Smart GIS Enabling a Smarter World

Smart GIS Enabling a Smarter World

GIS is enabling a smarter world to take shape. While advances in technology are certainly facilitating this evolution, it is the people who use GIS who are responsible for making this change take hold.

"Your work is so innovative at demonstrating the power of smart GIS," said Esri president Jack Dangermond.

He told an audience of 16,000 people during the Plenary Session at the 2016 Esri User Conference, "You are working on virtually all the significant challenges and issues on the planet, from climate change to food production to humanitarian relief to making cities better."

Dangermond spotlighted scores of maps generated by users all over the world that address issues ranging from environmental monitoring, energy development, and transportation planning to building management, disaster response, health, and education.

"GIS and maps are the common language that brings us together: they help us communicate, they help us understand, and they will help us act," he said. "You are addressing so many of our planet's increasing challenges," from loss of nature and lacking biodiversity to ongoing social conflict.

"GIS—your profession, your technology—provides the framework and the process for creating…a smarter world," asserted Dangermond.

With its ability to integrate and manage data, GIS transforms abstract information into visual models—maps, charts, and 3D representations—that are increasingly informing people and organizations all over the world. The technology integrates content and provides the context for understanding why things are the way they are, allowing anyone who uses GIS to analyze the interrelationships among various phenomena. By using this technology to connect and collaborate, people and organizations can gain a better understanding of the forces that shape the world we live in today, with the goal of discovering and designing better paths toward a more sustainable future.

GIS is undergoing a transformation as well. With the Internet of Things (IoT) promising to measure in real time virtually everything that changes or moves, a massive digital transformation is under way. Enormous amounts of data are now becoming more widely available, and maps have the ability to not only visualize this information but also integrate data from many sources and communicate this information to people and organizations.

Bringing Together Disconnected Data

"Smart GIS…is about integrating everything—connecting people and processes and things and all the data about them," noted Dangermond. "Smart GIS, for me, also means being able to engage communities."

This, in fact, is what the City of Los Angeles, California, is doing with its Los Angeles GeoHub, which brings together disparate data that, until now, has been stored in different city departments. The online public platform encourages residents to use this data and the ready-to-use apps available at the GeoHub to improve their city.

"The citizens of Los Angeles and the employees are basically weaving together pockets of our GIS data and technology that have been hidden in the halls of our city," said Lilian P. Coral, chief data officer for the Office of Mayor Eric Garcetti in the City of Los Angeles. "What this has meant is that we've been developing applications that matter and we're putting data to work."

For example, GeoHub is being used to inform initiatives such as Vision Zero, which aims to lower the number of deaths and serious injuries caused by traffic collisions. And the city's Street Wize app uses Web GIS to pool data onto a single map so that citizens can see in-progress or upcoming construction work on their streets. Private developers can use Street Wize to examine building opportunities as well, and the city uses the app to minimize construction conflicts and encourage coordination.

"The GeoHub dynamically integrates real-time data onto this user-focused map," added Coral. "And now we can use the same data and actually feed it into other applications—say, for emergency management."

As Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti specified, "[The] portal enables us to reinvent the way we're delivering services and broadens our ability to engage everyday residents and businesses."

Source: http://www.esri.com/esri-news