A \'NEW GEOSPATIAL MODALITY\'

1. INTERVIEW
A 'NEW
GEOSPATIAL
MODALITY'
IN AN EXCLUSIVE WITH
GEOSPATIAL WORLD ,
JACK DANGERMOND,
PRESIDENT, Esri REFLECTS
ON THE CHANGING
CHARACTER OF GEOSPATIAL
INDUSTRY AND PRIORITY
AREAS FOR Esri
The definition of the geospatial
industry is changing, rather,
evolving at a fast pace. I appreciate
your views on the same.
Geospatial technology is indeed evolv-
ing rapidly; opening up new opportu-
nities, new applications and new ways
of using geographic information in
society. A 'new modality' is emerging
that uses everything we do now but in
a new context. This is similar to what
occurred in the motion picture indus-
try when moving picture technology
was first invented. Initially people
filmed live stage performances and
disseminated them widely. After a
JACK while, people realised that a lot more
DANGERMOND could be done and a new modality
President, Esri emerged, giving birth to movies as we
now know them. When maps were
14 Geospatial World I January 2011

2. Interview
“ Geospatial technology is evolving rapidly - opening up new
opportunities, new applications and new ways of using
geographic information in society. A ‘new modality’ is emerging
”
that uses everything we do now but in a new context. It offers a
complete geospatial ecosystem for the users
first automated using CAD systems, people digitised tics; it's distributed, yet can dynamically integrate data.
maps, changed their scales and disseminated them It involves the Web, crowd sourcing (VGI), templates, wide
digitally. This was useful but limited. Digital maps as scaled access to open data, server based architectures
electronic drawings gave way to the GIS platform. and easier-to-use user interfaces and applications.
When we step back and look at what's going on
This introduced spatial analysis and generation of multi- technically, there continues to be the traditional
ple map products from a transactionally maintained data- enterprise computing patterns involving the desktop,
base. The GIS represented a new modality, a whole new the server and the federated systems.
approach for the application of geographic knowledge in
applications. These patterns are used extensively in utilities, business,
government and natural resources as well as the more
We are now at a stage where we are again seeing a major pervasive platforms of cloud computing and device
shift in many aspects of the geospatial world. Take for patterns (i.e. smartphones). We have recently launched
example measurement. In the beginning, we digitised and ArcGIS 10.
scanned maps. Later, digital imagery was used to extend
map information. Now we are beginning to take full This new technology integrates all five computing pat-
motion video and integrating with our GIS databases terns into one system; a complete geospatial ecosystem
directly. GIS is integrating real time measurements, such for our users. So if you acquire a desktop license, you not
as traffic, weather, earthquakes and a plethora of dynam- only have the local capabilities but also tens of thousands
ic measurements.Another shift is to server GIS and the of resources such as map services, data services, map
use of Web as a platform. We are seeing distributed GIS content, search capabilities and discovery and mashup
services emerge as well as the vision of a "system of capabilities.
systems" being realised by various organisations with
different mission responsibilities. This is not just about This means ArcGIS 10 extends from enterprise systems to
connecting enterprise data to the Web, it is actually the pervasive computing. Our purpose in doing this is to open
emergence of Web oriented systems that are designed to up traditional GIS systems, make their accessibility much
provide shared services and are maintained through easier and provide the knowledge and capabilities of
transactions. This is a new emerging architecture that these systems to users of the more pervasive world
will support many of the visions of SDI that have been (browsers and mobile devices). This technology shift is
discussed for decades. creating the huge modality shift. GIS professionals are
developing new, more pervasive applications and evolving
What are you engineering in your products to take the geospatial market towards 'GIS for everyone'. What
advantage of these new trends? that means for a GIS professional is that their work done
The new GIS modality has many interesting characteris- on a desktop or placed on a server becomes part of an
Geospatial World I January 2011 15

3. ecosystem or infrastructure available to many. This archi-
"GIS for billion people" tecture blends all five computing patterns and is totally
_
open and interoperable with other IT systems.
Today, GIS is being deployed on a new platform the Web
and cloud computing-and we all are in the early stages of
In summary, we are in a time of very rapid change. We
adjusting to it. The characteristics of this environment are
are still making maps and doing analysis on the desktop,
easy-to-use technology, more pervasive access, and the
ability to mashup or integrate distributed knowledge. This and at the same time GIS is moving to a new level with a
means that access to geospatial knowledge will grow platform that is allowing the realisation of SDI visions.
exponentially. Our existing users are gradually adopting
this new paradigm and integrating this platform with A significant number of mergers and acquisitions
their traditional workflows. So, in addition to running have taken place in the past five years in geospatial
t
their enterprises, they are putting up public services and industry, both of large and smaller companies. Many
applications that can be accessed by anyone. This will claim it as a process of consolidation. How do you
ultimately result in a geospatial platform that could perceive this?
potentially reach billions of people.
This is always going on in most industries. Esri's business
Over the last few decades, widespread adoption of GIS has
strategy is to focus on evolving a well designed and
caused a change in thinking. People can look at overlays of
engineered system rather than making acquisitions to
maps, see new relationships, see different kinds of phe-
nomena, and it creates a new understanding. Up until buy market share. We think this is better for our users
recently this has largely taken place in specialised commu- and creates a more stable organisation for our users and
nities, or with professionals using specific applications. employees. Our approach also involves partnering with
The next step in GIS evolution means that everyone will other organisations to create a broad ecosystem of
have access to the idea of map overlays and spatial analy- integrated geospatial technologies and applications.
sis. While traditional GIS has brought greater understand- Esri has occasionally acquired technology companies that
ing within organisations, this next step will mean greater made our overall system better or helped our users but
understanding within society at large. we remain focussed on developing a simple integrated
geospatial platform that's open, interoperable and stan-
It also means greater collaboration and communication
dards based.
across organisations. Esri is one participant in this move-
ment and while we are dominant significant player in
Acquisition of Intergraph by Hexagon has definitely
terms of research and advancement of the platform, there
is an enormous ecosystem of other players participating. I influenced the ecosystem of the geospatial industry
s
am personally very appreciative of the opportunity to and has affected in some form or other many geospa-
participate and continue playing a part in mak- tial companies. It has enabled Hexagon to acquire
c
ing all of this happen. technology in almost all segments including GIS,
GNSS, imaging, software, hardware and so on. There
is a strong feeling about the emergence of geospatial
camps in the industry. How do you view this new equi-
librium?
I don't like the culture and implications of ‘camps.’ I do
know that technology continues to evolve rapidly and with
this evolution comes changes in business alliances and
more importantly end user capabilities. What has kept
Esri so healthy over the decades is our focus on our cus-
tomers' needs and make a large ongoing commitment to
investment in successful innovation. Also, we work hard
on maintaining an open policy on business partnerships.
While the geospatial industry continues to be competitive,
16 Geospatial World I January 2011

4. ago, now position themselves as infrastructure, archi-
v
tecture and business intelligence solution companies
While the geospatial industry respectively. How do you look at these developments
continues to be competitive, and in your opinion what is the core value and utility of
these days we see less GIS in coming times? What would be its peripheral
environment?
competition in some areas and
We remain focussed on building enabling platform tech-
more cooperation based on a nology for enterprise and the pervasive geospatial market
maturity in the knowledge of what is our core business. Many of our traditional competitors
each of the vendors does best
s have moved into niche markets with more of a solution
focus. As a result, we see less competition in the geospa-
tial platform business and more partnerships by large
software companies like IBM and Microsoft. Our partners
in selected vertical markets see competition with some of
these traditional GIS compa-
nies.
The improvements in
these days we see less competition in some areas and interoperability
more cooperation based on a maturity in the knowledge between systems
of what each of the vendors does best. Interoperability have had a huge
standards have helped in this regard. Vendors have been benefit for end
trending toward more specialisation and selling into the users. For example,
areas that they do best in. GIS is increasingly
being integrated
In technology business, there are three kinds of technolo- with CAD technology
gy companies: 1) core technology like Intel and traditional around specific work-
DBMS companies; 2) solutions business and; 3) system flows. ArcGIS for
integration. In geospatial areas these three types can be AutoCAD has
seen in both software and data. Organisations like Digital- made the Auto-
Globe and GeoEye focus primarily on core data leaving CAD desktop a
solutions business to their partners. In GIS, Esri has powerful
focussed on core technology. Our partners, like Telvent or client for the
Telcordia, focus on utility applications. ArcGIS
Server
Esri's business is to provide platform technologies. Our
business success is based on the fact that we
do this very well and have strong developer
oriented platforms and an open and collabo-
rative business partner programme that
helps our partners be successful.
GIS has moved beyond traditional
boundaries and so has the focus and
approach of GIS companies. Bentley,
t
Autodesk and MapInfo, which were
very much in the GIS space a decade
Geospatial World I January 2011 17

5. GEODESIGN: Designing geographies People want to know the implications
for better decision making of various changes in the boundaries. A
new Web application does this. GeoDe-
sign uses GIS layers to guide design;
The concept of GeoDesign started my tion districts, the territories of which basic map or analytic models and inter-
career many years ago. The concept change every ten years. The boundaries active tools to design alternative plans.
was actually pioneered by my profes- While GeoDesign can help us to design
sor, Carl Steinitz at Harvard Universi- fair and equitable election districts, the
ty, who will soon publish a defin- same process can be used in the
itive text on the field. GeoDe- designing of land use plans, siting
sign uses GIS as a platform of retail stores in a region,
for designing geogra- highway plans or transmis-
phies at multiple sion plans-GeoDesign
scales. Specifically, gives us a scientific
the scientific infor- framework for evaluat-
mation that GIS ing the alternatives and
users collect and selecting the best one.
process is used to So, GeoDesign is an old
guide them in idea. But it is also a
designing things new idea considering
and quickly evaluate nature or considering
the consequences of society as part of the
alternative designs. process for creating the
This supports one of the future. GeoDesign is rather
basic tenets of GIS: better fundamental and you can think
decision making. I suppose of it at the engineering level like
GeoDesign concepts have been designing a new road, at town level
part of GIS workflows indirectly in like modifying it in a decision support
many agencies for decades. From the role. But up until recently, GIS has not
dawn of GIS technology, people have are redesigned by politicians or been so well connected. GeoDesign is a
used it in a decision support role. But up lawyers. This is an interesting process combination of process, technology,
until recently, GIS has not been so well because by changing the boundaries in and methodology which allows us to
connected. As an example of a GeoDe- various ways one could increase the evaluate quickly the consequences of
sign problem, in the US, there are elec- probability of winning the election. alternatives.
and as a result integrated workflows within many of our enabling of business intelligence, we are seeing that hap-
clients. In other cases, shifts in technology have changed pen in core companies like IBM, Microsoft, SAP and Ora-
the market. For example, with the new support for 3D cle. All four of them have the vision of geospatial enable-
data models and analytic tools, the building management ment of simple business intelligence applications using
industry has embraced GIS for new applications like facil- maps as a "report." This market is small but with the
ity management and energy optimization in smart build- advent of consumer Web mapping, there is greater
ings. Our users are basically extending their GIS's into awareness and people are demanding to see their data
campuses and buildings. With respect to geospatial visualised in this way. This is a good idea and our server
18 Geospatial World I January 2011

6. lyzed. GIS users are now learning how to leverage this. So
it's not just a new kind of data source for them to inte-
Crowdsourcing is an interesting grate, it's also a new set of methods for them to use.
concept that has been particularly
successful with GIS on the Web. Another kind of crowdsourcing which is even more excit-
ing to me is crowdsourcing from authoritative sources.
One of the first really successful
Last year, we started the 'Community Topographic Base
crowdsourced maps was Open Map'. This is a template that users in various agencies
Street Map. Another kind of around the world download, pour their data into and
exciting crowdsourcing is one
r upload into ArcGIS Online. Our template involves 20 dif-
from authoritative sources ferent scales of a topographic map and has been
designed for use in a GIS system. The map is a cache and
has continuous dynamic qualities. It is a beautiful map
and more than 500 organisations have contributed to this
system. We are currently making more than 12 million
maps a day on this system after only a few months. I see
this "community" approach as one way that SDI will be
realised.
technology is now regularly being integrated with sys- Esri is as strong as ever in the GIS market space and
tems such as SharePoint, Cognos, and Business Objects is becoming a de-facto standard in GIS. This is great
in a seamless way. news, but it also requires a significant amount of
localisation of Esri's capabilities. How do you foresee
Crowdsourcing is another buzz word at the moment providing customer support and fulfilling local needs
r
and presumably this is a pre-requisite for 'GIS for in times to come?
Billion People'. What new direction is crowdsourcing In ArcGIS 10, we decided to change our approach towards
taking worldwide? localisation with respect to language. So, in addition to
First, crowdsourcing is an interesting concept that has English, ArcGIS now ships in French, Spanish, German,
been particularly successful with GIS on the Web. One of Chinese and Japanese. We will expand this to include oth-
the first really successful crowdsourced maps was Open er languages this year. Within our organisation we have
Street Map (OSM). The concept OSM used was to develop an initiative called 'One Esri', to consistently spread busi-
a well organised classification system of streets (data ness practices and user support globally. For many of our
model) that allowed crowdsourced observation and easy distributors, it is like opening the door and walking
data entry. Esri adopted this concept of building an ontol- straight into Esri headquarters in Redlands, California.
ogy on a server and built it into ArcGIS 10 so that users That is the level of service and quality in support and
could set up their own map layer or feature class in the maintenance our users want everywhere. We are now
database and through Web editing tools, easily collect working with our distributors to implement the same
observation data using crowdsourcing. business practices and customer support, training and
technical support. Technology and globalisation are help-
This is a significant step because it means that a COTS ing us support our users and help grow our business
product could be used to organise a database on the serv- partners so they have the same capabilities globally.
er and any organisation could collect VGI observational
data and use it immediately. This has been a key for our In the given economic scenario, we see a significant
users who desired to do citizen science and crowdsourc- shift in focus to emerging economies. What are the
ing of citizens. The bottom line here is that in order to be priority areas for Esri in this new economic world
useful, VGI data needs to be collected in a structured order?
manner so that it can be properly manipulated and ana- Our basic philosophy is to follow what users want us to
20 Geospatial World I January 2011

7. do. Today, the North American market continues to be natural resources, especially in mining, oil and gas and
strong for us. While there is certainly less money in gov- forestry, growing.
ernment, our users continue to deliver efficiency and
better decision making to their organisations. The result What I am personally interested in is the growing interest
is that GIS is seen as important even in difficult economic in open data policies and open government. It is an inter-
times. Enterprise licensing has allowed our users to esting area for new applications of geographic informa-
navigate around and be creative in delivering significant tion. I also continue to be interested in education, growing
value to their organisations. the next generation of professionals. The last area of per-
sonal interest for me is our NGO-NPO programme. Last
Outside of North America, the Middle East, China, and year we introduced a new programme which provides
Russia are investing heavily and growing enormously. nearly free software to NGOs. Thousands of organisations
Latin America (especially Columbia, Peru, Brazil, and have already used this. For a small fee NGOs can get a
Chile) is certainly another growth market. There are, of free copy of ArcInfo and all of its extensions, downloaded
course, changes in the market place from year to year but and delivered on his/her desktop in any country. Likewise,
frankly, GIS is either sta- organisations can get a full ArcGIS enterprise server
ble or growing all over license. Our programme goes hand-in-glove with the
the world. growing open data policies of governments around the
world and delivers many benefits.
What are the
four major ver- You have been focussing a lot on India and your recent
ticals for the efforts have brought tremendous movement in the
geospatial thinking of political and administrative leadership in
industry? India. Would you please share your vision for India?
The utilities Senior leadership interest is a growing trend around the
segment con- world. My sense is that India is very much embracing GIS
tinues to be a as a societal platform. This is also being done in many
growth area countries including China, Indonesia, Abu Dhabi, and oth-
globally. We are ers. Even the United States is embracing GIS at senior
seeing both new government levels.
utilities' growth and
continued rollover of GIS is moving from simple mission to being seen as
competitive technolo- important technology infrastructure for governing.
gies into our platform. Basically a movement is afoot at the executive level in
The government sector, governments and corporations that GIS matters.
both at the local and
national levels, con- In India, when I met with many senior leaders, I found a
tinues to grow. The broad understanding of the power of GIS and how it could
military and help them govern. Geospatial technology has an opportu-
security mar- nity in India to deal with the real issues of water, food,
ket is grow- environment, urbanisation, transportation, and comm-
ing and unication in a holistic manner. This could empower and
we inspire so many things; increase collaboration, better
also communication and improved decision making across
see government and society. This could happen with some of
the leadership I met. They have the passion to drive it and
are willing to take risks to make it happen. This will make
India a better place.
22 Geospatial World I January 2011