I’m impressed with any effort to quantify the return on investment for geospatial technology spending. The Geospatial Information Technology Association (GITA) has put together some excellent tools for this purpose. As the executive summary of the AwwaRF/GITA ROI Workbook states, “the costs of a proposed system are not terribly difficult to research, but the potential benefits are much harder to document.”
GITA has focused primarily on this very difficult piece, helping GIT project managers put together benefit estimates along with their financial impact, and pulling together a credible business case. The GITA workbook is an excellent step for those exploring an initial investment in GIS, but when we look at the larger geospatial sustainable environment sector we envision a broader tool set.
The holistic view that is sustainable development requires a convergence of tools and knowledge, and a breadth of information about an area that is much larger than a single project’s footprint. Big picture technology is needed in order to understand the economic, environmental and social impacts of development.
That larger system takes advantage of the collaborative function of GIS and includes a broad number of additional tools that are used by a number of disciplines that don’t use or need the full functionality of GIS. Getting buy-in on converging technologies and knowledge into a much larger system of systems approach is something that will largely be mandated by policy. As green building and sustainable development plans become mandated, the case for centralizing knowledge and technologies will largely be a matter of efficiency and an elimination of duplicate efforts.
When problems with the environment occur, they beg immediate solutions that often don’t need an ROI analysis because the economic impacts are immediate. A recent discussion with the Trust for Public Lands brought the problem of stream warming in the West to my attention. Locals feel an immediate impact when there’s a mass die-off of fish in local streams because they lose tourism dollars from fly fishermen.
Local policy makers know that they need a large-scale watershed analysis to help solve the problem. Political barriers dissolve quickly, and they don’t care if you call the solution conservation, because at that point they’re feeling too much economic pain.
Setting up the large system of systems approach requires a great deal of forethought. Such an approach can be justified when you start amalgamating the cost for environmental cleanup on individual sites. The technology is available to create central systems that alert to problems prior to large-scale environmental and economic impact. In my mind, it’s a case of how can we not afford to make this investment?
—–
Read thoughts on this same topic at Jeff Thurston’s Vector One blog.
{ 1 trackback }