How GIS Enables Us to Become Architects of Our Future

This week Esri is challenging GIS professionals to be architects of our future

This week Esri, the global leader in GIS software, is hosting their 35th Users Conference in San Diego. Over 16,000 GIS professionals have come to the annual event to share best practices, case studies and share knowledge to help reach the full potential of GIS technology. The opening plenary shows that GIS is at a tipping point, as across all sectors organizations have realized the power of location to help make improved business decisions.

“This week is all about GIS, its all about geography, its all about you, and your work, its all about sharing your work, learning from each other and understanding new things,” said Jack Dangermond, Esri president, during his opening remarks.

“Geography as a science provides us both the context and the content of our world, it provides a framework for understanding our world, bringing all our measurements together to analyze, visualize and understand them,” said Dangermond.

It’s with that understanding we can start to tackle large-scale challenges facing our community – which is exactly what Esri has set out to do. Our world has to combat issues of poverty, health, and pollution, all to make better decisions with the data, which we are creating at unprecedented speeds.

With ArcGIS Software, Esri has developed a solution to find clarity from the complexity of our world, and has helped thousands of community’s globally to gather a better understanding of their community, driving better public policy outcomes.

The ArcGIS solution is one of the few technology suites that is able to connect data in a meaningful way, and help extract knowledge. And the applications of GIS are nearly universal. The case studies during the plenary covered everything from transportation, health, public safety, and disaster response and citizen engagement.

“GIS is becoming part of an interconnected platform,” said Dangermond. Everything from desktop users, servers, apps are evolving into more open and dynamic environments, and web GIS is helping to connect data with technology and people to start to tackle large-scale public sector challenges.

“Web GIS is transforming how GIS professionals do their work, its improving how you organize and share your knowledge, its enriching your own personal work by suddenly getting all this information, without having to go gather it all yourself, but its also allowing you to support involvement in sharing your data and sharing your maps,” said Dangermond.

Dangermond’s opening remarks cast a great vision for Esri and GIS, and show how GIS can be the enabler for us to architect our future.

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