GIS Technology: Making projects efficient and smarter!

The increasing urbanization, in addition to the growth of enterprise GIS in developing countries, like China, India, and other South East Asian countries, is expected to boost the demand of geographic information system. Not just this, owing to the development of smart cities, the demand for 3D based GIS has increased and its use has witnessed rapid growth in building surveillance applications.

In India, GIS adoption is increasing becoming an important area of discussion due to the overall impact of the technology. While its benefits are manifold, GIS implementation can bring together private sector organizations and enable better coordination among different departments of the government. The state of Rajasthan had developed GIS application for various fields like education, development, health, citizen services and many more.

To many, developing a national GIS would seem to be an insurmountable task. How would a single, comprehensive system ever be expected to serve the varied and separate needs of so widely contrasting elements? To others who know the challenges of GIS data availability in India, it would sound almost impossible to visualize a seamless national GIS that covers the whole nation.

To find out how one of the key players in this sector does things differently, BW CIO talks to Agendra Kumar, President, Esri India, about how a future of GIS enabled technology looks like, the rise in GIS enabled startups and how it contributes to a smarter world. 

 1)How would you best describe GIS technology and Esri India’s contribution towards the same?

Geographic Information System (GIS) is best described as a system that is built to capture, store, analyse, manage and interpret spatial or geographical data. Simply put, a GIS system can analyze and translate geographic data into explicit map-form images. Esri India, since its inception in 1996 has played a key role in propagating the use of GIS in India, GIS has now advanced as a strategic business critical platform in various government and state initiatives in areas like Land management; Natural resource management; National Mapping; Utilities; Infrastructure like Roads and highways; Urban Development and Smart Cities; Disaster Management, Defense and internal security etc. Financial Institutions, Telecommunication companies and manufacturing organizations are amongst the main GIS users in the private sector. 

2)Share with us the impact of GIS technology in various sectors like education, healthcare, citizen services to name a few.

As an early adopter, India began its journey with GIS in the 1980s. Today, India is one of the largest consumers of GIS technology in the Asia Pacific region. At Esri India, we extensively work with colleges, universities and research institutes to build GIS capacity and to address the changing skill requirements and resource shortage. Today, we are collaborating with premier education institutions in India to set-up Centre of Geospatial Excellence to address the skills gaps. Globally, Esri has a program under which the software is made available to educational institutes at a fraction of the normal price. 

GIS technology helped in eradicating Polio from the face of the earth. WHO also used GIS for controlling the spread of Ebola virus. Esri is proud to support such initiatives. In India, health departments are using Esri’s software to study the patterns of vector borne diseases. Lot of research activity in the health segment is driven by the use of GIS. 

Esri Solutions are used by land management, infrastructure departments, and have been implemented by Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, Orange City Water, Nagpur, and the Commissioner-ate of Municipal Administration, Chennai. One of the other key transformations has been the democratization of GIS technology for citizen services. In Rajasthan, an integrated GIS system has been implemented to provide a robust information and decision support system for planning and implementing various state developmental programs and for empowering citizens, thus ensuring seamless interoperability and cooperation between various departments. 

3)Could you elaborate on the owing interest in the economic and strategic value of GIS.

Geographic Information System (GIS) is becoming a part of mainstream business and management operations around the world in organizations as diverse as cities, state government, utilities, telecommunications, transportation, natural resource management, disaster management etc. Talking about economic and strategic value, I would like to give the example of cyclone prediction and preparedness. GIS has helped in cyclones like Hud-hud in evacuating people from the areas where the cyclone was expected to have landfall, to safer places. As a result, not a single life was lost due to cyclone. Use of GIS is helping better management of resources like water, land and forests. All these demonstrate very high economic and strategic value of GIS.

4)What according to you is role of GIS technology in urban planning and enabling a smarter world? 

Jack Dangermond, President and CEO of Esri Inc. introduced the concept of GeoDesign. When we design an urban area the geography of that area plays a very important role, this led to the formation of the term GeoDesign. It is about designing an urban area to provide clean, secure and efficient living conditions to its resident for both work and play. Now we talk a lot about Smart Cities, GIS provides the framework for Smart Cities, assisting at every point, including project conceptualizing, site-analysis, design studies, stakeholder participation, simulation, evaluation and operations, among others. The GIFT city in Gujarat and Lavasa in Maharashtra, India’s first e-cities, have leveraged Esri’s software right from the concept stage. Many of the smart cities out of the list of 100 smart cities are using Esri software for a variety of application.

 5)There has been a boom in startups over the last few years in India. Could you talk to us about how GIS is fueling innovation in India? 

With the Government of India’s support to new technologies and the availability of a fertile ground for startups to flourish, we are witnessing numerous GIS-focused technology startups come to the fore. It is extremely encouraging to see how startups are employing GIS technologies, to deliver innovative solutions for different industries. Startups are leveraging new dimensions in the fields of data acquisition and visualization, to create path breaking products that address issues, ranging from disaster response, water management and weather impacts to infrastructure development, public safety and health services. 

Many start-ups are leveraging opportunities that are created with the advancements in technologies like Internet of Things, Mobile, Real-Time analytics, GPS, Drones, Big data and Machine learning and combining them with their GIS systems to provide new solutions to customers in land survey, water and electric utilities, agriculture, transportation etc.

6) “The future of GIS technology” according to you is?

A lot is happening in technology and its changing every day. The speed at which data is being generated is unprecedented and it is only going to accelerate. Data is the key for our future. In the years to come, GIS will become ‘The’ platform for integrating all types of data. GIS will make use of new technologies like augmented reality, machine learning, IoT and various other types of automation. Most of the content will be hosted on cloud and the applications will also be based on cloud. All these have already started to happen and will mature in next 3 years. Frankly, 10 years is a long time, one may see 3 generations of technology in that time frame!

Nivedhana Prabhu.