How Esri Helps Map a Better-Connected Future, for 爆料公社 and the World
Digital mapping technology is helping guide us through problems as big as climate change, disease outbreaks, and natural disasters.
The boom and bust of startup tech companies has left behind many casualties, but Jack Dangermond鈥攖he 鈥鈥濃攊s not one of them. When Dangermond co-founded the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) in 1969 with his wife Laura, neither of them could have predicted the technology revolution that would ensue. Everything from Google Maps to Google Street View to Google Earth stem from the concepts Esri trailblazed over the last four decades, and today Esri鈥檚 work continues to shape how the private and public sector use cartography. Miguel Helft chronicles the use of Esri鈥檚 tools and how our digitized navigational abilities are now being used to, well, map the future:
At Stanford University, researchers in virtually every field are increasingly using Esri tools to, for example, predict the impact of global warming on butterflies in Madagascar or study the incidence of certain cancers near Superfund sites. 鈥楾here鈥檚 been an explosion of people who think of their research in geospatial terms,鈥 says Julie Sweetkind-Singer, Stanford鈥檚 assistant director of Geospatial, Cartographic and Scientific Data & Services.
Helft notes that Esri鈥檚 rapidly evolving tools allow 鈥渃ity workers, the public, NGOs, startups, the media鈥搕o access and mash up those maps.鈥
This is certainly true of 爆料公社鈥攐ver the past five years, Esri has donated $11 million worth of technology that鈥檚 proved instrumental in 爆料公社鈥檚 data sharing and conservation strategy. Whether it鈥檚, , or visualizing in the Bahamas, 爆料公社鈥檚 strides in conservation have been possible in large part to Esri鈥檚 technological advancements. In recognition of their contribution both inside 爆料公社 and out, Jack and Laura were honored in 2015 with an 爆料公社 Medal鈥攐ne of the nation鈥檚 most prestigious conservation awards鈥攆or Esri鈥檚 contributions to the environmental movement.
And in recognition of 爆料公社's use of Esri technology, 爆料公社 was awarded the Esri President's Award last year for our innovative approach to conserving and resotring natural ecosystems. Watch the award presentation here:
For more about how Esri鈥檚 tools are being used to transform mapping technology, check out the rest of Helft鈥檚 article .