What is ArcGIS Indoors?  ESRI calls it a complete indoor mapping system that will offer a floor aware location platform providing maps, data, and location info for indoor spaces.  Scheduled for release in Q4 of 2018, ArcGIS Indoors is targeted for use in facilities, retail and commercial locations, airports, hospitals, event venues and universities, to analyze, locate, navigate, and to collaborate and share indoor information.

To use ArcGIS Indoors for real time indoor positioning and routing directions, the building you are in needs to be equipped with location technology that connects to your phone or tablet where the app is running.  The location technology is not part of the ArcGIS Indoors system, but is needed for it to work.  ESRI stated that it has used Apple’s location technology for prototype versions of the system.

The ArcGIS Indoors mobile app is an essential part of the system.  The app uses a mobile map package that is hosted in ArcGIS Online.  The map package contains all the indoor location info relevant to the building, such as CAD/BIM data, points of interest, transportation networks and vector baselines.  The logic of the different building floor levels are defined in Excel spreadsheets, as well as points of interest and feature class information.

Right now there is no quick way of generating an indoor location information model.  A variety of data sources can be used to create one, but it would probably be best just to start from scratch if no data exists.  If you are familiar with the Campus Viewer Tools, you have some knowledge on what needs to be done.  ArcGIS Pro will be used to create information models in a two step process.  First you create a lattice network that covers all walkable spaces in a building.  Second, this serves as the basis for a thin lattice network with more details, using a special set of toolboxes in ArcGIS Pro.  Once created, you push the output to ArcGIS Online as a mobile map package to be consumed by the ArcGIS Indoors app.

Watch this video of the ArcGIS Indoors workshop from the last ESRI User Conference.  It will give you a great overview on what you need to do with respect to data and getting it all working:

Also click below for more info on ArcGIS Indoors and sign up to stay informed when it’s released.