What's new in Esri Roads and Highways

What's new in Roads and Highways 10.2.2 Patch 1

Conflict prevention

To improve support for LRS Network and event editing in a multiuser enterprise geodatabase, a new feature has been added to Esri Roads and Highways known as conflict prevention. With the ability to lock routes or events on routes to a specific user in a named geodatabase version, edit conflicts can be avoided, whether explicit conflicts as defined by ArcGIS or logical conflicts that ArcGIS doesn't detect as conflicts during the reconcile process but the user perceives as such.

Examples of where this feature is useful:

Scenario: Route edits versus event edits

In this scenario, a user is editing a route and changing the measures on the route in one version, and another user is editing measures on events located on that route in another version.

The reconcile and post processes do not detect that measures on events may not be relevant to new measures on a route or vice versa. By allowing users to lock routes, entry of the measures for events and routes is coordinated to prevent this situation. This functionality prevents measure-based mismatches and conflicts that the LRS or event editors would need to resolve.

Scenario: Route edits versus route edits

In this scenario, a user is editing a route in one version while another user is editing the same route in a different version.

On reconcile and post, the last user to reconcile must manually reconcile all conflicts in the route table, centerline sequence table, calibration point feature class, and centerline feature class. In addition, the last user to reconcile needs to reconcile any conflicts related to event measure behaviors in all event layers. If the user makes an error in reconciliation, the route measures or event measures could be incorrect. By allowing users to lock routes to edit, this scenario is avoided.

Event edits versus event edits

In this scenario, a user edits events and event measures in a version, and in another version, another user edits those events in a conflicting way.

On reconcile and post, the last user must manually reconcile all conflicts, including any arising from the other event editor's edits. Allowing users to lock events prevents the occurrence of this situation.

How conflict prevention works

Conflict prevention allows users to lock routes to a named geodatabase version, and only that user can edit the route. Locks are released by posting changes to a common, configured version known as the lock root version. To acquire a lock, you must first reconcile with the lock root version. If a route is locked, only that user in the version where the lock was acquired can edit the route or events on the route.

There is another lock type known as an event lock that allows only the user that acquired the lock to edit events on the route in the version in which the lock was acquired. Event locks allow other users to acquire event locks on other event layers and edit those layers on the same route. If event locks are acquired on a route, no one can edit the route itself until all event locks for the route are released.

Conflict prevention management

Tools have been added to Esri Roads and Highways for Desktop to view route locks, acquire route locks, and release route locks. There is a window to view and query the locks that exist, who holds them, and the version they are held in. Users can explicitly acquire locks on routes or implicitly acquire locks as they edit using the Esri Roads and Highways edit activities (Create Route, Realign Route, and so forth).

Tools have been added to the Roadway Characteristics Editor (RCE) to view event locks, acquire event locks, and release event locks. There is a user experience to view and query the locks that exist, who holds them, and the version they are held in. In the RCE, users can implicitly acquire locks as they edit using the event editing widgets and event table views.

The Roads and Highways REST APIs have been enhanced to provide REST endpoints to acquire event locks, query locks, and release locks. The event editing APIs have been enhanced to enforce locking. The reconcileVersion REST API has also been enhanced to support releasing locks on a post operation, or acquiring locks on a reconcile operation.

Event referent offset persistence

Also new to the 10.2.2 Patch 1 release is the ability to persist referent locations and measures with events in addition to the route ID and measures.

In addition to the route ID and measures, events can have columns to store information about the referent location provided at data entry to derive the location of the event. The referent locations that can be stored include the following:

• Offset distance from a feature for a point feature in the geodatabase
• Offset distance from an Esri Roads and Highways intersection point feature
• Offset distance from an Esri Roads and Highways point event feature

• Offset distance from an x,y coordinate
• Offset distance from a station

To leverage this feature, additional columns must be configured with your events to include columns for the referent method, the referent location, and the referent offset. For linear events, there are two sets of these columns, one for the from measure and one for the to measure.

When using Esri Roads and Highways to provide a measure for an event by providing an intersection offset; x,y coordinate offset; feature and offset; event and offset; or starting station and offset, the user-provided referent location and offset will be stored with the event along with the calculated route and measures. In addition, events in the same layer can have different referent methods. For example, a crash event can be located by x,y coordinate offset and another crash in the same event layer can be located by intersection and offset.

Legacy:

This new feature replaces support for the following event types in Roads and Highways, which will be removed from the product at the 10.3 release:

• X and Y Coordinate Offset
• Offset from an Event
• Offset from a Point Feature Class

Support to honor referent offset location at cartographic realignment

In addition to supporting the persistence of referent offset location for events, cartographic realignment now has added support to honor referent location of events over the route and measure as an option.

Example use cases for this capability include speed limit events on local government roads whose locations are maintained by intersection and offset or engineering stationing marker events whose locations are managed by x,y coordinates. If these two event layers were configured in Roads and Highways and given the columns required to store referent locations, this new feature would ensure that the events are not relocated by placing the event at the new route and measure for the event after the cartographic realignment. In the case of speed limits, the distance offset from the intersection would be used to recalculate the event's shape. For the engineering stationing markers, the closest point to the route for the x,y coordinate would be used to recalculate the event's shape.

Support to update route length after cartographic realignment

At this release, a new option has been added to update route length based on the change in length of the route geometry after a cartographic realignment. This is useful for networks whose measures are based on geometry length.

Event measure behaviors can be run after a series of LRS edits

Before this release, event measure behaviors were immediately processed by Roads and Highways after every LRS edit activity run by the user. At this release, an LRS editor can perform a series of LRS edits before applying the event measure behaviors. This new enhancement improves the workflow of the LRS editor by allowing him or her to make many edits before applying changes and waiting for event measure behaviors to process.

Event measure behavior performance improvements

The Roads and Highways event measure behaviors engine has been tuned to support improved single-user performance as well as multiuser scalability.

Route ID column lookup table

This feature is useful when you have a column that makes up a field in your route ID where there are several hundreds or thousands of potential values, such as street name or GNIS code. You can configure a column on the table to use to search for a value and another field to use as the actual value that is stored in the geodatabase when a user selects a value in the Create Route dialog box.

Translate events from LRM to LRM support for multiple matches

At this release, the Translate Events From LRM To LRM geoprocessing tool has been enhanced to support multiple methods of returning multimatch results for events. These are conditions where source events may have more than one potential target route on which to locate due to route concurrency in the target network.

The options supported for returning multimatches include the following:

• Any—The source event is translated against the first of the concurrent routes at that location in the target network.
• Route ID—The Route ID of the source event is compared to the target network route ID to find a single match route to translate against.
• All—The source event is translated against all the concurrent routes at that location in the target network.

Intersection generation now creates measure column on intersection

At this release, when configuring intersections, you can specify a column to store the route measure value in when the intersection is generated.

RCE support to display event record measure length

At the 10.2.2 patch 1 release, you can choose to display a measure length column for selected event records. The displayed measure length can be calculated based on the difference of the to and from measures or by subtracting physical and measure gaps.

RCE supports navigation to an event upon row click in attribute table

Also at this release, you can choose to center the map on event records by clicking one or more rows in the attribute table. The Center map on highlighted results check box is a table setting that enables this functionality for current and future logins. It can be changed as needed.

RCE support to navigate to route start, end, or extent

At this release, the Add Linear Events and Add Point Events widgets now allow you to zoom to a route start, end, or extent for the route selected for an edit.

RCE Advanced Route Find

At this release, a new widget has been added to the Roadway Characteristics Editor for advanced route searches. It can be accessed by clicking the Advanced Route Find button next to the Network drop-down arrow in the Find group. It supports searching against any column or a group of columns on the network. It supports columns that have coded value domains. It also supports IntelliSense searching against text columns. The results can be sorted by up to three columns in the results. In addition, the Search by method provided by the user is remembered, so the next time the dialog box opens, it is set to the configuration last used by the user, but can be reset.

REST endpoint to translate event measures

At this release, a new REST endpoint has been added to be able to translate event measures from one network to another. Before this release, this capability required two separate REST calls to perform the operation.

What's new in Roads and Highways 10.2.2

The 10.2.2 release of Esri Roads and Highways has added some new features and enhanced some existing ones.

Roads and Highways for Desktop updates

• Update route loading

  In prior releases, tools were added for initial data loading of routes into an LRS Network. At this release, support has been added to bulk load routes into an already loaded network. New additional routes can be loaded and existing routes replaced with updated records in bulk. This capability can be used by state government agencies looking to load LRS Networks from county or municipal agencies to build a statewide LRS Network.

  

• Calibrating gapped routes

  At the last release, a configuration screen was added to support the configuration of how newly created routes with physical gaps should be calibrated. At this release, the configuration is recognized for not only the Create Route edit activity, but also the Reassign Route, Retire Route, and Extend Route edit activities. In addition, the Update Calibration Points and Generate Calibration Points geoprocessing tools have been updated to support the following options. Each method will produce a different calibration value for a route with physical gaps.

  1. Add Euclidean distance between the gaps to the route measures.
  2. Add a configured increment (for example, 0.001 miles) between gaps, which also increases the route length by the configured amount.
  3. Add a configured step increment (for example, 0.001) between gaps, which does not increase the route length; it only provides unique values between the gap end points for the measures.

  This new support will help ensure that measures at opposite ends of gaps are unique without requiring the user to perform additional steps after network editing.

  

• Update Intersection Points geoprocessing tool

  A new geoprocessing tool has been created to support updating intersections if features that make up an intersection change. This new tool opens the door to Python scripting intersection updates, configuring intersection updates as part of a Workflow Manager job step, or scheduling a process that updates intersections.

  

• Updating intersections for only changed features

  The Update Intersection Points geoprocessing tool now only supports recalculating intersections for features that have changed. In previous releases, the Update Intersection Points tool recalculated intersections for all routes and features participating in the intersection definition, which was a time-consuming operation. Now, users can enable editor tracking for LRS Networks and feature classes participating in a Roads and Highways intersection feature class and provide a date or time when updating intersections. This ensures that only features that have been changed since the date or time will have their intersection locations recalculated. This will dramatically reduce intersection updating time.

• Stationing event layers

  Support for a stationing event layer type has been added to Roads and Highways. At this release you can configure a stationing event layer associated with an LRS Network. This event layer can be used to locate station measures against saved station events in the Roads and Highways REST web services and be used to locate station measures in the Roadway Characteristics Editor when creating new events. Station equations, with ahead and back stations values, are supported by this feature.

  

• Padding support for route ID fields

  When configuring route IDs that are comprised of multiple fields, users can configure Roads and Highways to automatically pad user-provided values for route ID fields with a padding character. The configuration of the padding character can be different by field, as can the justification of the padding on the field value (right or left side of user-provided value).

  This new feature is useful for agencies that continue to support a legacy route ID definition that is prevalent in the organization across different business units and resides in several layers of event data. If the user does not provide all of the characters required for the field length configuration in the route ID when creating new routes, Roads and Highways can fill in the values with padding characters.

  To illustrate, imagine a route ID configuration comprised of a route number column that has a fixed length of 4 characters and a route class column that has a fixed length of 2 characters. Both are configured with a padding character of 0. If the user creates a new route using the Roads and Highways editing tools and the route number provided is 10 with a route class of S, Roads and Highways can provide the padding characters to create the 6-character, fixed-length route ID of 00100s.

  

• Null value support for route ID fields

  When creating new routes using the Roads and Highways editing tools, users can configure the rightmost fields in the route ID to accept null values for route ID configurations comprised of multiple fields. This configuration option is useful when some route types provide a value for a column in the route ID and others don't. An example is if a route ID configuration supported the last field on the route ID as a ramp ID. Routes that are not ramps would not have a value, but routes that were ramps would.

Roads and Highways for Server updates

• Relocate event service

  New to 10.2.2 is the relocate event REST web service. This web service can be used to provide external event systems measure updates on their LRS events that result from LRS Network route edits. This new web service is an improvement over the queryChanges and acknowledgeChanges REST endpoints that historically provided external systems measure updates based on storing updates in staging tables. This new service calculates the measure update at the time the web service is invoked by the external system, providing the benefits of the following:

  • Better IT compliance

    It enables the Roads and Highways for Desktop LRS editor to no longer require a direct database connection to the external event system. Some transportation organization IT standards prohibit desktop users from direct database connections to external system databases, preferring web services instead.

  • More fault tolerant

    It enables support for external event system databases to go offline and not impact the LRS editing. The staging table approach in previous releases required external systems to be online in order to perform LRS edits so the external system measures wouldn't be brought out of alignment with the LRS.

  • Improved data synchronization

    This new approach makes it possible for the LRS editor to edit a route for which a user in the external system is making changes to the events on that route without bringing the event values or measures into a state that would require manual review.

  • Faster LRS editing

    The LRS editor no longer needs to wait for these external events to be processed for event measure updates after LRS edits. As a result, LRS editing is faster when external systems are configured.

  Note:

  This service, exposed by publishing the new Relocate Events geoprocessing tool, deprecates the queryChanges and acknowledgeChanges REST endpoints in Roads and Highways for Server. The queryChanges and acknowledgeChanges REST endpoints will continue to be supported at this release, but removed from Roads and Highways at the next release. Because these endpoints are still supported, the staging tables and external event processing during LRS editing will still occur at 10.2.2 but will no longer occur at the next release.

• Export network service

  At this release, we added the Export Network geoprocessing tool , which can be used by external systems to export routes definitions, route concurrencies, route gaps, and route LRM measure translations. This tool can be published as a service and used for external systems that wish to integrate with Roads and Highways but persist an LRS Network in its database.

• Stationing measure support

  At 10.2.2, if your network has a station event layer with station events (a new feature of 10.2.2), the stationToGeometry REST web service operation can support converting a station measure and route ID or list of station measures and route IDs to coordinates. Conversely, the geometryToStation REST endpoint supports converting a coordinate or a list of coordinates to station measures.

  In addition, we now ship a new JavaScript developer sample that demonstrates these web service calls. This sample takes a station measure and a route ID as input and returns the location on the map and the measure of the network at that station location. This sample can bootstrap the development of an app to convert station measures to network measures.

Roadway Characteristics Editor

• Exporting and importing attribute sets

  At this release, users can now share attribute set definitions by exporting them to a file. These files can then be imported. This feature not only enables the sharing of attribute sets among users but also simplifies the configuration of the Roadway Characteristic Editor for default attribute sets in a deployment. Before this release, users would need to edit JSON text in a configuration file to configure attribute sets. This process was error prone. At this release, the RCE administrator can place an exported attribute set file into a folder in the RCE deployment to configure the default attribute sets.

• Point event support for reference offsetting

  In the previous release, support was added for specifying reference offset measures for creating new linear events. At this release, this capability was extended to point event creation. Point events can be created by providing reference offset measures to features such as Roads and Highways intersection points.

  

• Station measure entry support

  In this release, support has been added for station measure entries for point and line event creation. Users can provide station measures for events, and the Roadway Characteristics Editor will translate the station measures into the LRS Network measures the events are modeled after. Users can provide station measures in RCE in one of three ways:

  • Provide a station measure that is an offset from a selected location on the map and a provided start station measure at that location.
  • Select an existing station event and provide a station measure offset from that station.
  • Provide a station measure that is located by RCE against a stationing event layer configured with the LRS Network.

  

• Compass direction for reference offsetting

  Added at this release is the ability to provide a compass direction for reference offset measure values when creating point and line events.

  

• Creating events on redlines

  Users can now add events on redlines for routes that need to be added to the LRS Network if they know the route ID for the missing route. This allows roadway characteristic editors the ability to provide roadway characteristic events for routes that are missing from the LRS Network. This capability frees them from waiting for the LRS owners to update the LRS with the route. Once the route is added to the LRS Network, the event shapes are updated to align to the authoritative route geometry.

• Changing temporal view date (TVD)

  The Roadway Characteristics Editor now supports the ability to change the TVD of networks, events, intersections, and calibration points displayed in the map. Users can now edit and create events for routes that are effective on the network in the future, routes that are retired, or routes that have different representations in the past.

  

• Create station events

  At this release, users can create station events and station equations from the Roadway Characteristics Editor using the Create Point Events widget. The widget has been enhanced to allow users to provide map coordinates to create events by including a ground control factor. In addition, station measures are validated before storage.

  

What's new in Roads and Highways 10.2.1

The 10.2.1 release of Esri Roads and Highways has added some new features and enhanced some existing ones.

Roads and Highways for Desktop updates

• Configurable rules for route dominance

  As part of configuring your LRS Network, you can specify the rules that define route dominance for concurrent routes. A dominant route in a concurrent route relationship is the route that carries events (for the event types that are only desired on one route of a concurrent route relationship). The rules can be configured against columns in the LRS Network feature class or associated line event tables. Example rules include specifying a route is dominant if the route number is lower and the functional class is higher. The rules are used to drive the snap event behavior selection of a priority (dominant) route to assign events to when routes are edited. For more information, see Configuring route dominance.

• Updating intersection locations

  At the 10.2 patch 1 release, support was added to generate intersection points for polygon and polyline features that intersect routes. This support has been extended at the 10.2.1 release to include the ability to update intersection locations based off of changes to the intersecting feature's or route's geometry. For more information, see Updating an LRS intersection class.

• Initial data loading for more than one LRS Network

  At the 10.2 patch 1 release, tools were added to support initial data loading of one LRS Network. At the 10.2.1 release, this support was extended to include support for the initial data loading for more than one network into an ALRS. For more information, see Creating additional LRS Networks.

• Ability to remove centerline geometry duplication

  Along with adding support for initial data loading for more than one LRS Network, a tool was added to remove duplicate centerline geometry that could result from the loading of a second network or through LRS editing. For more information, see Removing duplicate centerline geometry.

• Enhanced calibration for routes with physical gaps

  The Generate Calibration Point and Update Calibration Point geoprocessing tools have been enhanced to support options to

  • Add a Euclidean measure distance to the measure on the upstream portion of a physical gap.
  • Determine the direction of calibration on physically gapped routes based on the measures of source route polylines. Without this support, route portions separated by gaps were calibrated in the direction of digitization, which wasn't always the direction of calibration. In addition, route portions separated by physical gaps were calibrated in the order the path was digitized into the route, which didn't always reflect the order of desired calibration. For more information, see Creating and updating calibration points.

• Internal event registration for tables not in the geodatabase

  An enhancement has been made for internal events (events managed in the geodatabase with the Roads and Highways minimum schema) to no longer require the event table to be copied to the geodatabase where the Roads and Highways minimum schema resides. Event tables can be made internal by pointing to the table in an external system, and Roads and Highways will turn it into an event feature class in the geodatabase and copy over the records. For more information, see Registering an external event source.

• Creating routes with physical gaps

  At this release, a configuration screen has been added to support the configuration of how newly created routes with physical gaps should be calibrated. The options are to

  1. Add a Euclidean distance between the gaps to the route measures.
  2. Add a configured increment (for example, 0.001 miles) between gaps that increases the route length by the configured amount.
  3. Add a configured step increment (for example, 0.001 miles) between gaps that does not increase the route length. It only provides unique values between the gap end points for the measures.

  At this release, the configuration is recognized for the Create Route edit activity. For more information, see Methods for calibrating routes with physical gaps.

Roadway Characteristics Editor updates

• Data Reviewer Server integration

  At this release, the Roadway Characteristic Editor supports integration with ArcGIS Data Reviewer for Server to perform deployment time-configured batch jobs. Use Data Reviewer for Desktop to configure checks against the data including SQL checks, cross-table checks, domain checks, and more. With Data Reviewer for Server integrated, users in RCE can do the following:

  • View the Reviewer table

    View the list of errors and related attributes, navigate them on the map, highlight them, and export them to a CSV file. For more information, see Viewing the Reviewer table.

    

  • Filtering the Reviewer table

    As errors collect in the Reviewer table, it may become useful and necessary to filter out only the errors that are of interest to the workflow in which you are involved. Filter errors on any of the Reviewer fields, including the resource the error came from, error severity, the time the error was discovered, and more. For more information, see Customizing the Reviewer table.

    

  • Customizing the view of the Reviewer table

    Decide which Data Reviewer fields to display in the Reviewer table and the order in which they are displayed. For more information, see Customizing the Reviewer table.

    

  • Correcting errors

    Correct discovered errors from the Reviewer table within RCE. For more information, see Correcting Data Reviewer errors.

  • Executing batch jobs

    Execute Reviewer batch jobs to detect data errors from RCE to populate the Reviewer table. For more information, see Executing Data Reviewer batch jobs in the Roadway Characteristics Editor.

• Editing data in a table returned from an attribute set query

  At the 10.2 patch 1 release, support was added to return selection results as an attribute set that dynamically segments multiple event layers together in a single record set. At the 10.2.1 release, support was added to edit or change data returned this way. For more information, see Editing an attribute set selection.

  

• Multicolumn sorting for event queries

  Support has been added to sort event query results on multiple columns. This is very useful for sorting events by their route ID and then by their From measure. For more information, see Advanced table sorting.

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• User settings for From and To measure methods for adding linear events

  Support has been added to attribute sets to configure default selections for the Add Linear Event widget to prepopulate selections for Network, From measure method, From measure units, To measure method, and To measure units. This enables the building of attribute sets that pair with the methodology and measure system for the way data is collected and presented to the person that enters Roadway Characteristics. For more information, see Configuring attribute sets.

• Intersection searching

  At the 10.2 patch 1, release support was added to input event measures via intersection offsets; however, the user could only select the intersection by clicking on the map. At the 10.2.1 release, users can search for the intersection by doing a text search with an IntelliSense experience for returning results. For more information, see Adding linear events by route and measure.