Posts tagged Environmental
Blue Mountains City Council (BMCC) Healthy Waterway Explorer Power BI Report
Blue Mountains City Council (BMCC) Healthy Waterway Explorer Power BI Report

The DiscoverEI and Blue Mountains City Council (BMCC) team worked together to create the public-facing healthy waterway explorer dashboard (available here: https://www.bmcc.nsw.gov.au/waterquality).

In the session Amy StLawrence (BMCC Aquatic Systems Officer) and Alice Drummond discuss the project from start to finish, including: challenges faced; meeting the teams' vision for the report and arriving at the final solution.

The session also explored useful Power BI techniques and visualisations for showcasing this type of environmental water quality and waterbug data, to help inform data-driven decision making across the region.

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Meetup Group, Power BIAlice DrummondDiscover EIMeetup, Learning, Empowering, Environmental, Power BIComment
Using GenAI and Power BI - Fossil Hunting in Kansas
Using GenAI and Power BI - Fossil Hunting in Kansas

In this conversation, Mark McClure discusses various AI tools, particularly focusing on ChatGPT, Perplexity AI, and Copilot, and their applications in data analysis and research. He demonstrates how to gather data for fossil hunting in Kansas using these tools, organize it in Excel, and visualize it in Power BI. The discussion emphasizes the importance of experimenting with AI tools and showcases practical steps for data manipulation and visualization.

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Meetup Group, Power BI, GenAIAlice DrummondDiscover EIMeetup, Learning, Empowering, Environmental, Power BIComment
Azure Map in Power BI: How to add dynamic reference layers
Azure Map in Power BI: How to add dynamic reference layers

Interactive dynamic reference layers are now possible in the Azure Map core visual for Power BI! In this short video blog, Alice walks through this new feature (released Oct 2024), how to configure them in your Azure map and several ‘Gotchas‘ to be aware of in the first release of this feature! I hope this helps you have fun exploring maps in Power BI.

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Power BI, MappingAlice DrummondDiscover EILearning, Sharing, Environmental Comments
Icon Map ⭐PRO⭐ How to add WMS layers to your Icon Map Pro in Power BI
Icon Map ⭐PRO⭐ How to add WMS layers to your Icon Map Pro in Power BI

Icon Map Pro is the new and improved version of Icon Map, which has loads of new features and even more mapping capability! Like the original Icon Map, the Icon Map Pro includes the ability to connect to a WMS hosted spatial layer, allowing you to visualise highly detailed raster datasets really quickly and easily. In this video blog I walk through the steps to connect to existing WMS layers in Icon Map Pro using the publicly available NSW Koala Tree Indices dataset so you can follow along at home. I hope this helps you have fun exploring maps in Power BI!

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Power BI, MappingAlice DrummondDiscover EILearning, Sharing, EnvironmentalComment
Icon Map: How to add WMS layers to your Icon Map in Power BI
Icon Map: How to add WMS layers to your Icon Map in Power BI

The amazing free Icon Map custom visual for Power BI has the ability to display dynamic WMS layers, allowing you to visualise highly detailed raster datasets really quickly and easily. In this video blog I walk through the steps to connect to existing WMS layers in Icon Map using the publicly available NSW Koala Tree Indices dataset so you can follow along at home. I hope this helps you have fun exploring maps in Power BI.

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Power BI, MappingAlice DrummondDiscover EILearning, Sharing, EnvironmentalComment
Exploring the DCCEEW Flood Recovery Power BI Dashboard
Exploring the DCCEEW Flood Recovery Power BI Dashboard

In this session, Alice & Christian from DiscoverEI deep-dived into exploring the recently completed DCCEEW (NSW State Government) Flood Recovery Power BI Dashboard. It is a public dashboard available via the EPA NSW website: https://www.epa.nsw.gov.au/reporting-and-incidents/flood-recovery-programs/water-quality-monitoring-program/flood-recovery-program-east-coast-dashboard.

The session focused on explaining the context behind the tool, then identifying several Power BI techniques adopted to allow for the dynamic user interface. This included Power Query steps, the data model creation, DAX calcs and various visuals including the more advanced Icon Map features. We hope you learn more about Power BI's functionality from viewing this video

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Meetup Group, Dashboard Design, Power BIAlice DrummondDiscover EIMeetup, Learning, Empowering, Environmental, Power BIComment
AI, not Excel: Using ChatGPT for environmental data analysis
AI, not Excel: Using ChatGPT for environmental data analysis

In this session, Matthew O'Brien guided us through some practical AI use cases developed for environmental data using ChatGPT, drawing from his own experience and insights from his peers. These examples aimed to illustrate the potential of AI as a valuable part of your data exploration and automation toolkit, possibly saving time and sanity from performing similar processes in Excel!

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Meetup GroupAlice DrummondDiscover EIMeetup, Learning, Empowering, Environmental, Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPTComment
The next generation of maps for Power BI with Icon Map Pro
The next generation of maps for Power BI with Icon Map Pro

In this session James Dales dived into his new custom visual: Icon Map Pro. James showed how to achieve some of the more advanced mapping requirements in Power BI. The new Icon Map Pro visual opens up more opportunities for creating more complex geospatial visuals. For example working with your own polygons to create choropleth maps, drawing lines, shapes and images to create interactive utility network diagrams and clustering data using the H3 hexagon grid system.

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Meetup Group, Power BIAlice DrummondDiscover EIMeetup, Learning, Sharing, Empowering, Environmental, Mapping, Icon MapComment
When NOT to use Power BI for creating public engagement and communication tools
When NOT to use Power BI for creating public engagement and communication tools

This blog post unpacks several considerations for when⚠️ NOT to use Power BI ⚠️ to create public engagement and communication tools. This is based on our recent experience working collaboratively with Charles Sturt University (CSU) to create a custom scripted public-facing online interactive tool to help communicate river and environmental flow data, and fish survey results across the Edward/Kolety-Wakool River system in southern New South Wales.

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Power BI, MappingAlice DrummondDiscover EILearning, Sharing, Environmental Comment
⭐ Top 3 Power BI Tips ⭐ for creating public engagement and communication tools: Real World case study
⭐ Top 3 Power BI Tips ⭐ for creating public engagement and communication tools: Real World case study

Power BI is an amazing tool for processing, modelling, calculating and presenting your data - but it is also a fantastic stakeholder engagement and public communication tool for presenting information to non-technical audiences. This blog post unpacks our ⭐ Top 3 Power BI Tips ⭐ for creating public engagement and communication tools to bring your data to life, and showcases examples from a real-world case study.

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Power BIAlice DrummondDiscover EILearning, Sharing, EnvironmentalComment
Tips and tricks to simply your spatial files using QGIS and MapShaper for mapping in Icon Map in Power BI
Tips and tricks to simply your spatial files using QGIS and MapShaper for mapping in Icon Map in Power BI

Displaying very detailed spatial files using WKT in the Icon Map comes with it’s challenges – the biggest being poor performance (i.e. very slow to render). Some simplification and reduction of precision can go a long way  In this video blog I walk through some of my tips to simplify and reduce precision of your spatial files (using free tools such as QGIS and Map Shaper) BEFORE importing into Power BI as a WKT file to really improve rendering speed and avoid exceeding the 32,766 text character limit in Power Query. I hope this helps you have fun exploring maps in Power BI.

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Power BI, MappingAlice DrummondDiscover EILearning, Sharing, EnvironmentalComment
Processing detailed WKT polygons for Icon Map: Power Query and DAX magic to exceed the 32,766 text character limit in Power BI
Processing detailed WKT polygons for Icon Map: Power Query and DAX magic to exceed the 32,766 text character limit in Power BI

Sometimes we want to display highly detailed spatial files in Power BI using WKT text strings in the Icon Map custom visual… BUT Power Query has a text character limit of 32,766 characters per data point - so what can we do?!? In this video blog I walk through some Power Query and DAX magic to split up our WKT text string and then stitch it back together using CONCATENATEX. I also go over a very frustrating ‘gotcha’ where Power BI removes the lagging spaces in our text string on import (which causes errors in our WKT file) and how to resolve it. I hope this helps you have fun exploring maps in Power BI.

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Power BI, MappingAlice DrummondDiscover EILearning, Sharing, EnvironmentalComment
UWA’s data-driven journey towards sustainability
UWA’s data-driven journey towards sustainability

Dr Jason Hamer (dARTa) presented on The University of Western Australia’s (UWA) data-driven journey to become a sustainable campus. While the focus was on UWA’s internal and external sustainability dashboards, Jason also showcased the backend architecture that makes them possible, provided some amazing Power BI tips and tricks and shared his story and journey towards working with Power BI for the environmental industry..

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Meetup Group, Power BIAlice DrummondDiscover EIMeetup, Learning, Sharing, Empowering, EnvironmentalComment
ArcGIS Mapping and Maptaskr for Power BI
ArcGIS Mapping and Maptaskr for Power BI

In this two-part session, we firstly had Peter Schmidt (Maptaskr) presenting on Maptaskr for Geospatial Intelligence, where he demonstrated Maptaskr’s mapping & geo-productivity solution for the Microsoft BizApps platform showcasing how it streamlines business processes, drives operational intelligence and complements Power BI analytics. Next up we had Alice Drummond (DiscoverEI) deep-dive into the world of the ArcGIS mapping visual for Power BI, explaining her tips, tricks and limitations based on real-world experiences with trying to implement the visual in Power BI reports.

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Meetup Group, Power BI, ArcGISAlice DrummondDiscover EIMeetup, Learning, Sharing, Empowering, EnvironmentalComment
Dredge Dash: A real-time dredging project management tool harnessing Power BI
Dredge Dash: A real-time dredging project management tool harnessing Power BI

Dredging projects are critical to maintaining or establishing navigational access to ports, waterways and maritime infrastructure. Engagement and reporting to various internal and external stakeholders are required for these unique projects. Dredging project data collection and reporting can be timely and cumbersome. This ‘one stop shop’ Power BI reporting dashboard is used to track and communicate results from dredging projects. The session focused on a range of tech, including: Logic Apps; Azure Functions and SQL; SharePoint Excel files and Power BI aka the hero tool!.

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Meetup Group, Power BIAlice DrummondDiscover EIMeetup, Learning, Sharing, Empowering, EnvironmentalComment
West Gate Tunnel – Cradle to Grave Power BI Reporting Solution
West Gate Tunnel – Cradle to Grave Power BI Reporting Solution

Spoil management is an integral part of any construction project. West Gate Tunnel Project provided an opportunity to develop centralised data management system and hence near real-time reporting solution to monitor movement of spoil from one site to another. This Power BI for Enviro’s presentation focused on the Operational Power BI reporting solution for the construction industry emphasizing:

  1. How key business problems can be solved through reporting.

  2. How key stakeholders can make informed decisions to run successful operations.

  3. How time and money can be saved when information is available at hand.

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Meetup Group, Power BIAlice DrummondDiscover EIMeetup, Learning, Sharing, Empowering, EnvironmentalComment
Going Paperless in the Waste Industry - From Data Collection Apps to Power BI
Going Paperless in the Waste Industry - From Data Collection Apps to Power BI

In this digital world where technology is continuing to revolutionize the way we do business, going paperless is becoming more and more common. In his time working as a waste auditor, Simon has learnt from the 'traditional' methods of waste reporting, which often lacks transparency and can be difficult to audit & verify. This led to the creation of Traste, a digital app solution to track waste transparently, bringing waste processing facilities into the 21st century. In this session Simon introduced Traste's waste collection app and the workflow which feeds into a Power BI report. From here the Power BI reports are exported to PDF as this is the preferred method of reviewing the data by the client.

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Meetup Group, Power BIAlice DrummondDiscover EIMeetup, Learning, Sharing, Empowering, EnvironmentalComment
Power BI as an Environmental Sensitivity Mapping tool
Power BI as an Environmental Sensitivity Mapping tool

After a 6-month break we were excited for our June 2023 session return for Power BI 4 Enviro's. This was a joint presentation between DiscoverEI and Alluvium, who supported South East Water (SEW), in developing a Power BI Environmental Sensitivity Mapping (ESM) report, to help SEW identify key sensitivities of both environmental and public health across their region, to help inform risk assessments and incident response.

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Meetup Group, Power BIAlice DrummondDiscover EIMeetup, Learning, Sharing, Empowering, EnvironmentalComment