Jack Dangermond Opening Statements – GIS: Transforming Our World

Jack Dangermond, President of Esri, started off the 33rd Esri UC highlighting that the theme of the conference is “GIS: Transforming Our World.” Dangermond notes, “Our world is facing serious challenges, and it’s clear to me that we fundamentally and collectively need to create a better future.” GIS ability to visualize data, spot new patterns and show new kinds of relationships is one of the technologies that will help facilitate improved decision making and improved service delivery in the public sector.

As Dangermond states, “This week reinforces the global community of GIS professionals and what you do.” He also reminds attendees, “You will not only become friends this week, but will share best practices on what you’re doing.” GIS has numerous applications – Dangermond highlighted 17 ways that GIS has been impacting the public and private sector.

1. Monitoring environmental change
2. Managing natural resources (forest, agriculture, aquaculture, food production
3. Measuring and remediating environment contamination
4. Developing energy resources
5. Managing land records/information
6. Planning the future
7. Transportation Planning and management
8. Utilities, Telecommunications, and Public Works
9. Buildings and Facilities Management
10. Business Management and Economic Development
11. Understanding Human Health
12. Law enforcement and Public Safety
13. Planning for and Responding to Natural Disasters
14. Citizen engagement and Crowdsourcing
15. Cartography
16. Story Maps Are becoming a new medium
17. Organizational Portals (shared information between government entities)

Dangermond continued to explain some of the benefits of GIS, as GIS helps decision makers be more integrative across their agency, visualize data, be systematic and take a comprehensive approach to decision making. “GIS changes how we think and how we act, in that way it’s transformational,” states Dangermond.

Yet, Dangermond challenged users to consider the ways in which GIS has potential to become more broadly adopted across and agency, stating, “We need to scale up and take beyond single projects, and make it pervasive across organizations”

This is being done as GIS continues to become more web based and leverages emerging technology such as big data, web services, measurements, faster computing and cloud technology. The vision of GIS being adopted across an enterprise is now possible through ArcGIS, which supports multiple implementation patters and leverages a common computing architecture. Web GIS supports the entire enterprise for:

• Knowledge workers
• Executive access
• Public engagement
• Work anywhere
• Enterprise integration
• Professional GIS

Dangermond’s open remarks were just a start to what is sure to be an exciting and educational week on the power of GIS to transform society, and help us to tackle the major economic, environmental and social challenges we face.

Check out the GIS resources available on GovLoop:

• GovLoop’s GIS Knowledge Hub
• The Power of GIS for Facilities Management [Infographic]
• How GIS Influences our Daily Lives [Infographic]
• GIS Interviews [Videos]
• Identifying the Promise of GIS for Gov [Guide]

	When Esri was founded in 1969, it realized even then that geographic information system (GIS) technology could make a difference in society. GIS helps people to solve problems at local, regional, national, and global scales. Access maps and apps at ArcGIS.com. Be sure to check out all the GIS resources produced by Esri and GovLoop.