4 minute read
Jack Dangermond
LEADERS' OUTLOOK
ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022
BY JACK DANGERMOND
Founder & President, Esri
There has perhaps never been a more illustrative need for taking a geographic approach than the current pandemic. We have been able to watch and better understand the spread and impact of this virus on dashboards and maps. We can also better understand disruptions to the global economy, whether evidenced by supply chain struggles or labor shortages. Decision-makers in business and government are finding it increasingly important to strategize where they source materials — whether PPE or everyday consumer products — to ensure they are available to those that need them, and to better understand how to maintain operations and serve communities and customers with fewer people working. All of this is tied to location. So are the solutions. We have seen cities, states, and countries pinpoint vaccine distribution sites based on geospatial data. We have seen like-minded agencies and organizations team up to distribute food using one shared, collaborative map so as not to duplicate efforts and instead get essentials to those who need them most.
At Esri, we quickly pivoted our business and made adjustments to support our users and employees. There’s a reason we introduced the ArcGIS Platform last year. We recognize that our users want to be able to pick and choose the elements of ArcGIS best suited to their organizations. We have seen users go to market far quicker, knowing they could entrust our backbone technology with a specific pain point they might have had, be it data management, imagery sourcing, security, or sharing.
While navigating the pandemic, we also provided free access to health departments in cities, states, and countries to develop and deploy more than 5,000 dashboards to monitor the situation and help their communities understand the COVID data most relevant to them, based on templates we constructed that linked to their existing GIS.
Digital acceleration There is no slowing advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and there are certainly ways of life that can’t, or shouldn’t, be squeezed back into the bottle. Many jobs, we now know, can be done fully remotely or on a hybrid basis without sacrificing productivity, thanks in large part to accelerating IT infrastructure technology and expanded cloud computing.
The pandemic also speeded a shift in consumer flexibility, with brick-and-mortar retailers embracing omnichannel strategies, turning some stores into distribution hubs for deliveries and in-store or curbside pickup. This made location intelligence more essential to planning operations than ever. The pandemic didn’t cause many of these technological innovations; they were in development for some time. And there are constants in the geospatial industry, pre-pandemic to now, including an increasing push to move away from paper processes to systems for real-time data sharing. So, some of our users were able to quickly shift to remote work because of the device-agnostic collaboration capabilities.
Of course there are, and will continue to be, hurdles in the way — the growing capabilities of AI and ML, Big Data in a spatial context, advances in satellite imagery both in quality and turnaround time, advanced 3D visualization, real-time GIS connected to IoT devices and sensors, and open-source APIs allowing for more collaboration.
What I am most excited about is a geospatial nervous system that’s akin to the internet itself in its democratization but built on web services, which would allow for uniting and overlaying maps from so many reliable, accurate sources to create a whole that can be visualized. It’s the only way to truly understand what we are up against and get our best minds and sciences working in tandem on solutions.
Complex global challenges Before and well after the pandemic subsides, we still face enormously complex challenges. There are the severe weather events made worse by climate change and biodiversity loss, water scarcity and overpopulation, and the need to undo longstanding systemic inequalities that have held entire populations back.
Looking at climate change, the key question is not just how to stop it but also how to improve the planet for the better after we mitigate the damage. Nothing is simple, and neither is this, but it requires everyone being involved and working toward the same goal.
This is what is so crucial about maps; when everyone can see the same picture with the same information it becomes easier to collaborate and work towards a common goal. I get inspiration from thousands of our users who are already working on solutions and collaborating and sharing their knowledge. It’s going to require the best of all of us — scientists, thinkers, designers — to work together. The architecture for collaboration — a geospatial nervous system — exists, as long as it’s embraced by many.
The geospatial industry is today blessed with a vast amount of information that can help us make better decisions. That’s where we can help — securely hosting and helping to make sense of geographic data, including more detailed, updated views of our planet.
Technological advancements are best when ahead of the curve, that is, identifying needs early on. And in many ways, it’s heartening to know that the technology that could contribute to something as revolutionary as self-driving cars or dronebased deliveries is being refined and perfected so as not to be unwieldy. Understanding a new technology and how it fits into our natural world, as well as its potential consequences, is a prudent, rational — albeit ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022 perhaps slower — path to take. 17
The geospatial nervous system is akin to the internet itself, and is the only way to truly understand the challenges we are up against and to get our best minds and sciences working in tandem on solutions.
LEADERS' OUTLOOK
