maps and performing basic selections or queries. They should understand common vector data types such as points, lines and polygons, and be able to interpret tabular data containing identifiers and service records. Familiarity with local authority geography, service datasets or planning processes is useful but not essential. This is not a beginner GIS course: attendees do not need prior experience with Network Analyst, ModelBuilder, Python or web GIS, but they should already have practical experience creating and editing straightforward ArcGIS Pro projects.

Training methodology

The five-day programme combines concise instructor-led explanations with daily ArcGIS Pro build sessions using a local authority service-planning case. Participants work with demographic, asset, demand and network datasets to configure geodatabases, run spatial and network analyses, and test site-selection criteria. Facilitated reviews examine data limitations, weighting choices and the defensibility of recommendations. Small-group workshops simulate discussion between GIS, planning and service teams. The final session is an application-planning clinic in which participants adapt the course workflow to a live or anticipated workplace planning question.

Course outline

Day 1: Building a reliable local government spatial evidence base

• ArcGIS Pro project structure for multi-service planning work
• File geodatabases, feature datasets and naming conventions
• Coordinate systems and transformations for authoritative local datasets
• Data quality checks for geometry, null values and duplicate identifiers
• Domains, subtypes and coded values for service asset records
• Joining administrative service data to wards, LSOAs or neighbourhood polygons
• Metadata documentation and privacy-aware handling of resident data

Workshop: Participants create a planning geodatabase and integrate demographic, facility and service-demand datasets for a district service review.

Day 2: Measuring demand, coverage and service gaps

• Attribute queries and definition queries for service eligibility criteria
• Spatial joins for counting demand and assets by administrative area
• Buffer analysis for proximity-based service coverage
• Intersect, Union and Erase tools for policy-area overlay analysis
• Field calculations for rates, ratios and normalised demand measures
• Hot Spot Analysis concepts for clustering of service requests
• Layer symbology and classification methods for comparable thematic maps

Workshop: Participants produce a service-gap map that compares estimated need, current facility coverage and recorded demand by neighbourhood.

Day 3: Accessibility and network-based service planning

• Network dataset requirements and travel-mode configuration
• Service Area analysis for walk, drive and public-service access thresholds
• Origin-Destination Cost Matrix analysis for community-to-facility travel times
• Location-Allocation analysis for evaluating proposed facility locations
• Barriers, restrictions and impedance in local road and path networks
• Comparing straight-line buffers with network-based catchments
• Interpreting accessibility results for equality and rurality considerations

Workshop: Participants model 15- and 30-minute access to community hubs and identify settlements outside the agreed service standard.

Day 4: Prioritising sites and automating planning workflows

• Weighted Overlay and Weighted Sum methods for site suitability
• Reclassifying criteria into transparent scoring scales
• Constraint mapping for flood risk, protected land and planning exclusions
• Sensitivity testing of weights and threshold assumptions
• Raster analysis for continuous accessibility and land suitability surfaces
• ModelBuilder workflow design for repeatable service assessments
• Model documentation, validation and parameter setting

Workshop: Participants build and test a ModelBuilder suitability model that ranks candidate locations for a new public service facility.

Day 5: Turning analysis into an accountable planning recommendation

• Map layouts for cabinet reports, committee papers and service plans
• Charting and summarising priority areas within ArcGIS Pro
• Map series production for ward-level or neighbourhood briefings
• Communicating uncertainty, caveats and data limitations
• Publishing planning outputs to ArcGIS Online for stakeholder review
• Field verification workflows with ArcGIS Field Maps and Survey123
• Implementation planning for a live local authority spatial analysis use case

Workshop: Participants complete and present a service-accessibility planning pack with intervention priorities, a repeatable model and an action plan for workplace use.

Tools & standards covered

ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Field Maps, ArcGIS Survey123

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions