Mapping is about maps. But it takes a Jack Dangermond to think of mapping as a strategic activity. “Mapping has a strategy. And to create common ground, we really need to create an agreed upon understanding,” Dangermond said, while explaining the theme for Esri User Conference 2022 (ESRI UC 2022).
This year’s conference, which returned to in-person mode after two years, kicked off at its usual venue – the San Diego Convention Center – on July 11 with the theme “GIS – Mapping Common Ground”.
“This is familiar territory for most of us, especially if you work in communities. You get the community together, you get all the stakeholders together and you talk about issues, and you create a foundation for positive action,” he explained.
“Our world, as we know it, especially those with geographic science and ecological backgrounds, understand it as a complex and highly interdependent ecosystem. Not just the natural world, but also our human world. And many aspects of it are fragile. It’s also rich in biodiversity. It’s also not so well known. We think we know a lot about it, but it’s also not well known and it’s even less understood,” he said.
And this world we are living in is changing rapidly, and increasingly because of “reckless” human activities, which is causing us to fall out of balance with nature. Issues like human induced climate change, overpopulation, congested cities, pollution, and careless development have set in motion a whole series of conflicts and instabilities. Steep declines in biodiversity are leading to increasing natural disasters, changing and challenging the very sustainability on our planet, and actually threatening our future.
“The central problem of this is not just any one of those issues. It’s the lack of understanding of the intricacies of these issues and also their interrelationships. Further, our inability to actually collaborate and work on [is adding to the complexities],” Dangermond said, stressing that mapping and the geographic approach are powerful means to create understanding and collaboration.
“Finding solutions, reaching agreements, mapping common ground, a foundation for positive action. And I’ll repeat the words, creating agreed upon understanding,” he underlined, while stressing upon the need for increased collaboration.
Mapping is like a language
Stating that mapping is like a fundamental language, and like the written language or mathematics or music, it’s amazing as a language for telling stories. “It helps us understand and collaborate too. It allows us to communicate our stories. It allows us to plan and sketch. Mapping is not only describing what is, but also what could be, and this sparks our imagination. It’s been an instrument for this activity for thousands of years.”
History shows us that historic remnants of mapping were instrumental for progress in civilization – from navigation, to discovery, to organization, and even land organization. And as the technology is rapidly advancing, it can have a much more major impact on the way human civilization will evolve.
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“I’ve began calling this ‘the geographic approach’. It’s really an old thing, but I like these words — the geographic approach – as a way of thinking and a way of problem solving, bringing it all together,” Dangermond explained.
For instance, the geographic approach to education, the geographic approach to planning, the geographic approach to business, the geographic approach to energy — all of these various works that we do have a basic geographic approach. And it is interesting because all this driven by data, which is based in science and is inclusive.
“Getting all the data, visualizing it, analyzing it, planning on top of it, designing strategic thinking and acting on it. That is Mapping common ground,” he explained.
Technology advancements
Advancements in technology is also leading to advancements in analytics and visualization, and ultimately the storytelling. And as systems become interconnected, it is enabling something that we are starting to call geospatial infrastructure. Just like the Internet and World Wide Web, geospatial infrastructure is opening up a whole new system of systems platform for us. And, as millions of users begin to use this system every day, sharing tens of millions of data sets, they are further adding to the data and helping build this infrastructure. There are now over 50,000 websites with sharing hundreds of thousands of open data sets engaging with people, he said.
Dangermond also made a special mention to the GIS and geospatial community’s contribution to managing the pandemic crisis. “It touches me actually what you did during COVID. Over 8,000 deployments of the dashboards to track COVID and then also track vaccinations. The heroes in here.”
The greatest and perhaps most impactful use of maps in recent times has been the John Hopkins map on coronavirus which has had a total 1.2 trillion views. “That map told everybody what’s going on. As people could understand the crisis better, they could collaborate and respond efficiently,” he said.
“And I believe this is key for the future. [As a community,] we must all do everything to address these challenges we are having. And it’s kind of a key for mapping common ground at all scales,” he added.
From health to conservation, city planning to engineering, mining, energy, water and wastewater management, disaster management to commerce and supply chains, GIS and mapping have become integral to all workflows and businesses today. Thousands of organizations around the world are embracing GIS as a foundation for everything they do.
“GIS is helping in social equity and become a foundation for looking at vulnerable populations for example, in healthcare like in New York City, or transit access to social, vulnerable communities, or looking at power plant emissions and environmental justice by the US EPA,” he said.
The awards
This year the Making a Difference Award went to the Southern California Association of Governments for assembling from across 192 different departments all the information to create a regional information system.
The Enterprise GIS Award for this year went to Ordinance Survey (OS). Calling it one of the most sophisticated mapping organizations, Dangermond explained OS has built a database of half a billion features in the UK, which is updated 20,000 times a day.
This year’s President’s Award went to Prague. Like every place on Earth, one of the biggest challenges the city is facing is climate change. It has seen substantial change in the weather and climate in the last years. As the number of heat waves increases, it also negatively affects the environment — poor health of trees, poor health of grass in the parks, as well as negative impact on the health of the elderly people.
The mission of Prague’s Institute for Planning and Development is to improve the quality of life for through intelligent planning. The institute is using satellite imagery, and by combining with data layers such as population density and planning regulation etc., it is locating the spots that lack green cover. The city uses this data to build new green roofs, plant new trees, or even add new water features.
