Day after another, governments finding out the importance of having a holistic snapshots on the current situations to deal with critical cases, a wider images to make future plans considering edges and margins which weren't going to appear with narrow images, and the true values of the GIS weren't fully appreciated,yet.
Dialogue 
Interviews ESRI Enables the Intelligent Query and Analysis of Virtual Cities
Interviews ESRI Enables the Intelligent Query and Analysis of Virtual Cities
Written by Matt Ball Monday, 18 January 2010 22:25
V1: You’re a high-energy individual that has applied every waking hour for more than 40 years toward the design and application of technology to help manage the earth. Are your concerns for our planet a strong motivator for you?
Dangermond: This purpose has always been the reason for ESRI, and why all of us here work so hard. I think in our own small way ESRI, through the incredible work of our users, has been able to make a difference. However, given the immensity of the problem there is so much more to be done, and we need to keep driving our vision of integrating geographic thinking into virtually all human activities.
V1: There seems to be a growing urgency to respond to sustainability issues with the application of geospatial technology. Would you agree that this market is growing, and what do feel are the prospects for the entire geospatial industry in regard to the measurement and monitoring of emissions and climate change?
Dangermond: This market is definitely growing; even in a time of recession. I believe that this is because GIS is a system and set of workflows that organize all types of geographic measurements and data into a systematic database that can be applied to so many applications. While it is a great record keeping and geographic accounting system, its fundamental purpose is about helping apply geographic knowledge to create better understanding, planning, and decision making…and of course help in communication. These systems and workflows result in things being more efficient, minimizing impacts on the environment and reducing conflicts of many types. I would assert that GIS is all about making the world more sustainable.
V1: How do you see GIS evolving to address the complex multidisciplinary issues of climate change?
Dangermond: The contributions here are extensive and growing. Some examples include more efficient routing of vehicles (with 15-30% energy and cost savings), more efficient land use and transportation planning in cities, better climate change models, better storytelling and visualization of probable impacts, suitability analysis and map assessments for renewable energy siting, adaptation planning, conservation, planning for carbon sequestration and accounting ...and many others.
If we are to have a hope for the future, we need to integrate all these issues into comprehensive geographic planning approaches that are fundamentally based on geospatial information. The holistic approach that only geography can provide to this problem is very important.
V1: At the GeoDesign Summit there were a lot of new ideas about the evolution of GIS toward design and sketching of plans. Do you feel that the potential of 3D visualization for visualizing larger geographies is in concert with the concept of building information modeling (BIM)?
Dangermond: As I am sure you know, I believe strongly in the concepts of GeoDesign as an extension to GIS for designing the future. And yes, 3D aspects of this will be very important. This is one of the main areas of research that will be coming out in our upcoming software release this spring.
ArcGIS 10 will emphasize five things: a rich and scalable GIS data model that supports intelligent and large “virtual city" size data bases, full interoperability with standards-based and proprietary BIM models, very fast visualization, 3D object editing (i.e. building placement), and full 3D analysis. This system will allow users and developers to build workflows that test alternative design scenarios and evaluate the results using both statistical and visual analysis tools.
It’s useful to point out that there are many types and variations of BIM that are based on different data formats, standards, ontologies, densities of content, etc., and there are often very good reasons for these differences. Data models of any type are typically designed to work with specialized tools that are used to create and apply the data set to a particular set of applications. CAD tools for example are typically focused on a single building or small grouping of buildings for architectural and engineering applications. These BIM models often carry a lot of detail (sometimes down to the screw of a building) and simply don’t scale to deal with larger groupings of buildings like full virtual cities. High performance visualization/simulation technologies (VIS/SIM) have a radically different data model that is designed to provide very fast “fly through” experiences but perform no data management and cannot be used for the type of intelligent query and analysis typical in a GIS.
Today, GIS can scale to very large data sets (virtual cities) and can be fully interoperable with other BIM technologies. It is also nearly as fast as the VIS/SIM environments but offers the rich analytic and multi-user capabilities familiar to GIS users. On the other hand it is not a 3D building design and editing tool and needs to be integrated with other BIM technologies at the workflow level.
My sense is that all the BIM approaches and models will become increasingly interoperable, but there will remain a distinction between the tools and data models that relate to basic capabilities and applications they support.
V1: How do you intend to address the coming age of model-based design with new capabilities for the geospatial toolset? Are there opportunities for closer alliances with CAD vendors?
Dangermond: ESRI is not developing a 3D object editor like SketchUp or AutoCAD. We are doing our best to encourage easy integration of our tools and those of others. We think there is big opportunity here for collaboration between vendors based on creative workflows and standards.
V1: A certain element of your personality is as a competitive businessperson, but also with a strong bent toward philanthropy (giving software away to good causes). How do you reconcile the two, and measure the reward of giving your software away for free?
Dangermond: I have always liked building and applying GIS. Business was how I chose to do this. I am not good at most things, but I do work very hard and like to work where I have a chance to succeed. GIS was just such a thing for me.
Most people believe being in business is about making money. This has never been my motivation. ESRI was started without money but we were always able to receive support because we worked very hard and were always willing to do whatever was needed and wanted.
I’ve never had a problem with giving away things that really contribute. It’s my way of giving back. I think this philosophy is probably common to most people.
V1: Since you’re a private company, we don’t know much about the different elements that make up your business. Given your standing as the dominant GIS software vendor, an understanding of your business would provide a pretty comprehensive market analysis for GIS overall. For instance, a profile of your user base by industry segment and occupation would be really interesting. You’ve also been the longest lasting GIS vendor, so you’re privy to trends of growth or decline of individual market segments. What are some of the trends that you’ve seen recently regarding strength in specific market sectors, and are there any new and exciting market segments for you?
Dangermond: It’s true we are probably a good index of the GIS market. Government is more than half of our business but we also have major business in utilities, natural resource companies, retail and geo-marketing, transportation/logistics, and education. These are the big ones. They are all very strong. In 2010 we expect government to slow down a bit because of the recession, but the commercial markets are all accelerating.
Last year we grew at about 5% globally with China and the Middle East performing the best.
From a technology perspective our main thrust has been to develop a full standards-based enterprise GIS server that considers the Internet as a platform. This seems to be really catching on with large deployments in both traditional enterprise and distributed Web environments.
We believe that while this has been expensive to build, the future of GIS is built on exactly this kind of architecture and will help organizations to openly serve their content and knowledge holdings. These services will support thin and thick clients including the new mash-up applications that can be easily shared.
ESRI is also building a large GIS cloud based on ArcGIS Server with very large quantities of content and sharing services for our users.
V1: The concept of “doing well while doing good” is a growing mantra by the green entrepreneur, but it also carries with it an underlying bent toward wealth and materialism. You have run your company very lean over the years, and my understanding is that you live very simply. Now that you’ve amassed considerable personal wealth, what are your motivations and priorities for that wealth?
My wealth is ESRI. It’s my sense that this is also where I can do the most good—serving our users. I intend to keep doing this long into the future.
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