ESRI’s John Day speaks on “GIS in national government; enabling nation building”

Friday, 14 June 2013 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Environment Systems Research Institute (ESRI) Director for Defense Business John Day the developer of the most commonly used GIS software ArcGIS, was in Sri Lanka to make a presentation on “GIS in national government; enabling nation building” at the first ever GeoSpatial forum held at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel on Monday 10 June 2013 and organised by Geospatial Media (publishers of the well renowned GeoSpatial magazine). The forum had over 250 participants mainly from Government organisations.

In his presentation Day emphasised the important role that Geo Spatial intelligence can play in making more informed accurate decisions and how it is a much needed management tool for all key decision makers in varied sectors, enabling the growth, efficiency, development and preparedness. He highlighted how every sector from health services; to natural resources to emergency and disaster management to national security needs GIS for asset management and monitoring, planning for the future or ensuring that operations run more efficiently.

The collation of geographical information nationwide in to a National Spatial Data Base Infrastructure (NSDI) was also emphasised. Day’s recommendation from his experience was that whilst the people, processes and technology are involved the key driver for such an initiative is visionary leadership. He further iterated that collaboration between agencies is crucial and a NSDI doesn’t necessarily have to have one key agency in charge, but a bottom-up approach where many agencies can coordinate and collaborate in establishing a NSD.

Since joining ESRI, Day has been advising the US defence and intelligence community on how emerging commercial GIS technologies and solutions translate to defence systems. He has led ESRI’s efforts to promote and implement CJMTK, which provides a geospatial technology foundation for US DOD C2I programs. Day is a former British army officer with 30 years of experience in military engineering and geospatial technology including counter-terrorism activities in Northern Ireland and geospatial support in the NATO Corps headquarters in Bosnia. He has a Master’s degree in Engineering from Cambridge University, England and a Master’s degree in GIS from Edinburgh University, Scotland.

ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute) based in Redlands, California, USA is the developer of ArcGIS. ESRI inspires and enables people to positively impact the future through a deeper, geographic understanding of the changing world around them. They have to their credit an estimated 350000 clients worldwide, 3000 employees, 10 US offices, 1600 business partners and 80 international distributors worldwide.

ESRI has been in existence since 1969 and was founded by Jack Dangermond and his wife Laura. ESRI is represented in Sri Lanka by GIS Solutions (Pvt) Ltd.