INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS FROM DAMIAN SPANGRUD As director of solutions at Esri, Damian Spangrud focuses on making the science of location intelligence understandable and actionable. We asked him to share his insights on geospatial infrastructure, artificial intelligence, COVID-19, and real-time data. INTERVIEW BY JAMIE ARMSTRONG, CITYWORKS CONTENT MARKETING MANAGER
Q. What role has ArcGIS and spatial awareness played during the COVID-19 pandemic? A. As the COVID-19 pandemic rattles our lives in ways that we would never have imagined even a few short months ago, it is interesting to see the role that GIS and spatial thinking is playing in the response. From the early stages of the pandemic in Asia to now, ArcGIS has been key in modeling, visualizing, and responding to this crisis. Much of these efforts are being led by the GIS professionals working far outside of their normal day-to-day project work, but they know that their skills can help. As the global impact grows, we are seeing networks of these communities sharing information with each other and connecting the nodes in the network to ensure a better re-
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sponse. GIS and geospatial thinking is being used in every briefing and model globally. Our futures are all being impacted by this crisis, but your skills and communities are what is helping day to day. Q. What is geospatial infrastructure, and why is it important for communities moving into the future? A. Geospatial infrastructure is the collection of web service-enabled systems, providing applications and services for a wide variety of purposes. Communities can use geospatial infrastructure to share content, services, and applications beyond just the individual user or organization level. Geospatial infrastructure is important for communities because it allows cities, utilities, and other
organizations to support practical integration of all departments while maintaining their silos of excellence. It also enables communities to connect with other public and private organizations, taking advantage of each other’s data, services, and even apps. Since the infrastructure supports connected desktops, web apps, open data, and offline field data collection, it brings together all workflows across organizations. Q. How is ArcGIS technology taking geospatial infrastructure to the next level? A. The big change is in the interconnectedness and scale of GIS. Organizations can now dynamically bring together information from different departments into organization-wide applications such as
